Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Emor: God's Harvest

On April 22nd, communities around the world celebrated Earth Day, a holiday created to remind us of our obligation to be mindful stewards of our planet. In an article entitled "Tending to Our Cosmic Oasis," former Chancellor of JTS Ismar Schorsch writes that Judaism obligates us to reject the notion that all our material possessions are permanent, but rather that anything we own or posses is ultimately due to God's grace. Schorsch writes:

"...Judaism pulsates with reverence for God’s handiwork. Man may embody the highest form of consciousness in the universe, but hardly merits the limitless power of an absolute monarch. His unique ability to unravel the secrets of nature does not make him the equal of its creator...Judaism is a religious tapestry designed to sharpen our eye for the divine, in nature as well as in history, and thus is laced with universal motifs relevant to our contemporary crisis" (Ismar Schorsch, "Tending to Our Cosmic Oasis," The Melton Journal: Issues and Themes in Jewish Education, Vol. 24 (Spring 1991), 3).

Chancellor Schorsch cautions anyone from assuming that our ability to have possessions means that we are permanent owners of anything, for all things in this world are subject to God's will, and anyone blessed with plenty must use their good fortune to bring divine sanctity into this world, an idea expressed in Parshat Emor's depiction of the mitzvah of the omer.

Parshat Emor describes God's command to the Israelites that, prior to eating any food that is produced in the harvest season, the Israelites should bring an omer of their harvest to the Kohanim for a sacrifice. The parasha states:

"And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: When you come to the Land which I am giving you, and you reap its harvest, you shall bring it to the kohen an omer of the beginning of your harvest. And he shall wave the omer before the Lord so that it will be acceptable for you; the kohen shall unblemished lamb in its first year as a burnt offering to the Lord..." (Vayikra 23:9-12).

As is often the case in Sefer Vayikra, our rabbis were curious as to meaning behind the mitzvah of the omer, and how providing this portion of our harvest to God achieves certain larger aims in terms of the relationship between God and the Israelites. Beginning with our rabbinic midrashim, the bringing of an omer is considered intimately connected to something about the divine-human relationship. The midrash states:

"Do not take the precept of the omer lightly, for it was by merit of this commandment Abraham was privileged to inherit the Land of Canaan...as it is stated, "And I will give You, and to your seed after you, the Land..." (Genesis 17:8) on condition that you shall keep My covenant (17:9). What is meant by covenant? The precept of the omer" (Midrash Vayikra Rabbah 28:6).

The above midrash argues that something about the omer relates to the covenant between God and Abraham, as their covenant remains a paradigm through all of Jewish history. However, the midrash is opaque in terms of how exactly collecting the omer specifically reminds one of the covenental relationship.

Two later commentaries on the Torah offer a similar theme about the true meaning of the omer, and how bringing an omer to the kohanim makes a profound statement about the nature of our material possessions and our relationship with God. First, the Akedat Yitzhak, a super-commentary on Rashi by Rabbi Isaac ben Moses Arama, argues that collecting an omer of the first fruits acknowledges the covenant by forcing the individual to recognize that their harvest, no matter how bountiful, does not belong to them, but ultimately belongs to God:

“The declaration “When you come to the land which I give to you” collocates with the Divine promise, “For the Lord your God brings you into a good land...a land of wheat and barley...a land in which you shall eat bread without scarceness....when you have eaten are replete, then you shall bless the Lord your God...Beware that you forget not the Lord your God.”  The land was to be given to the people of Israel as a means to an end, as a necessary tool to achieve the ultimate goal and satisfaction (i.e. the appropriation of the Torah).  The omer of the first fruits reflects this idea.   Hence the prohibition to eat from the new produce before the offering up of the omer.   The priest is to wave it before the Lord in order that the offering of the people may be accepted and their awareness deepened that all this is at our disposal- not for its own sake, as fools are wont to think, but to enable us to serve God” (Akedat Yitzhak on Vayikra 23).   

According to the Akedat Yitzhak, lest one believe that a bountiful harvest is indicative of a person's own intrinsic worth, the mitzvah of the omer exists to remind each Israelite that any bounty from that harvest exists not for material wealth for its own sake, but to serve God. By extension, each time one sanctifies a piece of their harvest to God, they are not only acknowledging God's sanctity in the short-term, but making a statement about humanity's responsibility to obey God in the long-term.

Second, Rabbi Moses Alshikh, a sixteenth-century Torah commentator, writes that the omer not only reminds the Israelites that they are not responsible for indefinite material gains, but also that they are not responsible for their inheritance of the land of Israel. Alshikh states:

"Lest we succumb to pride, God has commanded us to offer up the earliest product of the Israelite harvest presenting the priest one omer as a token of our gratitude, of our acknowledgment that God is the Creator of the Land and all it produces...When you come to the Land implies no conquest but the acquisition of a legacy. This may foster the illusion that the Land belongs to Israel permanently and unconditionally, to be inherited by their children to be tilled and cultivated, and to reap the fruits of their sweat and toil" (Moses Alshikh on Vayikra 23:10).

According to Alshikh, we should not limit our understanding of the omer's significance to only the harvesting of the land, but of Israel's inheritance of the land itself. God will provide the Israelites a beautiful land with which to reap successful harvest, yet the harvests and the land itself are both depend on our willingness to accept God's Torah, and live our lives in intimate connection to the Divine.

Whether we are thinking about humanity's relationship to the environment, or how we teach our children to value people and community more than things, the above commentaries about the omer teach us what it means to maintain humility about who really "owns" our possessions, and take notice of the ways that we can allow God's presence to overcome the temptations of materialism. All of us, at any stage of life, can become convinced that we are the masters of our destiny and possessions, yet ultimately our parasha provides us a model by which we can take a step back, and give something ourselves as a means of acknowledging that God's role in providing us a bounty through which we can harvest all the goodness in our lives.

Shabbat Shalom!