פָּרָשַׁת בְּהַר

Parshat Behar, spoken to Moshe at Har Sinai (Mount Sinai), teaches that the Land of Israel and the people of Israel belong to Hashem. When Bnei Yisrael (the children of Yisrael) come into the land, every seventh year is Shemitah (the Sabbatical year): the land rests as a Shabbat to Hashem, no one sows or prunes, and what grows by itself is food for everyone — owner, servant, worker, stranger and animal. Hashem promises that the sixth year will produce enough for three. After seven cycles of seven years, the fiftieth year is the Yovel (the Jubilee) on Yom Kippur the shofar is sounded, freedom is proclaimed in the land, and every man returns to his family's holding.

Land is never sold permanently, "for the land is Mine; you are strangers and residents with Me." A sale is priced by the harvests left until the Yovel, and the seller or his nearest relative may always redeem it; only a house in a walled city passes permanently to the buyer after a year. Buyer and seller must not wrong one another (the oral law adds, not with words either).

Bnei Yisrael support the poor who falls on hard times and lend to him without interest. If he must sell himself, he is treated as a hired worker, never as a slave, and goes free in the Yovel. If he is sold to a stranger, his relatives redeem him — "for Bnei Yisrael are My servants, whom I brought out of Mitzrayim (Egypt)." The parsha ends with the command not to make idols or bow down on a carved stone, and to keep Hashem's Shabbatot and revere His Mikdash (sanctuary). In most years Behar and Bechukotai are read together as a double parsha.