Shmittah as a Lost Ecological Paradigm
By Hanna Roodman
Perhaps one of the most radical agricultural laws in the Torah is the concept of “shmittah,” the sabbatical year or “Year of Release” which must be observed every seventh year on the Jewish calendar in the land of Israel. This commandment is referenced in several different locations in the biblical text (see appendix), wherein three essential components to shmittah can be identified: Firstly, all land must lie fallow; secondly, all produce which grows without human effort is to be considered ownerless; and thirdly, debts contracted prior to the expiration of the year must be annulled. This last aspect is understood as a personal obligation that applies to an individual regardless of whether or not he is in Israel. Worthy of mention in the context of shmittah is the closely related Torah-commandment of the observance of yovel, the Jubilee year that is proclaimed every fifty years after the cycle of seven sabbatical years. Like shmittah, the Jubilee calls for an agricultural hiatus but additionally, it demands that all acquired real property be restored to its original owner and that all Hebrew slaves be liberated. Finally, yovel is predicated on the criteria that the Jewish people are living in Israel according to their tribes. Today, the practice of shmittah in the modern state of Israel is still heavily debated, and according to Dr. Benjamin Brak, regular contributor to Tradition: Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, much of the answer is contingent upon the question of whether these two institutions, yovel and shmittah are interdependent to the degree that one will not apply without the other—a dispute which is documented in the Talmud.
By means of introduction, I will begin this examination of the concept and practice shmittah by further enumerating on the sociological, economic, and ecological impact of its pure, biblical application. With this context in place, I will elaborate on the rabbinic discourse on the application of shmittah in post-Temple period times. Building from this context, the core of my analysis will focus on the contemporary relevance of the practice of shmittah and its heavily modified application that is upheld today in the modern state of Israel. I would like to posit that, by compromising the original application of shmittah, the Jewish people and the world at large have lost an ecological paradigm and spiritual wisdom in a time that urgently demands the refocusing of our awareness and strengthening of sustainable practices for the rectification of centuries’ practice of environmental recklessness. I will conclude by posing the benefits of integrating the original shmittah laws into society today and explaining how this can be done based off of testimonies of the small-scale shmittah farms that exist today in Israel.
Shmittah laws’ most profound social impact is equalization, as it says in the text, “The Sabbath produce of the land shall be for food for you,” i.e. everyone (Lev. 25: 4-7). The Mechilta, halachic midrashim on the Book of Exodus, explains that when the Torah commands “And you shall abandon it [private land],” it means that the owner must break down the fence that encloses his property. It is already apparent from the biblical verse that everyone, property-owners and otherwise, were able to eat from any field in the shmittah year, so what the Mechilta is suggesting about this act of breaking down fences is not with the intention to provide agency to those who cared to enter previously recognized private property. “Rather, in destroying the fences, one is pulling down the symbol and reality of private ownership”(Blidstein 49). Beit Shammai took this one step further, saying: “One may not gather permitted fruit in an area where one feels beholden, because it is forbidden to acknowledge, even emotionally, a concept of ownership in the shmittah year.” (Blidstein 50).
As one may surmise, the practical application of the shmittah laws requires very technical guidelines. The halachic concept of “shinui” (“change” connoting the halachic mechanism that allows someone to do something that is normally forbidden provided that they do so in an unusual way) is employed in the practice of shmittah as is written, “Man may harvest, but the law prevents him from using the full, measure of that technology which his human talents have devised”(Brak 140). The Vilna Gaon comments on this that many types of agricultural labor must be done by hand, thus denying man his tool-making achievement. Another technicality is the strict way that produce of the seventh year is to be used and consumed. It is to be used exclusively for “normal quantities of consumption” within the realms of eating, drinking, and anointing. The Mishnah points out that this law discriminates between man’s natural use of goods and what is a sophisticated utilization or manipulation of goods used to satisfy man’s more distant “needs” and lust for acquisition. This philosophy is also expressed in the laws surrounding storage of produce. During shmittah, the Jewish farmer cannot store his new crops. He has to leave them in the open field. We understand this from a verse that says, “When the wild animals can no longer find food, man must release the wine from his wine in his vats,” which additionally insinuates that man is responsible for the well-being of wild animals during shmittah as well.
The economic implications of shmittah can be quite jarring to our modern, 21st century, free-market minds. For an entire year, the Jewish people enter a restrictive barter system in which permitted fruit of the shmittah year gathered in accordance with the legal regulations may be sold only to buy other food products. The Talmud enumerates that “One may not engage in business with the fruits of shevi’it . . . one may not buy vegetables and sell them in the market, but one may gather vegetables and they may be sold by one’s son. If one bought vegetables for one’s own use and could not use them, he may sell them. . .The fruit of the shmittah year may not be sold by measure, weight, or number.” These regulations highlight the sacred nature of the fruit of the seventh year. Perhaps one of the most surprising economic procedures of shmittah is the concept of Biur shevi’it, “the elimination of produce of the 7th year.” The Rishonim came to several different conclusions as to what the Biur entailed. Some interpreted that it meant public re-distribution of goods, and other sages interpreted that it meant destruction of the extra produce. Still, some thought it meant a combination of these ideas.
