2021-22 Parashat HaShavua - Mishpatim

What were the founding values of Jewish society, and how has our evolution affected them? The laws of Parashat Mishpatim are given when Bnei Yisrael is still just beginning to develop an identity, laws that continue to reverberate when later generations encounter those laws in their own times. Among them is the law of shemittah, the year every seventh year that the land rests, which is in effect this year, 5782:

וְשֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים תִּזְרַע אֶת אַרְצֶךָ וְאָסַפְתָּ אֶת תְּבוּאָתָהּ: וְהַשְּׁבִיעִת תִּשְׁמְטֶנָּה וּנְטַשְׁתָּהּ וְאָכְלוּ אֶבְיֹנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְיִתְרָם תֹּאכַל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה כֵּן תַּעֲשֶׂה לְכַרְמְךָ לְזֵיתֶךָ:

“​​Six years you shall sow your land, and gather in its fruits.But the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie still, so the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner you shall deal with your vineyard, and your olive trees. (Ex. 23:10-11)

This law is so important that it is repeated in VaYikra (Lev. 25:1-7), and we are reminded of it yet again in Nechemya (10:32). Imagine being informed of this law before owning land yet, or after living in the land for a very limited amount of time, as is the context in Tanach for these two times. In the abstract, it might be hard to understand. Or, one’s excited anticipation of owning land might far exceed any concerns about rules being imposed about its use.

Meanwhile, the law messages profound values. You must rest: you and your entire household, not just one day a week every seven days, but an entire year every seven years. And the land and produce you might think of as yours does not belong only to you; as explained most fully in VaYikra, “the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you; for you, your servant, maid, hired servant, and the stranger who sojourns with you; for your cattle and wild animal in your land; all its produce shall be food / וְהָיְתָה שַׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ לָכֶם לְאָכְלָה לְךָ וּלְעַבְדְּךָ וְלַאֲמָתֶךָ וְלִשְׂכִירְךָ וּלְתוֹשָׁבְךָ הַגָּרִים עִמָּךְ: וְלִבְהֶמְתְּךָ וְלַחַיָּה אֲשֶׁר בְּאַרְצֶךָ תִּהְיֶה כָל תְּבוּאָתָהּ לֶאֱכֹל” (Lev. 25:6-7)

It is worth noting that, alongside the law to rest the land in the shemittah year, there is also a cancellation of debts. This, however, proved to be too much of a disincentive for lending as the shemittah year approached. Therefore, in an incredible act of rabbinic innovation, Hillel created a legal workaround to still enable collecting debts that might otherwise be canceled. (Mishna Shevi’it 10:3-4) In that context, the method of shemittah to help people financially by freeing them from debt proved counterproductive, and actually prevented people from receiving the financial assistance they needed.

Shemittah for the land, however, has endured. But now that we live in our own land, how do we eat?

As the modern State of Israel became a reality, the great thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz observed that “‘we are presented with the opportunity and the task of realizing through and within the land of Israel the concealed power of Torah’ through the application, indeed restoration, of the system of Jewish law to its original nation-building purpose whereby it might produce a state that could run according to Jewish law.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, quoting Ratziti, 327.)

This work is nowhere near complete. Shemittah, though, provides us with an opportunity to celebrate how the religious establishment has risen to the occasion that Leibowitz describes. When the earliest pioneers first arrived in Israel and would have starved if not for farming, a fix was created on an emergency basis to enable the temporary sale of land to non-Jews in order to live off of it. Since then, agricultural innovations and adaptations have increasingly found ways to adjust what is grown, how it is grown (e.g. above ground), and when it is grown and ripens (harvested early and then ready to eat later). Farmers collaborate and cooperate with each other to respect shemittah and each other rather than compete with one another. And Israel turns to neighboring countries for use of their land in the meantime.

Thus, as we read these passages about shemittah in Parashat Mishpatim, let us take advantage of this opportunity to celebrate values that were established for us at the outset of our existence as a people - such as rest for the land and its workers and acknowledging that the land is not only ours, it is God’s - which we have stayed true to and have fostered kindness and ingenuity throughout the generations. May we be inspired to find ways to similarly perpetuate and fulfill other important values in our Jewish lives as well. 

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jack Nahmod
Middle School Judaic Studies Head
Rabbinic Advisor