By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., in El Cajon, California
There’s a quiet assumption many of us carry without ever naming it: that time belongs to us. We spend it, save it, waste it, fill it, kill it. It’s something to manage, optimize, or complain about. But if you sit with that assumption for even a moment, it starts to feel less certain. Time is the one thing we never get back. Money can be earned again, possessions replaced, but time? Once it passes, it’s gone. And how we relate to time doesn’t just shape what we accomplish. It shapes who we become, how we feel, and how we experience our own lives.
Parashat Behar opens by challenging that assumption at its root. It introduces shmittah, the sabbatical year, when the land in Israel lies fallow every seventh year. No planting, no harvesting, no claiming ownership over what grows. It’s an interruption in our productivity.
At first glance, it feels distant, agricultural, ancient, maybe even impractical. But beneath the surface, it speaks directly to one of the most urgent issues we face today: our emotional wellbeing.
We live in a world that rarely stops. There’s always another email, another obligation, another goal. Even when we “rest,” we’re often scrolling, consuming, distracting ourselves. Stillness can feel uncomfortable. Slowing down can feel like falling behind. And over time, we begin to internalize a dangerous equation: I am what I produce.
That equation is at the heart of so much anxiety and burnout.
Shmittah steps in and quietly dismantles it. It says: “stop!” Not because everything is done, but because stopping itself is sacred. Because your worth is not measured by your output. Because life cannot be sustained at a constant sprint.
Imagine what that kind of pause does internally for your wellbeing. For an entire year, those who worked the land had to release control. They couldn’t rely on their usual rhythms of effort and reward. They had to live with uncertainty. And more than that, they had to trust. Trust that there would be enough. Trust that their lives were held within something larger than their own striving.
That trust isn’t just a religious idea; it’s an actual psychological shift. Much of our stress comes from the belief that everything depends on us, that if we don’t keep pushing, everything will unravel. Shmittah pushes back against that. It reminds us that we can loosen our grip without losing everything. and what we do, but from who we are. It is a time to be truly redeemed as human beings. Shabbat and the shmitta year as structured pauses that recalibrate our inner life. They interrupt our habitual striving and redirect us toward what sustains us, our relationships, meaning, and our values. In these intervals, worth is no longer measured by output or possession, but by being. They offer a necessary restoration of balance, a return to wholeness, and a deeper experience of what it means to live as a redeemed human being.
And in that loosening, something opens. Space.
Space to breathe, to think, to feel. Space to reconnect with parts of us that get buried under constant activity. When the land rests, the Torah tells us, something deeper begins to grow. The same is true for us. When we step back from constant doing, the soul has room to wake up.
Without that space, everything blurs. We move from one task to the next, one week to the next, without ever really processing what we’re experiencing. And the cost of that is real: burnout, disconnection, a quiet sense of emptiness even when life looks full from the outside.
Shmittah offers a different emotional rhythm. It teaches that rest is something you build into the fabric of your life. It also reframes how we think about growth. Some things like healing, clarity, and emotional resilience emerge precisely when we stop trying so hard to control them.
That can feel unsettling for many who believe they “must” be in control. Letting go of control and demands for certainty usually does. But it can also be deeply relieving. It allows us to step out of the pressure we create to fix, produce, and prove, and simply to be. Ahhhhh…feeling better?
Parsha Bechukotai takes us in a different direction, but one that completes the picture. If Behar is about creating space, Bechukotai is about what we do within that space. It introduces the concept of keri, relating to life as if everything is random, disconnected, coincidence.
It’s a familiar mindset. Things happen, good, bad, unexpected, and we move on quickly. We don’t pause to reflect. We don’t look for patterns. We don’t ask what any of it might mean. On the surface, that can feel easier. If everything is random, then nothing asks anything of us.
But psychologically, that way of living comes at a cost to our wellbeing. When life feels like a series of disconnected events, it’s hard to feel grounded. There’s no sense of direction. Experiences don’t integrate; they just pile up. And over time, that can leave us feeling empty or adrift.
We reach for meaning when we’re desperate, but when things work out, we detach. We explain it away. We quickly explain life without Hashem driving it.
That disconnection affects our emotional health. When everything feels random, we lose access to gratitude. We miss moments of awe. We overlook the ways we’ve grown, the ways we’ve been guided through Hashem’s Hand. Life becomes a string of random events instead of His story.
We thrive when we feel that our lives have coherence, that our experiences, especially the difficult ones, fit into something larger. This allows us to process it, to learn from it, to carry it forward in a meaningful way.
Bechukotai challenges us to resist keri. To slow down enough to notice. To ask, honestly: “what might this moment be teaching me?” “Where have I seen something like this before?” “How is He shaping me?”
That kind of awareness is at the core of psychological resilience. It transforms how we experience both success and struggle. Gratitude becomes more natural, because we’re paying attention. Setbacks feel less random, because we’re placing them within a larger journey. Even uncertainty becomes more tolerable, because we’re engaged with it rather than numbing ourselves to it.
Taken together, Behar and Bechukotai offer a remarkably balanced model of emotional health, a psychological foundation most ignore.
Behar teaches us to step back, to create space, to rest, to release the illusion of total control. Without that, we burn out.
Bechukotai teaches us to step in, to pay attention, to reflect, to connect the dots of our lives. Without that, we drift.
We do best with both. Space and awareness. Rest and attention. The ability to pause, and the willingness to engage are keystones of emotional wellness.
When those two qualities come together, something shifts. Life becomes less frantic, less superficial. There’s more room to feel, to think, to notice what’s happening within us and around us. We become less reactive, more grounded. Less scattered, more present.
We may not have a literal sabbatical year built into our calendars, but we can still live with a “shmittah mindset.” We can carve out moments of real pause, putting the phone away, sitting in quiet, allowing ourselves to breathe without immediately filling the space. And within those moments, we can choose not to default to keri, not to rush past them, but to listen. To reflect. To let those moments speak.
Time will keep moving either way. That’s the one thing we can’t change.
But these parshiot ask a deeper question: “How will we move through time?” On the surface, are we rushing from one thing to the next? Or are we learning from the Torah to pause?
Because in the end, emotional wellbeing is about how we inhabit our lives, not simply about managing our stress. And when we begin to sanctify our time, not just fill it, we don’t just get through life. We thrive through it.
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Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly D’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family are members. They are also active members of Congregation Adat Yeshurun.