page_title: Behar
section_title: Ancient
hierarchical_section_title: Behar / Further reading / Ancient
caption_attribution_description: Hammurabi marble bas-relief, one of 23 reliefs of great historical lawgivers in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. Sculpted by Thomas Hudson Jones in 1950. Diameter 28 inches in diameter.
context_page_description: Behar, BeHar, Be-har, or B'har is the 32nd weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the ninth in the Book of Leviticus. The parashah tells the laws of the Sabbatical year and limits on debt servitude. The parashah constitutes Leviticus 25:1–26:2. It is the shortest of the weekly Torah portions in the Book of Leviticus. It is made up of 2,817 Hebrew letters, 737 Hebrew words, 57 verses, and 99 lines in a Torah Scroll.
  Jews generally read it in May. The lunisolar Hebrew calendar contains up to 55 weeks, the exact number varying between 50 in common years and 54 or 55 in leap years. In leap years, parashah Behar is read separately. In common years, parashah Behar is combined with the next parashah, Bechukotai, to help achieve the needed number of weekly readings.
  In years when the first day of Passover falls on a Sabbath, Jews in Israel and Reform Jews read the parashah following Passover one week before Conservative and Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora.
context_section_description: Code of Hammurabi § 117. Babylonia, Circa 1780 BCE. In e.g. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard, pages 163, 170–71. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. ISBN 0-691-03503-2. (3-year limit on debt servitude for wife or child).
  Julius Lewy. "The Biblical Institution of dᵉror in the Light of Akkadian Documents." Eretz-Israel, volume 5 (1958): pages 21–31.
caption: Hammurabi
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