Last Thursday night, Beth Tzedec hosted a panel that gave urgent shape to questions this Shabbat’s Torah portion has been asking all along. Bruce Elman, Co-Chair of CIJA’s Legal Task Force and a member of our own Board; Mark Ross of the LTF Steering Committee; and Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, sat together and laid out plainly what the Jewish legal community is doing to combat antisemitism in Canada. I left the room thinking: this is exactly what this week’s Torah portion demands of us.

This week we read a double portion — Behar and Bekhukotai together on a single Shabbat. That pairing is not calendrical convenience. It is a theological argument. The two portions form one arc, and you cannot understand either without the other.

Behar means “on the mountain.” Im Bekhukotai teleikhu means “in My statutes, you shall walk.” Together they trace the complete movement of Jewish life: ascend to receive; descend to enact. Vision, then obligation. The summit, then the path back down.

Rashi notices the tension at Behar’s opening: Mah inyan Shemitah etzel Har Sinai? — “What does the sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?” Every law came from Sinai. Why specify this one’s address? His answer: just as Shemitah was given in its fullness at Sinai — every detail and sub-detail — so too was every commandment. The mountain isn’t a dateline. It is a theological claim.

Mountains and Pyramids

In his essential work Sinai and Zion,........

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