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PARASHAT BECHUKOTAI A SCARCITY OF ESSENTIALS Parshat B'Chukotai enumerates the curses, of which many have befallen the Jewish people during the holocaust. One of the curses is lack of essential goods, including both fire-wood and flour. "And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight" (Vayikra 26:26). Rashi explains that ten women must share one oven due to the scarcity of wood. The reason why they have to deliver the bread by weight is because the grain will rot and cause the bread to become crumbly and break into pieces in the oven, so that the women will have to deliberately weigh the pieces in order to divide them fairly between themselves. Hirsch comments that each oven has enough space to satisfy the need of just one household. However, because of the scarcity of bread, ten families will have to make do with what is only enough for one family. This insufficient amount of bread must be weighed on a scale in order to ensure that no one receives more bread than the other. STRUGGLING FOR SURVIVAL The Torah paints a miserable picture of privation. When imagining
times of such utter destitution, the holocaust inevitable comes
to mind. This was a time when women would search the garbage for
dirty potato peels, which they would wash and pulverize in order
to make potato flower for baking matza. Altruism becomes a scarcity,
when each person is struggling for her own survival. Everyone tries
to grab as much as possible for herself to lessen the pain of her
own growling stomach. Confronted with the prospect of starvation,
the survival instinct cause people to be out for themselves.
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