Since Talmudic times, rabbis of every generation have written extensively about the philosophy of shmittah and the logical benefits that it provides. The major theories and themes behind shmittah are: the conservation of land from over-exhaustion; designation of one year from every seven to focus on spiritual and religious self-growth; the establishing of an engrained realization that the land is not our exclusive possession but rather, is entrusted to us by the Creator (the Stewardship model); and finally, the stimulation of the practice of charity by making available to the poor the natural, uncultivated produce. Certainly, these philosophies are not mutual exclusive, and their rationales are all very complimentary and even self-evident given the practical, social, and economic implications of the practice of shmittah as outlined above.
Beyond these rational explanations of the benefits of shmittah, there are many writings that discuss “a cosmic shmittah cycle which effects the creation and duration of existence” (Aish.com). These ideas, often conveyed in Kabbalah, Chassidic discourses, and other mystic teachings, describe how intense spiritual energy is funneled into the world every seven years with the practice of shmittah. The Torah itself explicitly states that farmers who trust in God and obey these laws will have a miraculous abundance in the sixth year of their harvest which will last them through the sabbatical year. Many commentaries raise eyebrows as to why the laws of shmittah are given in such depth in the Torah as opposed to relying on oral law to transmit these rules, and of course, the favorite rabbinic answer informs us that this is because “it comes to teach us something deeper.” For instance, Nachmonides teaches that shmittah parallels Shabbat, meaning that shmittah is mystically sourced in the biblical narrative of Creation. The sabbatical year and its message of renewal remind us of Adam prior to the sin; He had no need to work—He existed in God’s paradise. Just as Adam was punished with exile from the Garden for transgressing God’s commandment, so too, the punishment for transgressing shmittah is exile, and indeed many sources say that had the Jews kept shmittah properly for just one year, the world would have immediately entered the messianic age. These sources teach that the only way to rectify the original sin and pursue the ultimate destiny of a perfected world is through trust in God, which is what the practice of shmittah is predicated upon. From this perspective, the entire mitzvah is founded upon the fundamental concept of faith in God and his Divine Assistance. In the words of Chassidic philosophy, the soul’s task is to nullify the ego that asks: “what shall we eat in the seventh year?”
As mentioned earlier, the question of whether or notthe original practice of shmittah in non-messianic times is dependent on the Jubilee is heavily debated in the Talmud. Among the defending commentaries who deduce that shmittah practice is still a biblically-binding law, despite the pause from Yovel,are Rashi and Maimonides, who maintain that the observance of the sabbatical year in modern times in respect to stoppage of agricultural activity is obligatory upon Jews residing in the Holy Land. However, the extent to which shmittah is fully applied in diasporic times is assessed with an underlying conviction that God calculated for the original shmittah, the diaspora, and the rabbinic legal system with His total omniscience. In other words, in the rabbinic discourse, “changing the laws” does not follow the belief that “Rabbis are navigating the Jewish people through Plan B, because God did not foresee the change in the Jews’ circumstance.” They understand that there is Divine Intention underlying the circumstances that have forced the changed rabbinic/modern application of biblical law, and these changes need to be respected as such. Thus, many argue that God “expected” the Jewish people to adapt the philosophical framework of shmittah to suit modern circumstance in a halachic framework much like the philosophy of animal sacrifice was replaced by the codified prayer services and liturgy. Rav Kook supports this point of modern rabbinic adjustment to shmittah, explaining that “the reality of shevi’it must be deferred until the Messianic age.”
With the advent of the Zionist movement, the practice of shmittah became problematic for Torah-observant settlers, and in 1889, this question demanded a solution. Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spector, the great spiritual head of Russian Jewry, proposed that a landowner who was unable to sell his land to non-Jews prior to the seventh year with a guarantee for its resale after the Sabbatical year, could be permitted to cultivate the land through non-Jewish labor. This solution was based upon the views of most halachic authorities that the Sabbatical institution in modern times (when the Jubilee is no longer practiced) is only a rabbinic requirement. Working from this assumption, the State of Israel today would be placed in the same category as Syria was in ancient days (i.e. it is seen as sacred soil that is automatically desanctified upon subsequent non-Jewish acquisition of the land). By selling the land to a non-Jew in modern times, the land is removed from its rabbinic status of “sanctified land” and thus released from the governing rules of shmittah. This halachic loophole called heter mechira came under tireless attack at its inception primarily by Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Berlin of the Volozhner Yeshiva. He argued that it was the sacred duty of Jews everywhere to provide special funds to enable the settlers to observe the shmittah year, for in his judgment the sanctity of the soil still applies even where the land is held by non-Jews. The argument wages on today and the heter mechira is criticized on many fronts. One interesting interpretation of why it is “illegal” is that the Torah (Deut. 7:2) presents the prohibition of Lo Techanem (do not show them favor) concerning the seven nations that the Jewish people were commanded to overcome upon entering the land of Israel. The Gemara in Avodah Zara explains that this Torah-prohibition has three manifesting attributes, one of which being that Jews are not to sell their land to any non-Jews in Israel following the interpretation of Tosafot. Therefore the opinion of the Netziv rejects the heter mechira on these grounds and in fact, states “selling the farmland to a non-Jew is a more severe prohibition than failing to observe shmittah.”
