Your own bread – B’chukkotai
What a wonderful promise: “You shall eat your bread to satiety and you shall dwell in safety on your land” (Lev. 26:5).
Note that the verse does not say, “You shall eat bread – lechem” but “you shall eat your bread – lachm’chem”.
What is it that qualifies you to live in safety in your land? The fact that you live by the ethics of the Torah.
When we are told, “Do not steal”, it means not cheating other people out of what really belongs to them. When we want to be able to sleep at night, the requirement of Jewish ethics is a clear conscience: “Eat your own bread – the bread you have worked for honestly, the bread that you can rightly call your own, the bread that hasn’t been acquired by questionable means”.
There are countless temptations in business life; maybe no-one will ever find out what you have done: no-one, apart from God and your conscience.
