This Shabbat we read in the Torah a portion which is usually half of the combined last portion in the Book of Leviticus. On leap year we split the two, read a portion called Bahar this week, and finish the book next week with 'Bekhukota'y.' Out text begins in Chapter 25, verse one: "Va'ydaber adona'y el moshe behar sina'i le'mor -- And the Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath to the Lord."

I am going to date myself: I remember seeing a David Susskind round table discussion on T.V. -- which infuriated me as I was listening -- about mixed marriages. There were four men, all of them Jewish and married to non-Jewish wives. There were two women, one an actress and the other a well-known public figure, both of whom were married to Jews. The women said that they were married before, to non-Jews, and they found Jewish men make better husbands: more considerate, more respecting of their spouses, more willing to compromise and encourage the spouse to realize herself. The men smiled and agreed that they had these qualities. I asked myself: “So, Jewish women don’t deserve these considerations? Should they not have the Jewish men for spouses. And what about the flip side of the coin? Are Jewish wives not every bit as considerate, respecting of their spouses, willing to compromise and encourage?”

Now carry this question to a larger issue: why is it that the Jewish people have been at the forefront of the battle for justice and freedom, for human rights and civil rights and human dignity throughout history. Why were so many of the early revolutionaries in Russia Jews? Why did Ha’yim Solomon practically pay for the American Revolution out of his own pocket? Why are so many of the Nobel Prize winners and film and stage artists and top ranking musicians and authors and college professors all spring from the seed of Abraham? And why is it that our heritage, the Torah and the Tanakh, the Talmud and the great interpretations of the Rabbis from Rabbi Hillel and Akiba to the great late chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav Cook, to that wonderful sage, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel -- all stressed the sanctity of life and the importance of our right to choose -- even if we choose to be heretics, over everything else in Judaism?

Maybe it starts with the very first words of the Parsha: "Vaydaber Adona'y el Moshe behar sinai -- And the Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai." We can look at these words, no we must look at these words as more telling than merely an indication of the place where Moshe and God held their meeting. Why? Because the place is not that important. Had the Constitution of the United States been written in Boston, New York, or Dover, Delaware, would it have read any differently than it does? How many people even know where the constitution was written, or approved, or kept? The Constitution is a compilation of principles that guide the government, the congress and the judicial system of the United States. Its text is published and stands free of time and space. So, also, does the 'constitution' of the Jewish people, the Torah that God revealed to Moshe to teach the Children of Israel.

So, the verse "Vaydaber Adona'y el Moshe behar sinai -- And the Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai." must mean something else -- something different from what we understand, and maybe even something more. Let me suggest to you an interpretation that comes to us from the first book of our Scriptures, relating to the very first word of the Torah, ‘Beresheet, in the beginning.’ The sages asked, 'How could God start His great opus with this word? The beginning of what? What constitutes the beginning? Was it the thought of God, or the words "let there be," or possibly was it the actual appearance of that first light?' The answer was sought in the purpose of creation, not in its sequence. The sages separated the prefix "b" from the word 'reshit.' They said, "b" has more than one meaning. While it is true that more often than not it means 'in' or 'at' -- still it does at times mean 'for' -- as in Jacob working for Laban 'b'rakhel bitkha haktana -- for Rachel [Laban's] (your) little daughter.' Thus bereshit was interpreted to mean 'for a "reshit -- beginning" God created...' Now, we carry the same reasoning to our text this week, and we consider the verse as saying, "Vaydaber Adona'y el Moshe behar sinai -- And the Lord spoke to Moses 'for Sinai' -- which means that He spoke in the spirit and manner of the revelatory experience of Mount Sinai."

The "spirit of Sinai" is the ultimate spiritual connection between God and the Children of Israel. To this day, sages of all religions investigate and speculate about the nature and manner of the experience. Since God is ephemeral and nonphysical, what was it that the Israelites saw -- or even heard. How very awesome it was we can learn from their reaction, when they asked Moshe to have God stop, lest they all perish. "And they said to Moses, Speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said to the people, Fear not; for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that you sin not. And the people stood far away, and Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was." [Ex. 20:16-18] So Moshe entered the thick darkness, from which he extracted light -- or enlightenment. He spoke to Israel for forty years after the Sinai experience, to make them a unique people who will pursue justice and peace. It is the Sinai experience that made the Jews a kingdom of priests and a consecrated nation, charged with acting as agents of the Almighty.

The unique values taught by the Torah, by which a people were about to establish their new national character, are best exemplified by the command to observe not only a Sabbath day every week, but a "Sabbath year," when the land will lay fallow so as not to exhaust its ability to produce. The rules of the seventh year extend beyond allowing the land to lay fallow -- as we read in Deauteronomy 15, "At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release; Every creditor who lends anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother; because it is called the Lord’s release." [Deu. 15:1,2] As if this was not a law sufficiently demanding of the people, the Torah extends that demand to "seven times seven" -- the Jubilee year. "Then shall you cause the shofar to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the Day of Atonement shall you sound the shofar throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants of it; it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family."