Though most contemporary scholars and religious settlers who recognized Rabbi Isaac Elchana as the greatest scholar of his generation upheld his heter, a small fraction refused to submit to it and observed shmittah fully by refraining from all agricultural work and treating the uncultivated produce as ownerless property. Since this landmark case, with the changes in population that the new state created in 1948, increasing the number of Jews and decreasing the Arab population, more legal extenuating authorization was given to Jews to perform many kinds of work that were previously prohibited to Jews in the practice of shmittah. In his article “Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year,” Gerald Bildstein poignantly comments on the historical legacy of this spiritual/legal dilemma, saying “Indeed, this conflict between the radical demands of shevi’it, on the one hand, and the social reality it seeks to undermine, on the other, is a paradigm of the history of the institution. Ironically, the more potent its observance became, the less were its chances of survival…We have here an institution that in its essence contests the legitimacy of that world, and threatens to become not merely the symbolic repudiation of its normal social and economic patterns, but its real menace and ultimately its victor.”
Rabbi Isaac Elchana was not the first to create a heter specifically for the practice of shmittah in response to the circumstances of the times. As far back as nineteen hundred years ago, the duty to cancel debts during the seventh year presented a severe economic as well as humanitarian problem. As the sabbatical year approached, the rich stopped lending money to the poor, and this stoppage of credit resulted in great hardship to the community. Responding to these circumstances to resolve the suffering of the poor and the indifference of the rich, Rabbi Hillel codified a loophole called Prozbol, a rabbinic formulae that enabled the creditor to collect his loans which was limited to credit only and did not affect the agricultural components of shmittah. Like many heterim, Prozbol was created to help better apply biblical philosophy to fit the circumstances of the times.
The heter mechira established a precedent that has been appropriated by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel every shmittah year. The Rabbinate conducts a formal sale of land and provides careful instructions to the farmers as to which type of labor Jews can perform themselves and which they are halachically required to outsource to non-Jews.
Putting aside the legal discussion on the modern practice of shmittah with the application of the heter, Jewish and non-Jewish environmentalists alike are rediscovering the original formula for shmittah as a lost ecological paradigm. Part of this newfound interest in shmittah is the popular philosophy expressed in famed farmer and writer Wendell Berry’s words, that “Eaters must understand that eating takes places inescapably in the world – that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines to a considerable extent, how the world is used” (Berry in his article “The Pleasures of Eating”). This trend may be measured by the growing number of films and other media forms turning towards this kind of ecological and holistic awareness (Food Inc, The Inconvenient Truth, No Impact Man, etc.) In light of rising health concerns amongst today’s youth, including alarming early-onset medical conditions such as asthma, obesity, and diabetes, it is no wonder that people are beginning to open their pantries with more doubt. Thus, in this era when most of the population in western society does not cultivate their own foodstuff, we can see that people are becoming increasingly interested in where and how their food reaches them. It is easy to understand how a system like shmittah refocuses us on these important and relevant questions. The system forces its observers to realize their inherent dependence on nature no matter how disillusioned they become with the belief that man causes the natural process through his own interference in the natural world. Shmittah also teaches restrictions on acquiring excess which helps inspire people to eat locally and in moderation, and avoid harmful food preservatives and other chemicals (hormones and synthetic ingredients alike) that are endangering our health.
Additionally, shmittah is an ideal model for agricultural sustainability, which has become a central topic amongst environmentalists, especially in their advocacy for permaculture – “an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies” (wikipedia.org). Shmittah espouses regenerative farming that increase biodiversity and soil health, which is desperately needed today. Agriculturally speaking, observing the shmittah is something that must be prepared for in its preceding six years. In a land-based society, refraining from farming in the seventh year would require careful preparation: Farmers would need to plant a variety of crops, including fruit and other perennials, in addition to the annual grains and vegetables. This would allow more food to grow on its own during shmittah in order to supplement the surplus that had been stored from previous years. This enables a more sustainable and secure food system, as it is not exclusively based on annual crops that require tremendous input and labor. According to Nati Passow, Jewish-environmental educator, in our modern context, “much of the environmental degradation associated with agriculture stems from the large-scale mono-cropping of a small number of staple crops like corn and soy that require incredible amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; chemicals that end up in our water, soil and air” (Passow 213). Although mono-cropping began with an intention of ending world-hunger, its inefficacy and economic damage shows that it must be replaced by more sustainable systems.
