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From The Rabbi

  Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton

   e: admin@greatsynagogue.org.au

DVAR TORAH – Behar-Bechukotai 5785

We can all celebrate two major successes at the National Trust Heritage Awards last week. Jana Vytrhlik won a High Commendation for her book Treasures of Old Jewish Sydney and the Bimah Relocation Project also won a High Commendation for the excellence of its planning and execution. Mazal tov to us all!

Shavuot begins in just a couple of weeks. The evenings will be very busy, with a choral service, a Yom Tov dinner and my annual Shavuot lecture. This week I will be speaking about the most remarkable medieval Jewish philosopher, Rabbi Levi ben Gershon, known as Ralbag or Gersonides, who pushed Aristotelianism as far as it could possibly go within Judaism, indeed many people thought too far.

On the second evening we are privileged to host Prof Colin Shindler, world expert on the history and politics of Israel, who will speak on ‘Gaza: The Day After’ after Maariv. On the first morning kids are invited to an ice cream party after the Ten Commandments, and on both days there is an ice cream and cheesecake Kiddush for all after the service. The choir will sing on the second morning, when there will also be Yizkor.

The Torah forbids us in Parashat Behar to lend at interest within our own religious community. That, strangely, is the reason that Jews became moneylenders in the middle ages. Christians read the same verses and on that basis banned lending money at interest within the Christian community. Nevertheless, for large financial projects, whether funding armies, building castles and cathedrals or paying dowries, Christians, especially kings and nobles, needed capital and credit. They therefore turned to Jews to provide them with it, in some cases importing them into the country for that purpose.

This led to the irony that Jews became associated with lending money at interest despite the severe disapproval of the Torah. When the prohibition is stated, it is followed by an apparently unconnected statement, ‘I am the Lord, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt’. We can understand why the text might say ‘I am the Lord your God’, but what has the Exodus to do with lending at interest?

The Talmud addresses this question by referring to the death of the firstborn that immediately preceded the Exodus. God knew who was a firstborn and who was not. In some cases, this would be something a parent might want to keep quiet, if there was a prior relationship that produced a child and they wanted to keep that secret. God could see through all the deception and the true firstborn was taken. Similarly, God can see through any deception around charging interest and will punish accordingly.

The problem with this explanation is that it seems difficult to disguise charging interest. If I give you $10 and ask for $11 back, that is a fairly obvious matter of charging interest. But of course, that is not how it is done. A combination of fees, charges, administration costs, fines etc. etc. is all used to disguise the money taken from us by the institutions lending us money. We are told one interest rate, but in fact banks and other lenders take a lot more from us. In fact, they even take money from us when we are lending to them, by placing money in our account. I once got charged by my American bank account for having too little money with them, and I now have to make sure my balance doesn’t fall below a certain level. If I hadn’t noticed, after a while they would have cleared me out entirely!

None of these tricks work with God. He knows who is who and what is what. We might try to fool the people who need to borrow our money, but in this case, as in every case, we can’t fool God.