The release of the 'seventh year,' the Shmita, was meant to give members of this special society that was formed by the teachings of God at Sinai a chance to level the playing field, so that those who fell by some misfortune may rise and join in the game of life. The Jubilee year was much more profound. At the time of the Jubilee the slate was to be wiped clean, and a new game was to start -- to be sure with new dominant players, as fifty years is a sufficient time for a generation to disappear and another to take its place in center stage of the drama of life.

Some people are, by their nature, doomed to fail, and time after time they will get themselves in debt, in trouble, and into the company of the less fortunate. However, a just society does not punish children for the shortcomings of their parents. Thus the Jubilee year was to create the ultimate justice, the most equitable society where families need not hold grudges from generation to generation, and the young never find themselves so disadvantage from birth as to make it impossble to rise above their ‘inherited misfortune.’ With this lesson of social justice and equanimity, generations of Jews carried on the battle for social justice, the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, for all minorities, care and dignity for the elderly and for children.

The verse, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof,” from today's Torah reading, is impressed upon our Liberty Bell, and deserves credit as the motto, the creed and the inspiration of the drive to equality and suffrage that created our nation and molded it in its finest and most idealistic form, that of a nation “under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Amen.

This Shabbat we read in the Torah the last portion in the Book of Va’yikra, Leviticus, a double portion called Behar – Bekhukotie. The text begins in Chapter 25, "Va’ydaber adona’y el moshe b’har sinai lemor - The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard." The second part begins in Chapter 26, verse 4, "Im bekhukota’y telekhu ve’et mitzvota’y tishmeru va’asitem otam - If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." Of course, this double portion deals with the priests’ offerings in the portable sanctuary, the Tabernacle in the desert. But The combination of the two words in the name of the portion is a great trigger to my talk this evening.

The was never before or after as great a moment for the Jewish people as when "Va’ydaber adona’y el moshe b’har sinai lemor - The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai," - as we read in the very beginning of our portion today. You would think, would you not, that the Jewish people would make Sinai the center of their faith, the center to their nation - the center of their existence. Yet, they did not. That role was reserved for another place, another mountain - and maybe not one mountain but a collection of them: Zion, Moriah, Scopus. I am referring, of course, to the apple of our eye, our ever precious capital, Jerusalem. There is a midrash that explains why it is that this city which David, psalmist and king, conquered from the Jebusites to make his capital, is more important to the Jews than Sinai, where the Glory of the Holy One, Blessed be He, descended and was revealed to the entire House of Israel. Sinai, the midrash says, was a place God chose to present Himself and His Torah to His children - but Zion, and Moriah, is the place the Israelites chose to glorify Him and establish His House. This matter, choice, is the subject of the second half of our portion! ""Im bekhukota’y telekhu ve’et mitzvota’y tishmeru va’asitem otam - If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully" - you always have a choice, even though one path may lead to trouble and travail.

She also taught me the ‘Jerusalem scriptures.’ Did you know that nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tanakh, with you find the name "Yerushala’yim?" That is quite so! The spelling is always, but always, without a ‘yod’ - so that it spells Yerushalem. However, it is read "Yerushala’yim." Further, I was taught, the first time, the very first time that the name "Yerushala’yim" is mentioned in the Torah is... Never! The first time the name "Yerushala’yim" is mentioned is in the book of Joshua, where it is mentioned in four different chapters a total of eight times. All three "major" prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel spoke of Jerusalem, as did six out of the "twelve" so called ‘minor’ prophets: Yo’el, Amos, Ovadiah, Mikha, Tzefania and Zekhariah.

Was there a Jerusalem in the days of our father Avraham? Torah scholars tell us that there is a reference to "Malkitzedek melekh Shalem" - king of Shalem, which is Yerushala’yim. However, that is not very likely, because if there had been a town there, how could Avraham have offered his son Yitzkhak on Mount Moriah, where the city center should have been? And why don’t we read about it in the story of Yitzkhak and Ya’akov? It would seem that Jerusalem was established on mounts Zion and Moriah after the last patriarch and his sons began their sojourn in Egypt. And then Israel came back, and David made the city his capital. The King’s lyrical ode to his city spans many verses, from "Do good in your good will to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem." [Psalms 51:20] to "Your God has commanded your strength; strengthen, O God, that which you have done for us. Because of your temple at Jerusalem kings bring presents to you." [Psalms 68:29,30] to "I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all his people, In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Hallelujah!" [Psalms 116:18, 19] and, one of the most beautiful hymns to the city, "Shir hama’alot ledavid, samakhti be’omrim li beit hashem nelekh. Omdot ha’yu ragleynu bishe’ara’yikh Yerushala’yim; Yerushala’yim hab’nu’ya k’ir shekhubra la yakhdav. A Song of Maalot of David. I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand inside your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built as a city which is bound firmly together; There the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. For thrones of judgment were set there, the thrones of the house of David. Seek for the peace of Jerusalem; those who love you shall prosper. Peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces. For my brothers and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within you. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek your good. Sha’alu shlom Yerushala’yim yishla’yu ohava’yikh. Yehi shalom bekheylekh, shalva be’armnota’yikh; lema’an akha’y vere’a’y adabra na shalom bakh. Lema’an beit eloheinu avaksha tov lakh." [Psalm 122]