Shmittah also creates economic stability: “Claims of ownership over material wealth are let go as the needs of the poor are prioritized over the needs of the rich. This practice recognizes that a society with a large disparity of wealth is ultimately not sustainable” (Passow 223). This system also provides a mental well-being in addition to physical benefits. In its original intention it is supposed to remove workers from the land and give them a Sabbath from which they can rest and focus inwards. Through this reflection, one meditates on the sacredness of food and its role in building community. Additionally this time was often dedicated to learning Torah and other spiritual pursuits. It goes without saying that healthy-introspective people foster a healthier world.
Today, it is estimated that about five thousand people in Israel observe the Year of Release, literally. While The “Chafetz Chayyim Yishuv,” of Poale Agudat Israel suspends all agricultural work in the sabbatical year and is an example of one such community, others, like the colonies of “Hapoel Hamizrachi,” which rely entirely on the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, nevertheless choose to distinguish one field in each yishuv which will be left fallow as a symbol of their literal adherence to the shmittah laws. For those select communities who keep shmittah without the heter mechira, there are special funds like the Keren Hashviis: The Nationwide Centre for Shmittah Observing Farmers, made available by religious Jews in the United State and Israel to support them. A radical alternative to the shmittah heter is the advent of soilless produce called hydroponics. Successful experiments have been carried out in Israel to examine the possibility of cultivating vegetables in metal tanks, using water and chemicals without soil to offer an interesting alternative for those who wish to fulfill shmittah literally.
From an optimistic and theological perspective, those keeping shmittah, “a year in which we turn our focus away from personal benefit to public benefit, from material needs to communal needs, from worldly pursuits to spiritual pursuits,” will abundantly reap what they sow; or more precisely, reap what they don’t sow (Passow 215). These miracles are conveyed through the stories of Kibbutz Kommemiyut, which in 1950 observed the shmittah fully and afterwards planted infested wheat seed which produced a flourishing crop thereafter. A similarly miraculous account was recorded at Yitzhar Vineyard, where the farmer left his young vineyard to rest during the seventh year and came back to find that his crop yield had tripled in size. My prediction is that the return to the original application of shmittah is imminent. These miraculous communities have been trailblazers in our time to prove that even for larger communities such a system is possible. Imagine a world where every seventh year, life took on a new rhythm and people were allowed to slow down to be cosmically in sync with the Creator and His universe. Imagine the freedom that we would feel by disengaging from the false sense of self-resourcefulness, which according to the Gaia Theory has tipped our world horribly out of balance. On a communal level, could we not logically predict the wonders that shmittah would do for restoring family harmony and uniting communities? Our western world incessantly preaches the values of democracy and equality, but they are far from establishing an economic equalization like the one that shmittah provides. It is my sincere prayer that this Jewish wisdom will be restored to its full biblical application and create an ecological renaissance in our world.
Appendix:
And six years thou shalt sow thy land and gather in the
increase thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it
rest and lie fallow, that the poor of thy people may eat,
and what they leave, the beast of the field shall eat. In
like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with
thy oliveyard (Ex. 23: 10-11) .
……………………
In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest
for the land, a sabbath unto the Lord; thou shalt neither
sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth
of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes
of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather; it shall
be a year of solemn rest for the land. And the Sabbath produce
of the land shall be for food for you: for thee,
and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired
servant and for the settler by thy side that sojourn with
thee, and for thy cattle and for the beasts that are in thy
land, shall all the increase be for good (Lev. 25: 4-7).
………..
“If you will say, ‘What shall we eat in the
seventh year-for we can neither sow nor gather in our crop’?
I shall command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and
that crop shall suffce for three years!” (Lev. 25: 20-1 ) .
………..
“For there will never cease to be needy ones from the midst of the land, which is why I command you: open your hand to your fellows, your poor and your needy in your land” (Deut. 15:11
Talmudic origins
God said to Israel, ‘Sow six years and rest on the seventh so that you might know that the land is Mine’“ (Sanhedrin 39a)
*an entire An entire Talmudic tractate, Sheviit, deals extensively with this subject.
