(Delivered May 9, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

We find ourselves today at the end of Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus, which I must admit is almost nobody’s favorite book. The text of Leviticus בְּגָדול—overall—is full of rules and regulations, blood and guts, sacrifices, rituals, restrictions. 

My teacher, Rabbi Nehemia Polen, on the other hand, loves Leviticus. Loves it, loves it, loves it.

In Nehemia’s world, Leviticus becomes almost romantic: he reads it as a tender description of acts of profound devotion: of the gifts that God asks of humanity and that humanity lovingly offers. Where the rest of us see the mind-numbing details of alienating ritual, Nehemia sees care and softness, a desire for deeper connection and partnership.

The emotional drama underneath those boring details is of God and humanity reaching toward each other, repairing the sense of abandonment arising from centuries of enslavement, moving past the savagery of the Golden Calf, dwelling in sacred companionship in a holy place, that God designs and the Israelites construct. To put it another way, the Mishkan and the many elaborate religious practices that take place within it are the embodied expression of the covenant that defines the Jewish people. 

Although I passed Nehemia’s class and wrote a pretty good final essay, I have some lingering skepticism for this reading.

But Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, particularly what we encounter in the first shlish—the first triennial reading—offers a wink here and there of the passion and adoration that my teacher sees in the book overall. 

Consider the loving care that God commands us to have for one another and for the land. The system of שְׁמִיטָה and יוֹבֵל—of letting the land rest every seven years, and of rebalancing wealth inequities every fifty—speaks to a strong theme of generosity and good will toward one another. It also demands a level of faith in the unseen, to be able to accept the enforced no-harvest period. Between us and God, and amongst ourselves, these principles teach and demand a kind of tenderness.

The parsha’s many lessons about economic justice likewise point to an ethic of love and חֶסֶד, commanding us to uphold the dignity of the migrant or the servant with as much energy as we would do for our own kin. It would be enough that the parsha forbids taking economic advantage of someone who is struggling. But our Torah goes further, to command that if we see someone beginning to struggle, we must intervene to support and strengthen them (וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ). Rashi compares this to a heavy load on an animal. If the load begins to wobble, it’s better to catch it quickly before it falls to the ground. Once it has fallen all the way, it’s that much harder to lift it up. With this teaching, the Torah is demanding that we not look away from suffering, that we see the struggles of the world as our own and labor to help. That these teachings are couched in the refrain: אֲנִי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם—I am Adonai your God—completes the circuit of love and compassion. The more empathic the human-to-human interaction, the more it aligns with God’s primary principle of עָרֵֵבוּת—of taking responsibility for one another.

But let me tell you about one particular pasuk that encapsulates the divine-human connection and love that Nehemia believes permeates Vayikra. In chapter 25, verse 23, God says: 

וְהָאָרֶץ לֹא תִמָּכֵר לִצְמִתֻת כִּי־לִי הָאָרֶץ כִּי־גֵרִים וְתוֹשָׁבִים אַתֶּם עִמָּדִי׃
But the land will not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine.
You are strangers and sojourners with Me.

The final word of that pasuk עִמָּדִי—with Me—opens a world of theological questions and possibilities. When the verse says we are with God, what is the quality of that with-ness? Are we wanderers being accompanied by God, our footsteps monitored from the middle distance by an all-knowing presence? Or is God also a stranger and sojourner, wandering alongside us as we go about our lives? 

Surely the ambiguity is not an accident. 

It is comforting enough to imagine the former: that God is watching peacefully over us, guiding our every choice. The strangeness and the sojourn never get out of hand because God is with us. Yet if God is also a stranger and sojourner, if we are walking beside God in wonder and sometimes bewilderment, how does that obligate us, to God and to one another?

This, I believe, is the sense of depth and companionship that makes Nehemia Polen so devoted to Sefer Vayikra. Ultimately, it’s the idea that God and we are sojourners together, learning from one another and holding one another steady in the whirlwind of life. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass—born Richard Alpert—said, “We are all just walking each other home.”

We are all just walking each other home.

May our footsteps be guided by kindness.