Parshas Behar-Bechukosai Shabbos Times Erev Shabbos Shabbos Day Candle Lighting 5:01pm Latest time for Shema 9:45am Shkiya 5:18pm Shabbos Ends 6:02pm Avos Ubonim at Home Avos Ubonim 7:05-7:50pm Join us on Zoom at 7:45pm for this week's RAFFLE SPECIAL TREAT - HOT POTATO KNISHES (pick up from Family Berlin from 8pm) Kindly Sponsored by Family Brett Cohen Every boy who learns will get a voucher towards a Pizza (8 vouchers entitle a family to a FREE Pizza) (This is besides the communal weekly Avos Ubonim) Short Vort on the Parsha The second half of parshas Behar deals with numerous laws that pertain to a fellow Jew who becomes impoverished. If you lend him money, "Do not take from him interest." If he sells himself to you as a slave, "You shall not work him with slave labour." If the situation is such that he sells himself as a slave to a Non-Jew, we must make an effort to extract him from his undesirable environment. As the Torah instructs us, "He shall have redemption; one of his brothers shall redeem him" (Vayikra 25:36, 39, 48). The final two pesukim in the parsha seem to be totally out of place. There the Torah commands us not to make idols or put up statues and it exhorts us to observe Shabbos. What do these mitzvos have anything to do with what was mentioned beforehand? Rashi explains (26:1) that these commandments are specifically directed to the Jew who sells himself to the gentile. When this slave observes his master's behaviour, he should not look to imitate him. He should not say, "Since my master engages in forbidden relationships, so will I. Since my master worships idols, so will I. Since my master desecrates the Shabbos, so will I." The Torah wrote a condensed book of the most basic prohibitions tailored specially for the Jew that finds himself in spiritually challenged circumstances. Rav Wolbe comments that the Torah does not give up on anybody. A Jew can never reach a situation of total spiritual despair. His situation could be so bleak that he even sold himself to chop wood and draw water for a house of idol worship (see Rashi 25:47). Nevertheless, the Torah reaches out to him with a "Kitzur Shulchan Aruch" exhorting him to keep at least the basic tenets of Judaism.