* * *
Bibliography:
Bak, Benjamin “The Sabbatical Year in Modern Israel.” Tradition Magazine 1(2) (1959):193-199
Blidstein, Gerald J. “Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year, Tradition Magazine Volume 8 (4) (1966): 48-55)
Edrei, Arye. “From Orthodoxy to Religious Zionism: Rabbi Kook and the Sabbatical Year Polemic”
Jachter, Rabbi Howard. “The Heter Mechira - Part One” May 2000. http://koltorah.org/ravj/hetermechira1.htm
http://www.shviis.com/ (online fundraising for shmittah farmers)
Jackobovitz, Yitzchak. “More on Ma’adanei Eretz on Shevi’it .”
The Seforim Blog. http://seforim.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-on-ma-eretz-on-shevi.html
Passow, Nati.”Shemita as a Foundation for Jewish Ecological Education” in Jewish Education News Volume 28 issue 1
By means of introduction, I will begin this examination of the concept and practice shmittah by further enumerating on the sociological, economic, and ecological impact of its pure, biblical application. With this context in place, I will elaborate on the rabbinic discourse on the application of shmittah in post-Temple period times. Building from this context, the core of my analysis will focus on the contemporary relevance of the practice of shmittah and its heavily modified application that is upheld today in the modern state of Israel. I would like to posit that, by compromising the original application of shmittah, the Jewish people and the world at large have lost an ecological paradigm and spiritual wisdom in a time that urgently demands the refocusing of our awareness and strengthening of sustainable practices for the rectification of centuries’ practice of environmental recklessness. I will conclude by posing the benefits of integrating the original shmittah laws into society today and explaining how this can be done based off of testimonies of the small-scale shmittah farms that exist today in Israel.
Shmittah laws’ most profound social impact is equalization, as it says in the text, “The Sabbath produce of the land shall be for food for you,” i.e. everyone (Lev. 25: 4-7). The Mechilta, halachic midrashim on the Book of Exodus, explains that when the Torah commands “And you shall abandon it [private land],” it means that the owner must break down the fence that encloses his property. It is already apparent from the biblical verse that everyone, property-owners and otherwise, were able to eat from any field in the shmittah year, so what the Mechilta is suggesting about this act of breaking down fences is not with the intention to provide agency to those who cared to enter previously recognized private property. “Rather, in destroying the fences, one is pulling down the symbol and reality of private ownership”(Blidstein 49). Beit Shammai took this one step further, saying: “One may not gather permitted fruit in an area where one feels beholden, because it is forbidden to acknowledge, even emotionally, a concept of ownership in the shmittah year.” (Blidstein 50).
As one may surmise, the practical application of the shmittah laws requires very technical guidelines. The halachic concept of “shinui” (“change” connoting the halachic mechanism that allows someone to do something that is normally forbidden provided that they do so in an unusual way) is employed in the practice of shmittah as is written, “Man may harvest, but the law prevents him from using the full, measure of that technology which his human talents have devised”(Brak 140). The Vilna Gaon comments on this that many types of agricultural labor must be done by hand, thus denying man his tool-making achievement. Another technicality is the strict way that produce of the seventh year is to be used and consumed. It is to be used exclusively for “normal quantities of consumption” within the realms of eating, drinking, and anointing. The Mishnah points out that this law discriminates between man’s natural use of goods and what is a sophisticated utilization or manipulation of goods used to satisfy man’s more distant “needs” and lust for acquisition. This philosophy is also expressed in the laws surrounding storage of produce. During shmittah, the Jewish farmer cannot store his new crops. He has to leave them in the open field. We understand this from a verse that says, “When the wild animals can no longer find food, man must release the wine from his wine in his vats,” which additionally insinuates that man is responsible for the well-being of wild animals during shmittah as well.
The economic implications of shmittah can be quite jarring to our modern, 21st century, free-market minds. For an entire year, the Jewish people enter a restrictive barter system in which permitted fruit of the shmittah year gathered in accordance with the legal regulations may be sold only to buy other food products. The Talmud enumerates that “One may not engage in business with the fruits of shevi’it . . . one may not buy vegetables and sell them in the market, but one may gather vegetables and they may be sold by one’s son. If one bought vegetables for one’s own use and could not use them, he may sell them. . .The fruit of the shmittah year may not be sold by measure, weight, or number.” These regulations highlight the sacred nature of the fruit of the seventh year. Perhaps one of the most surprising economic procedures of shmittah is the concept of Biur shevi’it, “the elimination of produce of the 7th year.” The Rishonim came to several different conclusions as to what the Biur entailed. Some interpreted that it meant public re-distribution of goods, and other sages interpreted that it meant destruction of the extra produce. Still, some thought it meant a combination of these ideas.
