Behar | The Duality of Shemitta

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Parashat Behar is concerned with primarily one topic: the observance of the Sabbatical Cycle.  While the mitzvah of the "Shemitta" (literally "relinquishment") had been introduced much earlier in Parashat Mishpatim of Sefer Shemot, that was but an oblique and general reference:

 

Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its bounty.  But during the seventh year, you shall relinquish it and forsake it, so that the poor of your land may partake of it and the remainder shall be consumed by the beasts of the field.  So too shall you do for your vineyard and olive grove (Shemot 23:10-11).

 

Our Parasha, in contrast, treats the matter much more comprehensively.  It describes the seven-year cycle of planting and harvest, spells out exactly which activities are to be curtailed during the Sabbatical Year, and, in the most marked departure from the text in Sefer Shemot, goes on to describe in great detail the related observance of the Yovel or Jubilee:

 

You shall count seven Sabbatical years – seven times seven years – and these years of the seven Sabbatical cycles shall equal forty-nine years.  Then you shall sound the shofar blast on the tenth day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement you shall sound the shofar in all of your land. You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants.  It shall be an observance of the Yovel for you, for each person shall return to his ancestral estate and family…(VaYikra 25:8-10).

 

 

SOCIAL BENEFITS OF SHEMITTA

 

Additionally, while Parashat Mishpatim stresses the social benefits of the observance, our Parasha is concerned with its more philosophical implications.  Thus, in Sefer Shemot, we read that the relinquishment of the land during the seventh year is calculated to allow equal access for the poor to the land's bounty.  By ceasing to exercise active ownership and surveillance of the land, anyone may enter to freely consume what the land produces of its own accord.  In this way, the poor are afforded an opportunity to partake of anything that the fields produce, while the wealthy landowners can exercise no advantage by virtue of their legal possession.

 

In fact, the passage in Parashat Mishpatim quoted earlier introduces the Shemitta observance in the context of a whole series of laws whose overall purpose is to foster the common good by protecting the welfare of the weak and powerless:

 

Do not corrupt the justice due to the poor in his grievance.  Distance yourself from falsehood; do not kill the innocent and righteous for I will not acquit the wicked.  Do not take bribes, for bribery blinds the wise and perverts the words of the just.  Do not oppress a convert, for you know the how a foreigner feels, for you too were foreigners in the land of Egypt.  Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its bounty.  But during the seventh year, you shall relinquish it and forsake it, so that the poor of your land may partake of it and the remainder shall be consumed by the beasts of the field.  So too shall you do for your vineyard and olive grove.  For six days you shall do your labors but on the seventh day you shall cease, in order that your ox and donkey may experience rest and your maid's son and foreign worker may be refreshed…(Shemot 23:6-12).   

 

 

RECOGNITION OF GOD

 

In our Parasha, in contrast, the Torah in the course of its introduction to the observance, emphasizes a different dimension: "…when you enter the land that I give to you, it shall lay fallow AS A SABBATH TO GOD" (25:2).  It completes the discussion employing similar vocabulary and emphasizing an identical theme: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for THE LAND IS MINE, FOR YOU ARE BUT WANDERERS AND SOJOURNERS ON IT WITH ME" (25:23).  In other words, according to our Parasha, the thrust of the Sabbatical cycle as well as of the Yovel that completes it is to remind us that God is the eternal and sovereign Master of the world.  While the intermediate verses make mention of others who may partake of the land's produce during the Shemitta, just as the passage did in Parashat Mishpatim, the "poor" are conspicuously absent from the list:

 

During the seventh year, the land shall enjoy a sabbatical year, a Sabbath to God, you shall neither plant your field not prune your vineyard.  You shall not harvest that which grows of its own accord nor gather the grapes of your untended vines, for a year of Sabbath shall it be for the land.  What grows while the land rests shall be for you to eat, as well as for your SERVANT and your HANDMAID, for your HIRED WORKER as well as for THOSE THAT DWELL WITH YOU.  All of its produce shall be food for your ANIMALS and for the BEASTS that are in your land, " (VaYikra 25:4-7).

 

Therefore, the emphasis of our text is not the rectification of the imbalances that exist between rich and poor or powerful and weak, but rather the neutralization of all ownership rights before Almighty God.  The landowner, his servant and handmaid, his paid employees and even those that simply dwell in the area, all are granted equal access to the land.  The implication of this is clear: though we may labor mightily to attain possession of the earth and of its riches, the Shemitta indicates to us that we are but mortal and our material achievements are but transitory.  "The earth and its fullness are God's, the world and those that dwell upon it" (Tehillim 24:1).

 

 

LINKING THE IDEAS

 

Of course, this duality of the Sabbatical year, stressing both the needs of the poor as well as God's transcendence, constitutes an intrinsic linkage of like ideas.  By recognizing our own impermanence and the fleeting nature of our hold on the land, we may more easily come to share with the less fortunate.  To observe Shemitta is to realize that my most permanent and precious material possession, the very land from which I wring my sustenance, is not truly mine forever but only given to me so that I might exercise responsible stewardship over it.  Surely, it must follow that in the shadow of its observance I will be able to appreciate the needs of those less fortunate, those whose every day is lived in a state of vulnerability and powerlessness.

