Richard Dawkins, Gardening and the Number Seven: Parshat Behar

Richard Dawkins, Gardening and the Number Seven: Parshat Behar

I just watched the Richard Dawkins movie, "The God Delusion. I disagree with Dawkins who thinks that religion is poison (a little too Chairman Mao for me), but he did bring up an interesting point: In one scene, Dawkins confronts a British rabbi about the Genesis account of creationism. The rabbi says that he supports a literal interpretation of Genesis and believes that the world is only 6,000 years old. Dawkins tells the rabbi how stupid this is, because archeologists all agree that humans are millions of years old and that 6,000 years ago was the start of the Agricultural Revolution.

This got me thinking: is there a biblical connection between the agricultural revolution and the laws of Moses? Sure enough, there is...and it's this week's Parshat.

Parshat Behar gives the faithful a set of rules for how to handle all their farming...stuff like the Jubilee, contracts between tenant farmers, a year of rest for the land, etc. etc. I'm not gonna go into it because frankly its boring to me and I don't have a green thumb...i can barely keep a house plant alive.

At the beginning of human civilization, cultures believed that they were controlled by the land and created Earth gods and goddesses to act as the middle man between the Earth and their needs. Life was subsistence, short and brutal. But when the Agricultural Revolution happened, people had abundance for the very first time. We were able to control the land and were free for the first time.

But with freedom comes responsibility, and as keepers of the Law, Jews understand this and bring this to the world with Torah. G_d demands we level the playing field, giving time for the Earth and those who cultivate it to rest. We have to give to the wandering stranger and return land back to its original owner, eliminating the tenant farmer relationship. We cannot abuse our land privilege with usury and on the 50th year, we have to celebrate with festivals.

When a culture has comfort, it becomes responsible to those whose lives are still short and brutal. The lesson of Parshat Behar, and the agricultural revolution, is to see the bigger picture: that no matter what our abundance, we are still partners with G_d and have to play by the rules in order to make life worth living.

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