Behar-Behukkotai: Servants to God

From "Judaism's Utopian Vision of Universal Equality" by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg at http://hadar.org/torah-resource/judaism%E2%80%99s-utopian-vision-universal-equality#source-10295
I believe the marriage of utopian values with hard-headed actions and concrete steps is intended to enable Judaism to make dialectical moves and use the best policies from both general political approaches. This “hybrid” approach also has positioned Judaism to avoid the pathological, runaway revolutionary movements that have raised humanity’s hopes—and
dashed them—for the past two centuries. Here, I want to focus on the Utopian vision. This will help readers grasp the fullness of the Jewish hope for world repair.
The Torah recognizes private property and upholds it by prohibiting stealing, unfair exchanges, or seizing others’ possessions by cheating, or moving boundaries without payment. 2 But private property and marketplace economics inevitably lead to inequality and the creation of a class of permanently poor. The Torah fights this by prohibiting taking
interest on loans and by calling on family to help individuals avoid falling into poverty. 3 When individuals are driven by economic pressures to sell their land, the Torah instructs family and redeemers 4 to help them regain their land and capacity to produce income (Leviticus 25:26-27; 48-51). . .
. . .Our parashah also describes the fiftieth year, Yovel, the Jubilee year. Yovel upholds and restores the Torah’s ideal vision of full economic equality for all. Equality and economic dignity start with the division of the land when the people, Israel, entered Canaan. Each family was given an equal portion of land, adjusted for the number of people in the family and the productive quality of the land. 6 Then the Torah prescribes interest-free loans, and instructs family to help to prevent people from having to sell their land and lose their source of income. The Torah also rules that land can not be permanently sold but only for a limited number of harvest years (Leviticus 25:23-24; 25-28). When poor farmers sell the land for these limited years, the Torah instructs the family and redeemers to help them buy it back and regain their earning power.
Despite all these special efforts, inevitably some land will be lost to some families and a permanent landless class mired in poverty will emerge. Therefore in this fiftieth year, the Jubilee year, all the land is redistributed back to the original families. 7 Thus every family can start over again with a guaranteed source of income. Permanent poverty is prevented.

In the Jubilee year, every Hebrew in servitude goes free. The Torah is saying that in the ideal world, no one will be a master; everyone will be free; everyone will be equal economically. Everyone will be restored to an ancestral heritage. To sum it up, the Torah says: “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (25:10). 8

Historians are not sure that these ideal laws were ever actually carried out. We know that far less economically transformational laws—such as the Torah’s limit of a six year term limit for Hebrew slaves—were resisted and violated by large landowners and wealthy nobles. 9 Nevertheless the prophets insist that these laws are operative and that this ideal will be realized in the Messianic era. The exploitation of the poor and the privileging of the rich and powerful will be stopped. That is why the book of Isaiah predicts that, to have full dignity and equality for all, we must overcome poverty altogether. . .

From "Behar" by Rabbi Shefa Gold at https://www.rabbishefagold.com/behar/
So often we try to build a sense of security by acquiring possessions. Our search for security often becomes an impossible drama of “never enough.” As we acquire more wealth, nicer clothes, better computers, bigger homes, more knowledge — security continues to elude us. We are conditioned to become consumers as insecurity pushes us to acquire MORE.
Behar teaches us about a different kind of security that comes not from having, but from forging a deep relationship. During the seventh year when we let the land lie fallow and the earth experiences Shabbat, it celebrates its freedom. When the earth is no longer enslaved by our obsession for MORE, then we can truly come into relationship with her. We step into mutuality and trust is born.
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And perhaps once, maybe twice in a lifetime, at the time of the Jubilee, all masks, all roles will for a time, fall away. Then we will know that we are loved by God not for the role we play or the work we do, or the knowledge or things we have acquired, but for our true essence alone. Knowing this allows us to see and love each other in the same essential way.
The Jubilee strips us down and teaches us the pure joy of existence. Behar challenges us and asks, “Are you ready to sound the shofar and call forth the consciousness of Jubilee? Are you ready to let go of everything and return to your true home in God?”