What is the relationship between kindness, humanity, and material success? Does kindness lead to health and prosperity? This question, at the heart of humanity's search for meaning, is frequently discussed in Jewish teachings. Our parashah presents a firm statement on this matter: "If you walk in my statutes, I will provide you with rain in its season, and the land will yield its crops, and the trees will bear fruit… You will live securely in the land… But if you do not listen to me and do not observe these laws… You will plant your crops in vain, for your enemies will devour you… You will escape even though no one is pursuing you…”
In short, this paragraph shows two perspectives: one of "Redemption," that is, national and individual wholeness, and another of "Exile," fragmentation and conflict.
The first perspective, that of Redemption, indicates a state of union between the spiritual and material aspects of life. A good deed produces a good effect in the material world. Body and soul are in harmony at every level of the person. The people serve God, and therefore, crops grow and there is peace. Life has meaning.
The second perspective, that of Exile, comes as a punishment. Even so, the state of Exile is not simply punishment and suffering, but Chaos. Exile is the separation between spirit and matter.
In the situation of Exile, the goodness of the individual, or of the community, may not be immediately rewarded in material terms. Sometimes crops will grow, sometimes they will not. Even if they grow, sometimes the enemy will capture them. There is constant uncertainty. Exile is the separation between matter and spirit, between body and soul. Good people may be afflicted by terrible illnesses and pains; the wicked often seem to enjoy peace and prosperity.
At a deeper level, even in a state of Exile, there is a relationship between a person's actions and the events that follow. However, this relationship is governed by a Divine logic that is not fully accessible to our minds. To understand it, we would need to be able to consider the spiritual worlds, the world of souls. We would need to be able to appreciate certain processes in existence that must occur. If the full spiritual picture were accessible to us, we would truly see the reward for each individual action. But this is not apparent in the physical world we see before our eyes.
The very fact of knowing that there is a deeper reality is a step forward. Even though we live in the world of Exile so harshly depicted in the "Rebuke" in the parashah Bechukotai, a world where the Holocaust could occur, we can be aware that waiting in the shadows is another way of life, the world of Redemption. And in the final verses of the "Rebuke," the Torah promises that Redemption is the state in which we should be, and the state to which we will return.
Therefore, we must do what we can to help our practical, everyday world reach the state in which body and soul, spirit and matter, God and existence, are one, unified. Every step in Torah observance brings that world of Redemption closer.
By Tali Loewenthal
Extracted from www.chabad.org