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The Tikvah Podcast

Yedidya Sinclair on Israel's Shmitah Year

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6620 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Every week, on the seventh day—the Sabbath—observant Jews rest. They perform no labor and they dedicate the day to serving God. This idea, the Sabbath, has another application in the Hebrew Bible: God also commands the observance of a sabbatical year to be taken every seventh year and during which the land of Israel would lie fallow and debts would be remitted. For most of Jewish history, the laws of this year, known as shmitah, were abstract and remote. But with the growth of modern Zionism, and then the rebirth of the sovereign Jewish state, the laws of shmitah have acquired a renewed importance. Jewish farmers are obliged to let the land of Israel lie fallow every seven years, and religiously observant Jews are prohibited from consuming fruit grown on that land. Does this happen in Israel today, and if so, how? And what are the deeper ideas embedded in the practice of shmitah

The questions are not abstract; this new Jewish year, 5782, is a shmitah year. So on this week’s podcast, the rabbi Yedidya (Julian) Sinclair joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain why this biblical ordinance is so important, and how it’s expressed in Israel today. Recently, Sinclair translated and authored a commentary on a famous rabbinical work about shmitah, Shabbat Ha’Aretz, The Sabbath of the Land, by the rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who is considered the father of religious Zionism and whose ideas about shmitah govern much of its application in Israel today.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This year, Jewish communities read in the Hebrew Bible of God's six days of creation,

0:13.0

and consequently of his seventh day of rest.

0:17.0

Then the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their array, we read in Genesis

0:22.4

Chapter 2, and God completed on the seventh day the task he had done, and he ceased on the

0:28.6

seventh day from all the task he had done, and God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, for

0:34.2

on it he had ceased from all his task that he had created to do. Thus was born the Sabbath,

0:41.1

the obligation that Jews take upon themselves in imitation of God and later at his command,

0:48.0

to set aside one day each week to rest, and to serve him, rather than the worldly authorities for whom we labor the other six

0:56.6

days of the week. The Sabbath, Shabbat in Hebrew, is its own fascinating subject of study and

1:04.1

reflection, but today I'd like to focus on the application of the idea of the Sabbath in another

1:10.7

setting.

1:11.6

This is the sabbatical year, known in Hebrew as Shmitah, referred to in chapter 23 of Exodus,

1:19.6

in chapter 25 of Leviticus, and in chapter 15 of Deuteronomy.

1:25.6

Just as a Sabbath would occur every seventh day, so a sabbatical year would

1:31.4

occur every seventh year, during which the land of Israel would lie fallow, and debts were to be

1:38.2

remitted. For most of Jewish history, the biblical and rabbinic laws related to Shmita were abstract, like the

1:46.7

operations of the Levitical sacrifices in the temple.

1:50.8

But with the growth of modern Zionism, and then the reclamation of the land of Israel,

1:56.8

and then finally with the rebirth of the sovereign Jewish state, laws of Shmita have acquired a renewed applicability.

2:04.8

Farmers are obliged to let the land of Israel lie fallow every seven years,

2:09.8

and religiously observant Jews are prohibited from consuming fruit grown on that land.

2:16.4

What are the deeper ideas embedded in the practice of

...

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