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“If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer…No one shall rule ruthlessly over the other.” (Leviticus 25: 39-40, 46) Read more...

Our parashah this week ends in an odd way, a way that it is odd both for the book of Leviticus, and for Torah more generally. Leviticus is largely a book of laws – laws related to the Tabernacle and the priesthood (hence the English name of the book that invokes the tribe of Levi), laws of incest and sexual prohibitions, laws of ritual impurity, and so on. It contains very few narratives, yet it presents one here. Read more...

In 1939, a group of Hasidic Jews in Lublin, Poland were lined up against a barbed wire fence by SS soldiers. The sadistic commandant then ordered them to sing themselves to their own deaths. One of the men began to improvise a tune: “Mir veln zey iberlebn, iberlebn, iberlebn” – “We will outlive them” he sang over and over. Witness reports say that the song spread quickly through the group, who died dancing and singing those words. Read more...

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“The priest shall then offer the purification offering and make expiation for the one being purified of his impurity…Then he shall be pure.”  (Leviticus 14:19-20) Read more...