LEV1007 It is the way of penitents to be exceptionally lowly and humble. If fools shame them with their former deeds, saying: "Yesterday you did this-and-this," or "You said this-and-this," they should pay them no heed but listen and rejoice, knowing that this is to their merit. For as long as they are ashamed of the previous transgressions and are humiliated because of them, their merit increases and they grow in stature. It is a great sin to tell a penitent: "Remember your former deeds," or to mention them before him with the intent of shaming him. On this it is written [this verse]: "Let a man not wrong his fellowman" (Bava Metzia 58b). The penitent should pursue good deeds and keep himself far from thoughts of this world. He should strengthen himself in the counsel of the Blessed One, take shelter in His shade, bear the yoke of the Blessed One's Torah, and abide the shame and scorn of fools, making himself as one deaf, and blind, and dead, as it is written (Tehillim 69:8,11,14): "Because for You I have born shame… I have made sackcloth my garment… And as for me, my prayer is to You, O Hashem, in a time of favor."

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LEV1017 See [[LEV206]] Leviticus 18:4 laws SPERO 24-5

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LEV1018 See [[LEV957]] Leviticus 25:10 jubilee AMEMEI 130

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LEV1021 The legal distinction between custody and ownership also played a significant part in the development of ethical obligations in the field of social welfare. The biblical declaration that the land belongs to God [this verse] limits man to the role of custodian of his wealth. Property was entrusted to man on the condition that he use it for the good of all. Modern states have enacted into law advanced social concepts to alleviate the plight of the needy. Yet no law has succeeded in transmitting a sense of ethics to its citizenry on a personal level. Secular education has failed to replace religion as a moral force.

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LEV1019 See [[LEV958]] Leviticus 25:10 liberty SACKS 204-5

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LEV1020 The concept of equality we find in the Torah specifically and Judaism generally is not an equality of wealth: Judaism is not communism. Nor is it an equality of power: Judaism is not anarchy. It is fundamentally an equality of dignity. We are all equal citizens in the nation whose sovereign is God. Hence the elaborate political and economic structure set out in Leviticus, organized around the number seven, the sign of the holy. Every seventh day is free time. Every seventh year, the produce of the field belongs to all; Israelite slaves are to be liberated and debts released. Every fiftieth year, the year following the seventh set of seven years, ancestral land was returned to its original owners. Thus the inequalities that are the inevitable result of freedom are mitigated. The logic of all these provisions is the priestly insight that God, creator of all, is the ultimate owner of all. [This verse]. God therefore has the right, not just the power, to set limits to inequality. No one should be robbed of dignity by total poverty, endless servitude, or unrelieved indebtedness.

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LEV1023 What Shabbat does for humans and animals, the Sabbatical and Jubilee years do for the land. The earth too is entitled to its periodic rest. The Torah warns that if the Israelites do not respect this, they will suffer exile (Leviticus 26:34). Behind this are two concerns. One is environmental. As Rambam points out, land which is overexploited eventually erodes and loses its fertility. The Israelites were therefore commanded to conserve the soil by giving it periodic fallow years, not pursuing short-term gain at the cost of long-term desolation (The Guide for the Perplexed, III: 39). The second, no less significant, is theological: "The land," says God, "is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me" (Leviticus 25:23). We are guests on earth.

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LEV1022 True, Israel of old had its rich and its poor. But the Torah made ample provision for the poor, and more important--no group could ever gain permanent control of enough land, and with it wealth and control, to make the country a nightmare of contrast between the fabulously rich and powerful on the one hand, and the miserable, illiterate starving peasant worker on the other. The Almighty's words are clear: "the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for Mine is the land; for you are strangers and sojourners [temporary dwellers] with Me" [this verse]. Israel could never have a chasm so stark and unbridgeable between landed aristocracy and starving poor that it would need a Lenin or Stalin to seize the land, or a Castro to take from the rich and give to the poor.

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LEV1024 Trust in God when alone. Every person is necessarily in one of two situations: either he is a stranger or he lives among family and friends. If he is a stranger, he should, whenever he feels lonely, find companionship in God and, in his condition as a stranger, places trust in Him. He should bear in mind that the soul is also a stranger in this world, and the inhabitants of the earth are like strangers on it, as it says in Scripture: “For to Me you are strangers and temporary residents” (Vayikra 25:23). He should think of how anyone who has relatives will, in a short while, be left a solitary stranger; neither relative nor child will help him, not one of them will accompany him. He should also consider that he is freed from the heavy burden of supporting relatives and fulfilling obligations toward them, and regard this as one of the blessings the Creator has bestowed upon him. For if he is busy with secular interests and providing for his material needs, his labors are lighter without wife or child, and their absence means rest for him and is beneficial to him. And if he is concerned about his latter end, his mind is undoubtedly clearer and freer when he is in a state of solitude.

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LEV1025 See [[GEN1070]] Genesis 19:9 alien DUTIES 765-7

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