The closing parshiyot of Sefer Vayikra confront us with two deeply unsettling themes: human power over others and divine power over us. In Behar, we are forced to grapple with the Torah’s sanctioning of slavery. In Becḥukotai, we face a theology of reward and punishment that can feel overwhelming in its severity. Together, these texts challenge not only how we read Torah, but how we understand morality, responsibility, and God.

Behar: Power Over the Other

Parshat Behar presents a striking contrast. On the one hand, Israelite servants must be treated with dignity and released in the Jubilee year. They are God’s servants, redeemed from Egypt, and cannot be permanently enslaved (Leviticus 25:39–43). On the other hand, the Torah permits the enslavement of non-Israelites in perpetuity. Foreign slaves may be acquired, owned as property, and passed down through generations (Leviticus 25:44–46). Unlike Israelite servants, they are never freed.

This tension is difficult to ignore. The Torah insists on compassion within the Israelite community while allowing permanent domination over outsiders. These verses are often minimized or explained away—perhaps because of their use in justifying later systems of slavery.

A candid acknowledgment of this tension appears in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, which notes that these laws sharply contradict other biblical principles that call for a single standard for both citizen and stranger. Later rabbinic interpretations attempt to soften the text by suggesting that “for all time” actually means “until the Jubilee year,” but this reading strains against the plain meaning.

What if this second passage did not exist? Would history have unfolded differently? It’s hard to say. Slavery predates the Torah and appears across ancient civilizations. From the Code of Hammurabi to Egypt, Greece, and Rome, slave systems were deeply embedded in economic and social structures. The........

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