Since Talmudic times, rabbis of every generation have written extensively about the philosophy of shmittah and the logical benefits that it provides. The major theories and themes behind shmittah are: the conservation of land from over-exhaustion; designation of one year from every seven to focus on spiritual and religious self-growth; the establishing of an engrained realization that the land is not our exclusive possession but rather, is entrusted to us by the Creator (the Stewardship model); and finally, the stimulation of the practice of charity by making available to the poor the natural, uncultivated produce. Certainly, these philosophies are not mutual exclusive, and their rationales are all very complimentary and even self-evident given the practical, social, and economic implications of the practice of shmittah as outlined above.
Beyond these rational explanations of the benefits of shmittah, there are many writings that discuss “a cosmic shmittah cycle which effects the creation and duration of existence” (Aish.com). These ideas, often conveyed in Kabbalah, Chassidic discourses, and other mystic teachings, describe how intense spiritual energy is funneled into the world every seven years with the practice of shmittah. The Torah itself explicitly states that farmers who trust in God and obey these laws will have a miraculous abundance in the sixth year of their harvest which will last them through the sabbatical year. Many commentaries raise eyebrows as to why the laws of shmittah are given in such depth in the Torah as opposed to relying on oral law to transmit these rules, and of course, the favorite rabbinic answer informs us that this is because “it comes to teach us something deeper.” For instance, Nachmonides teaches that shmittah parallels Shabbat, meaning that shmittah is mystically sourced in the biblical narrative of Creation. The sabbatical year and its message of renewal remind us of Adam prior to the sin; He had no need to work—He existed in God’s paradise. Just as Adam was punished with exile from the Garden for transgressing God’s commandment, so too, the punishment for transgressing shmittah is exile, and indeed many sources say that had the Jews kept shmittah properly for just one year, the world would have immediately entered the messianic age. These sources teach that the only way to rectify the original sin and pursue the ultimate destiny of a perfected world is through trust in God, which is what the practice of shmittah is predicated upon. From this perspective, the entire mitzvah is founded upon the fundamental concept of faith in God and his Divine Assistance. In the words of Chassidic philosophy, the soul’s task is to nullify the ego that asks: “what shall we eat in the seventh year?”
As mentioned earlier, the question of whether or notthe original practice of shmittah in non-messianic times is dependent on the Jubilee is heavily debated in the Talmud. Among the defending commentaries who deduce that shmittah practice is still a biblically-binding law, despite the pause from Yovel,are Rashi and Maimonides, who maintain that the observance of the sabbatical year in modern times in respect to stoppage of agricultural activity is obligatory upon Jews residing in the Holy Land. However, the extent to which shmittah is fully applied in diasporic times is assessed with an underlying conviction that God calculated for the original shmittah, the diaspora, and the rabbinic legal system with His total omniscience. In other words, in the rabbinic discourse, “changing the laws” does not follow the belief that “Rabbis are navigating the Jewish people through Plan B, because God did not foresee the change in the Jews’ circumstance.” They understand that there is Divine Intention underlying the circumstances that have forced the changed rabbinic/modern application of biblical law, and these changes need to be respected as such. Thus, many argue that God “expected” the Jewish people to adapt the philosophical framework of shmittah to suit modern circumstance in a halachic framework much like the philosophy of animal sacrifice was replaced by the codified prayer services and liturgy. Rav Kook supports this point of modern rabbinic adjustment to shmittah, explaining that “the reality of shevi’it must be deferred until the Messianic age.”
With the advent of the Zionist movement, the practice of shmittah became problematic for Torah-observant settlers, and in 1889, this question demanded a solution. Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spector, the great spiritual head of Russian Jewry, proposed that a landowner who was unable to sell his land to non-Jews prior to the seventh year with a guarantee for its resale after the Sabbatical year, could be permitted to cultivate the land through non-Jewish labor. This solution was based upon the views of most halachic authorities that the Sabbatical institution in modern times (when the Jubilee is no longer practiced) is only a rabbinic requirement. Working from this assumption, the State of Israel today would be placed in the same category as Syria was in ancient days (i.e. it is seen as sacred soil that is automatically desanctified upon subsequent non-Jewish acquisition of the land). By selling the land to a non-Jew in modern times, the land is removed from its rabbinic status of “sanctified land” and thus released from the governing rules of shmittah. This halachic loophole called heter mechira came under tireless attack at its inception primarily by Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Berlin of the Volozhner Yeshiva. He argued that it was the sacred duty of Jews everywhere to provide special funds to enable the settlers to observe the shmittah year, for in his judgment the sanctity of the soil still applies even where the land is held by non-Jews. The argument wages on today and the heter mechira is criticized on many fronts. One interesting interpretation of why it is “illegal” is that the Torah (Deut. 7:2) presents the prohibition of Lo Techanem (do not show them favor) concerning the seven nations that the Jewish people were commanded to overcome upon entering the land of Israel. The Gemara in Avodah Zara explains that this Torah-prohibition has three manifesting attributes, one of which being that Jews are not to sell their land to any non-Jews in Israel following the interpretation of Tosafot. Therefore the opinion of the Netziv rejects the heter mechira on these grounds and in fact, states “selling the farmland to a non-Jew is a more severe prohibition than failing to observe shmittah.”
Though most contemporary scholars and religious settlers who recognized Rabbi Isaac Elchana as the greatest scholar of his generation upheld his heter, a small fraction refused to submit to it and observed shmittah fully by refraining from all agricultural work and treating the uncultivated produce as ownerless property. Since this landmark case, with the changes in population that the new state created in 1948, increasing the number of Jews and decreasing the Arab population, more legal extenuating authorization was given to Jews to perform many kinds of work that were previously prohibited to Jews in the practice of shmittah. In his article “Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year,” Gerald Bildstein poignantly comments on the historical legacy of this spiritual/legal dilemma, saying “Indeed, this conflict between the radical demands of shevi’it, on the one hand, and the social reality it seeks to undermine, on the other, is a paradigm of the history of the institution. Ironically, the more potent its observance became, the less were its chances of survival…We have here an institution that in its essence contests the legitimacy of that world, and threatens to become not merely the symbolic repudiation of its normal social and economic patterns, but its real menace and ultimately its victor.”
Rabbi Isaac Elchana was not the first to create a heter specifically for the practice of shmittah in response to the circumstances of the times. As far back as nineteen hundred years ago, the duty to cancel debts during the seventh year presented a severe economic as well as humanitarian problem. As the sabbatical year approached, the rich stopped lending money to the poor, and this stoppage of credit resulted in great hardship to the community. Responding to these circumstances to resolve the suffering of the poor and the indifference of the rich, Rabbi Hillel codified a loophole called Prozbol, a rabbinic formulae that enabled the creditor to collect his loans which was limited to credit only and did not affect the agricultural components of shmittah. Like many heterim, Prozbol was created to help better apply biblical philosophy to fit the circumstances of the times.
The heter mechira established a precedent that has been appropriated by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel every shmittah year. The Rabbinate conducts a formal sale of land and provides careful instructions to the farmers as to which type of labor Jews can perform themselves and which they are halachically required to outsource to non-Jews.
Putting aside the legal discussion on the modern practice of shmittah with the application of the heter, Jewish and non-Jewish environmentalists alike are rediscovering the original formula for shmittah as a lost ecological paradigm. Part of this newfound interest in shmittah is the popular philosophy expressed in famed farmer and writer Wendell Berry’s words, that “Eaters must understand that eating takes places inescapably in the world – that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines to a considerable extent, how the world is used” (Berry in his article “The Pleasures of Eating”). This trend may be measured by the growing number of films and other media forms turning towards this kind of ecological and holistic awareness (Food Inc, The Inconvenient Truth, No Impact Man, etc.) In light of rising health concerns amongst today’s youth, including alarming early-onset medical conditions such as asthma, obesity, and diabetes, it is no wonder that people are beginning to open their pantries with more doubt. Thus, in this era when most of the population in western society does not cultivate their own foodstuff, we can see that people are becoming increasingly interested in where and how their food reaches them. It is easy to understand how a system like shmittah refocuses us on these important and relevant questions. The system forces its observers to realize their inherent dependence on nature no matter how disillusioned they become with the belief that man causes the natural process through his own interference in the natural world. Shmittah also teaches restrictions on acquiring excess which helps inspire people to eat locally and in moderation, and avoid harmful food preservatives and other chemicals (hormones and synthetic ingredients alike) that are endangering our health.
Additionally, shmittah is an ideal model for agricultural sustainability, which has become a central topic amongst environmentalists, especially in their advocacy for permaculture – “an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies” (wikipedia.org). Shmittah espouses regenerative farming that increase biodiversity and soil health, which is desperately needed today. Agriculturally speaking, observing the shmittah is something that must be prepared for in its preceding six years. In a land-based society, refraining from farming in the seventh year would require careful preparation: Farmers would need to plant a variety of crops, including fruit and other perennials, in addition to the annual grains and vegetables. This would allow more food to grow on its own during shmittah in order to supplement the surplus that had been stored from previous years. This enables a more sustainable and secure food system, as it is not exclusively based on annual crops that require tremendous input and labor. According to Nati Passow, Jewish-environmental educator, in our modern context, “much of the environmental degradation associated with agriculture stems from the large-scale mono-cropping of a small number of staple crops like corn and soy that require incredible amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; chemicals that end up in our water, soil and air” (Passow 213). Although mono-cropping began with an intention of ending world-hunger, its inefficacy and economic damage shows that it must be replaced by more sustainable systems.
