“At the heart of this week’s parasha, Behar, is the visionary concept of returning land to its original owner at the end of a 50-year cycle. This prevents the polarization of society into two classes: wealthy, powerful landowners on the one hand and permanently impoverished people on the other. In an agrarian society, a farmer who sold all the land to pay debts had no prospect of being anything other than a servant…(One of the moral objectives of this law is that) no person should be condemned to permanent servitude.” (Etz Hayyim commentary below the line, page 738)
In 1963, during a peaceful march on Washington, DC, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He eloquently called for freedom to ring from every mountaintop across the nation. The cost to him personally and to those who joined his peaceful resistance movement was steep, but real change soon began. God used that speech to awaken the conscience of the US to fight for the freedom of the oppressed and downtrodden. Today part of the political debate is the facing a growing income disparity between the top 1% and the rest of us.
Like Isaiah, we have been sent to let freedom ring. With God
strengthening our resolve, we must proclaim that the captives can be released,
that the downtrodden can be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of
the Lord’s favor has come
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