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A few weeks ago, someone asked me to identify the most important commandment in the Torah. I gave a rabbinic answer (“It depends”) and cited a few classics: love your neighbor as yourself, justice, justice shall you pursue, choose life and probably a few others as well. That led to the next question: “Which commandment,” they asked, “is the hardest to actually follow?”

While I answered that it was probably the “love your neighbor as yourself” commandment, for sometimes our neighbors and the people in our lives can be pretty trying, I now wish that I could have a do-over. See, in preparing for the writing of this message, I read through this week’s Torah portion, B’har, and I think I found the one that is the clear winner.

Throughout this portion, we are taught to let the land rest. Every seven years, we have what is known as a shmita year, where the fields go unplanted, debts are released and even slaves are set free. It’s not a suggestion; it’s a law. And it doesn’t really matter if we are ready or not. Need one more harvest season to get a new roof for your home? Nope; shmita. Need just a few more months of interest from debt repayment to get your spouse a great gift? Nope; shmita. Shmita comes along and pauses or disrupts all of those plans and actions.

Shabbat is our weekly shmita, a weekly invitation to step off the treadmill of achievement and accumulation and instead return to something deeper: dignity, stillness, perhaps even a refocus on what we are losing when in pursuit. But how many of us truly stop? How many of us really rest?

The Torah’s challenge isn’t just to believe in sacred time; it’s to trust it. The words in this week’s portion challenge us to accept that the world keeps turning even when we let go. We are compelled to recondition ourselves to understand that rest is not a reward for finishing everything but a commandment to recognize that we are not solely the composite of our to-do lists.

As we move from into Shabbat and then into the week that follows, may we practice letting go. May we build lives that leave space. And may we rediscover the holiness not only of what we do but of what we find when we stop.

Shabbat Shalom