When the Jews were first exiled from Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah uttered the famous vow, "Im eshkekhekh Yerushala’yim tishakakh yemini — If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy." [Psalm 137:5,6] The memory of the sovereign Promised Land, and of Jewish independence, has always been distilled and focused on David’s Capital, the city where the Temple once stood. It was father Abraham who said of Jerusalem, "This is the place where God is seen." [Gen. 22:14] The Talmud says that Jerusalem was named by God. The name has two parts: Yira, which means "to see," and shalem, which means "complete," or "shalom" – which means "peace." Jerusalem, according to our tradition, has seventy names, each more beautiful than the previous one . "There are ten measures of beauty," says the Talmud, "nine were given to Jerusalem — and one to the rest of the world."

The connection of the Jews to the city is not merely a historical association alone. Jerusalem is linked in some mysterious way to our current vigor as a people. Next Monday we will celebrate Yom Yerushala’yim - and who amongst us who was alive and aware at the time does not recollect the reverberating current of excitement that swept through the Jewish world on hearing, in June of 1967, the fateful words, "Har haba’yit be’yadeinu - Temple Mount is in our hands." Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief military chaplain, came hurriedly to the wall, shofar in hand, to sound a "Tki’a gdola" - a great blast of the horn - the sound of the beginning redemption.

Yes, who can explain, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, with religion losing ground and skepticism on the rise, the mystical attraction of this town? From the queen of Sheba to Pope John Paul II, the mighty as the frail are drawn nigh. What is in the memory of Jerusalem that makes it so important to us — and to our detractors and foes as well? What does this city contribute to our personal existence, to our understanding of who we are? Surely it is not merely the "historical" aspect of our connection — it is not David, or Solomon, or the Maccabees. If it were, would we not feel a similar connection to Bethlehem, David’s birthplace, to Hebron, the Patriarchs’ burial place, or Modi’in, Yehuda the Maccabee’s hometown?

I would like to suggest to you that Yerushala’yim is connected to the very essence of Jewish being, to our endurance and perseverance - which is to say to our communal and personal memory. It is connected to our roots, which are with God. Elsewhere, God is a theory, but in Jerusalem, God is seen, and felt: He is a tangible presence. In Jerusalem we reach beyond the frailty and vulnerability of our lives, and we sense and strive for transcendence. Elsewhere we grope for insight. Here we tread a path traveled by prophets, seers and mystics. In Jerusalem we anticipate clarity. London has its fog, Amsterdam its canals, and Moscow has Red Square. New York is home to the United Nations and the twin-towers of the World Trade Center. Paris, with its Rive Gauche, may be the place for lovers. Our capital, Jerusalem, is a place for dreamers and visionaries. The Talmud says that creation began in Jerusalem, and that the whole world was spun, as it were, outwardly from this place, like a huge crochet piece. Medieval maps show Jerusalem at the very center of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The world flows in and out of this spot, and all of life’s forces radiate from it. From this place, the whole world was cast into its proper place, to be fixed in orbit in the scheme of things in the universe. Yes, nothing less than that!

Jerusalem, the center, the core, the essence, the heart, gives perspective to the rest of the world - even to the eternity of God Himself. Visit this metropolis, spend a night there, and you will realize that this town is where God starts the day. Jerusalem the complete (even with its ruins), the completing (even with its contentions). Humanity has long understood that he who controls Jerusalem controls the world’s memory: he controls the way God is perceived, the way He is announced. He controls the way life’s forces are cast into perspective. He controls the way we, individually and collectively, see ourselves, our history - and our future.

The vision of life’s promise is a memory of things yet to come, an eye fixed on the promise of tomorrow, giving us the energy and the will to live. In exile for two thousand years, Jews recited and repeated daily, "next year in Jerusalem!" In poverty and persecution they never lost their hope. They preserved the lofty ideal of a world in which love and justice, not politics, power and self-interest, would be the currency men live by. Since 1967, Jerusalem has been the capital of the renascent Jewish commonwealth. We have built it and opened it to all creeds, nationalities and persuasions. As we celebrate Yom Yerushala’yim let us renew our ancestors’ oath: "Im eshkekhekh Yerushala’yim tishakakh yemini — If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy."