A Sabbath For The Land

by Freema Gottlieb
Special To The Jewish Week

Shabbat candles: 7:47 p.m.
Torah Readings: Lev. 25:1-27:24
Haftorah: Jeremiah 32: 6-27
Shabbat ends: 8:53 p.m.

In the code of courtly love that constitutes the relationship between God and Israel, it is precisely the difficulty that forges the staying power and attachment that enables us to hold on to God’s gifts.
Behar starts with Moshe Rabbeinu’s imaginative leap, from his isolated elevation on Mount Sinai (be-har), to a spiritual topography for future generations inside the Land of Israel.

Specifically, there was to be a shmitta, a Shabbat for the land — a kind of Jewish Earth Day. While modern minds might understand the benefits of periodically letting the

earth lie fallow, such pragmatism is not the reason stated for this commandment. The sabbatical year must be a “Shabbat for the Lord,” indicating that the earth — and primarily that quintessential piece of earth, the Land of Israel — belongs to God.
However beautiful the idea may be in the abstract of Shabbat being extended from human beings to nature and the land itself, the command of a sabbatical year remains one of the most difficult.

In the sixth year, people will naturally ask: “What shall we eat during the seventh year?” [Lev. 25:20]. Rashi explains that in the seventh year, “the produce of the land is not actually forbidden either as food or as enjoyment” but that the owner is required to undergo a radical shift of perspective.

“Only that you should not grow accustomed to thinking of yourself as its owner, but all should be equal regarding it, your tenant, your hired servant, your cattle, even wild animals, and the stranger sojourning with you.” God declares Himself the true owner of the property: “The land is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with Me” [Lev. 25:23].

God then resets the balance by including Himself as the ultimate Stranger.
Ethically, these sabbatical laws are more far-reaching than first appears, positing as they do a kind of spiritual communism, an equality based on Divine ownership or participation. Though the gentile may appear the “stranger” during the six years of bourgeois normality, in the seventh they have become one’s equal. And we must cultivate the ethical sense to recognize this.

“Don’t wrong your brother” is the constant refrain through the text. And wrong means nothing rarefied, simply financial injury, which in an agrarian society has to do with land. Comes the Jubilee and not only the land but also Jewish bondsmen revert to their original master. A limit is set on the accumulation of wealth and power over others. To the accompaniment of the shofar blast, the wave of release from shmitta to Jubilee culminates in an outbreak of transcendent joy in ultimate Jewish brotherhood.

The answer given to the question posed during the sixth year as to what can be eaten during the sabbatical year is answered. Just as with manna, of which Israelites in the desert were given a double portion on the sixth day, on the sixth year God will provide enough food for three years, and even longer — the sixth, the seventh, and even the eighth, when one will still have to do some sowing to reap anything new.

What is being promised has no external guarantee but asks for faith alone. Therefore, the blessing expands past all bounds. “And you will eat till satisfaction” [Lev. 26:19]. On this the Sifra says that from the food a blessing will enter one’s vitals and into one’s entire metabolism. “We will eat a little and it will be blessed in one’s innards.”

But the real reward is that God will be newly attracted to the Jewish people. “I will set in your midst My sanctuary and I will not be repelled by you” [Lev. 26:11]. The Hebrew for sanctuary, mishkan, derives from the root shakhen, neighbor, implying either “the place where I dwell,” or the Shekhinah, Divine Presence, dwelling in that place that has come to be viewed mystically as a separate feminine entity, or simply intimacy.

Of the verse “And I will walk about amongst you” [Lev. 26:38], Rashi suggests, “Like one of you” — that is, on an equal basis. He goes on to say, “I will stroll about with you . . . and you won’t be terrified!”
In order to achieve this kind of close relationship that Moshe Rabbeinu enjoyed on Sinai “as a friend with a friend,” it may be necessary to cultivate temporarily a certain distance from one’s own concerns as prescribed for the shmitta year.

The consequence, we are told, for not keeping the seventh year of release is exile. Tragically, the land is then forced to lie fallow for a longer time. However, even in this worst scenario, the Jewish people are never totally abandoned. According to the Talmud, wherever the Jewish people are dispersed, the Divine Presence accompanies them (Megilla 29a). Paradoxically, keeping shmitta can be a kind of preemptive act — taking on oneself an inner exile while still in the land may be the only defense against tasting that condition in reality. Strangers, yes, temporary residents, maybe, but with God.

Author of “Lamp of God: A Jewish Book of Light,” Freema Gottlieb is deeply involved in adult Jewish learning in New York.