Shmittah also creates economic stability: “Claims of ownership over material wealth are let go as the needs of the poor are prioritized over the needs of the rich. This practice recognizes that a society with a large disparity of wealth is ultimately not sustainable” (Passow 223). This system also provides a mental well-being in addition to physical benefits. In its original intention it is supposed to remove workers from the land and give them a Sabbath from which they can rest and focus inwards. Through this reflection, one meditates on the sacredness of food and its role in building community. Additionally this time was often dedicated to learning Torah and other spiritual pursuits. It goes without saying that healthy-introspective people foster a healthier world.
Today, it is estimated that about five thousand people in Israel observe the Year of Release, literally. While The “Chafetz Chayyim Yishuv,” of Poale Agudat Israel suspends all agricultural work in the sabbatical year and is an example of one such community, others, like the colonies of “Hapoel Hamizrachi,” which rely entirely on the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, nevertheless choose to distinguish one field in each yishuv which will be left fallow as a symbol of their literal adherence to the shmittah laws. For those select communities who keep shmittah without the heter mechira, there are special funds like the Keren Hashviis: The Nationwide Centre for Shmittah Observing Farmers, made available by religious Jews in the United State and Israel to support them. A radical alternative to the shmittah heter is the advent of soilless produce called hydroponics. Successful experiments have been carried out in Israel to examine the possibility of cultivating vegetables in metal tanks, using water and chemicals without soil to offer an interesting alternative for those who wish to fulfill shmittah literally.
From an optimistic and theological perspective, those keeping shmittah, “a year in which we turn our focus away from personal benefit to public benefit, from material needs to communal needs, from worldly pursuits to spiritual pursuits,” will abundantly reap what they sow; or more precisely, reap what they don’t sow (Passow 215). These miracles are conveyed through the stories of Kibbutz Kommemiyut, which in 1950 observed the shmittah fully and afterwards planted infested wheat seed which produced a flourishing crop thereafter. A similarly miraculous account was recorded at Yitzhar Vineyard, where the farmer left his young vineyard to rest during the seventh year and came back to find that his crop yield had tripled in size. My prediction is that the return to the original application of shmittah is imminent. These miraculous communities have been trailblazers in our time to prove that even for larger communities such a system is possible. Imagine a world where every seventh year, life took on a new rhythm and people were allowed to slow down to be cosmically in sync with the Creator and His universe. Imagine the freedom that we would feel by disengaging from the false sense of self-resourcefulness, which according to the Gaia Theory has tipped our world horribly out of balance. On a communal level, could we not logically predict the wonders that shmittah would do for restoring family harmony and uniting communities? Our western world incessantly preaches the values of democracy and equality, but they are far from establishing an economic equalization like the one that shmittah provides. It is my sincere prayer that this Jewish wisdom will be restored to its full biblical application and create an ecological renaissance in our world.
Appendix:
And six years thou shalt sow thy land and gather in the
increase thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it
rest and lie fallow, that the poor of thy people may eat,
and what they leave, the beast of the field shall eat. In
like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with
thy oliveyard (Ex. 23: 10-11) .
……………………
In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest
for the land, a sabbath unto the Lord; thou shalt neither
sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth
of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes
of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather; it shall
be a year of solemn rest for the land. And the Sabbath produce
of the land shall be for food for you: for thee,
and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired
servant and for the settler by thy side that sojourn with
thee, and for thy cattle and for the beasts that are in thy
land, shall all the increase be for good (Lev. 25: 4-7).
………..
“If you will say, ‘What shall we eat in the
seventh year-for we can neither sow nor gather in our crop’?
I shall command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and
that crop shall suffce for three years!” (Lev. 25: 20-1 ) .
………..
“For there will never cease to be needy ones from the midst of the land, which is why I command you: open your hand to your fellows, your poor and your needy in your land” (Deut. 15:11
Talmudic origins
God said to Israel, ‘Sow six years and rest on the seventh so that you might know that the land is Mine’“ (Sanhedrin 39a)
*an entire An entire Talmudic tractate, Sheviit, deals extensively with this subject.
* * *
Bibliography:
Bak, Benjamin “The Sabbatical Year in Modern Israel.” Tradition Magazine 1(2) (1959):193-199
Blidstein, Gerald J. “Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year, Tradition Magazine Volume 8 (4) (1966): 48-55)
Edrei, Arye. “From Orthodoxy to Religious Zionism: Rabbi Kook and the Sabbatical Year Polemic”
Jachter, Rabbi Howard. “The Heter Mechira - Part One” May 2000. http://koltorah.org/ravj/hetermechira1.htm
http://www.shviis.com/ (online fundraising for shmittah farmers)
Jackobovitz, Yitzchak. “More on Ma’adanei Eretz on Shevi’it .”
The Seforim Blog. http://seforim.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-on-ma-eretz-on-shevi.html
Passow, Nati.”Shemita as a Foundation for Jewish Ecological Education” in Jewish Education News Volume 28 issue 1