 

In the wake of the Shemitta laws, our Parasha goes on to describe a whole series of enactments whose purpose it is to draw a connection between the relinquishment of the land and the treatment of the helpless.  Thus, it is regarded as an obligation for a family member to repurchase and restore the land of one who was forced to sell it due to economic straits.  Alternatively, the seller himself must be given the opportunity to recover the land should he secure funds, or else it shall revert back to him without payment at the time of the Yovel (25:24-28). 

 

As for the sale of houses, the seller may choose to repurchase his former homestead during the first year of the sale, if the house in question was located within a walled city.  The assumption is, of course, that some people sell their homes out of necessity and should therefore be given an opportunity to repossess them.  Concerning the Levites, they are given the special right to repurchase their real estate at any time, or else receive it back at the time of the Yovel, since their lack of official tribal lands made them especially vulnerable (25:29-34)

 

During the next section of the Parasha, the focus shifts from land-based law to other economic issues, especially forms of servitude and slavery.  Interest and usury are forbidden, since these are instruments that tend to prey on a person's weak financial state (25:35-38).  Harsh servitude is outlawed, and the Jewish servant must be let free at the time of the Shemitta (25:39-46).  The Jewish slave who has been purchased by foreign owners must duly be redeemed by family, in accordance with his market value that is a function of the current year in the Yovel cycle (25:47:53).

 

The entire section is concluded with a summary statement that expresses the essence of the Torah's concerns: "For the people of Israel are servants to ME, they are MY servants that I have taken out of the land of Egypt, for I am God your Lord" (25:55).  Therefore, just as God's ownership of the land precludes rapacious plundering of its bounty or the exclusion of the poor from enjoying its fruits, so too God's "ownership" of the people of Israel precludes the utilization of capital to carry out injustice or the maltreatment of the feeble at the hands of those more secure.

 

 

THE REAL VS. THE IDEAL

 

As we all know, there is often a cavernous gap between the noble ideal that the Torah presents and the real state of affairs as human beings have frightfully fashioned it.  Consider the following passage from Yirmiyahu, recorded by the prophet on the eve of the Babylonian conquest of the First Commonwealth in the sixth century BCE.  The people of Jerusalem had already been subjected to the effects of the siege, and Yirmiyahu's earlier cries to them to abandon immorality and return to God now suddenly took on urgency.  Their weak-willed and ineffectual ruler Tzidkiyahu abruptly adopted the prophet's platform and called upon the people to free their servants from unjust slavery.  Remarkably, the people listened, though their motivations may have been to swell the depleted ranks of the city's defenders or else to free themselves of responsibility for their slaves' sustenance as the first pangs of hunger began to gnaw.  In any case, though carried out under the threat of imminent destruction, the reform was short lived and God's disappointment was correspondingly great:

 

All of the ministers and people listened, those that had entered the covenant to send forth their male and female slaves to freedom so as not to oppress them any more.  But afterwards, they retook the slaves and maidservants that they had sent forth, and again pressed them into service to become slaves and maidservants!  God's word came to Yirmiyahu, from God saying: "Thus says God the Lord of Israel.  I entered a covenant with your ancestors on the day that I took them out of the land of Egypt FROM THE HOUSE OF SLAVERY, and I said – after seven years you shall send forth your Hebrew brothers who had been sold to you and served for six years.  You shall send him forth to freedom from you!  But your ancestors did not hearken to Me nor incline their ears. 

 

On this very day you did what was just in My eyes and proclaimed freedom each man for his brother, and entered into a covenant in the House that is called by My name.  But then you returned and desecrated My name by retaking each man his slave and maidservant that you had just sent forth to freedom, and you pressed them into service to again become your slaves and maidservants!  Therefore, thus says God, since you did not hearken to Me to proclaim liberty each man for his fellow and friend, therefore I shall proclaim liberty for you – liberty to the sword, to pestilence and to the famine, for I shall make you into a horror to all of the kingdoms of the world!" (Yirmiyahu 34:10-17).

 

Of course, the ancient link between the unjust amassment of real estate, the misuse of financial power and the phenomenon of slavery, the unholy trinity of undeveloped agrarian societies, is less pronounced now.  But, as we all intuitively recognize, the pathological need to exercise power over others that lies at the core of those social ills is very much with us still.  Our Parasha this week addresses those matters in terms that may strike some of us as archaic, but the Torah's transcendent message cannot be overlooked. Oppression of society's weaker elements comes in many guises and forms, and we have so far only succeeded in eradicating its most overt expressions.  May we all merit to see the day when Yirmiyahu's noble words are truly fulfilled: "On this very day you did what was just in My eyes and proclaimed freedom each person for his fellow".

 

Shabbat Shalom