Shmita
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The Shmita (in Hebrew: שְׁמִטָּה -- "[Year of] Remission") or Sabbatical Year, promulgated in the Torah, is a practice of contemporary Orthodox Judaism with Biblical roots. It has a number of dimensions to it: It is a year during which farm-land owned by Jews has to remain uncultivated, when debts owed to individuals are "forgiven" (i.e. "remitted"), and when people serving as bonded laborers were traditionally freed. It occurs every seven years and applies only in the Land of Israel. The next Shmita year will be 2007 (5768 in the Hebrew calendar).
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[edit] In the Hebrew Bible
The Sabbatical year is discussed in the Hebrew Bible in a number of places, including:
- Book of Exodus: "You may plant your land for six years and gather its crops. But during the seventh year, you must leave it alone and withdraw from it. The needy among you will then be able to eat just as you do, and whatever is left over can be eaten by wild animals. This also applies to your vineyard and your olive grove." (Exodus 23:10-11) [1]
- Book of Leviticus: "God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, telling him to speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land must be given a rest period, a sabbath to God. For six years you may plant your fields, prune your vineyards, and harvest your crops, but the seventh year is a sabbath of sabbaths for the land. It is God's sabbath during which you may not plant your fields, nor prune your vineyards. Do not harvest crops that grow on their own and do not gather the grapes on your unpruned vines, since it is a year of rest for the land. While the land is resting may be eaten by you, by your male and female slaves, and by the employees and resident hands who live with you. All the crops shall be eaten by the domestic and wild animals that are in your land." (Leviticus 25:1-7) [2]
- Book of Deuteronomy: "At the end of every seven years, you shall celebrate the remission year. The idea of the remission year is that every creditor shall remit any debt owed by his neighbor and brother when God's remission year comes around. You may collect from the alien, but if you have any claim against your brother for a debt, you must relinquish it..." (Deuteronomy 15:1-6) [3] and "Moses then gave them the following commandment: 'At the end of each seven years, at a fixed time on the festival of Sukkoth, after the year of release, when all Israel comes to present themselves before God your Lord, in the place that He will choose, you must read this Torah before all Israel, so that they will be able to hear it. 'You must gather together the people, the men, women, children and proselytes from your settlements, and let them hear it. They will thus learn to be in awe of God your Lord, carefully keeping all the words of this Torah. Their children, who do not know, will listen and learn to be in awe of God your Lord, as long as you live in the land which you are crossing the Jordan to occupy'." (Deuteronomy 31:10-13)[4]
- Books of Chronicles: "...And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia; to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had been paid her sabbaths; for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. (2 Chronicles 36:20-21)[5]
[edit] Rules of observance
Land owned by Jews in the Land of Israel is left unfarmed, and any naturally growing produce is left to be taken by poor people, passing strangers, and beasts of the field.
Debts between the people of Israel are remitted (does not apply to debts to foreigners or courts).
In Biblical times, Jews indentured into bonded servitude (e.g. as a punishment for crime) were freed.
[edit] In Rabbinic Judaism
According to the Talmud, observance of the Sabbatical year is of high accord, and one who does not do so may not be allowed to be a witness in an Orthodox religious court.
Nonetheless, Rabbinic Judaism has developed Halakhic (religious-law) devices to be able to maintain a modern agricultural and commercial system while giving heed to the Biblical injunctions. Such devices represent examples of flexibility within the Halakhic system
Hillel the Elder, in the first century BCE, used the rule that remittance of debts apples only to debts between Jews, to develop a device known as Prosbul in which the debt is transferred to a Beit Din (religious court). When owed to the court rather than to an individual, the debt survives the sabbatical year. This device, formulated early in the era of Rabbinic Judaism when the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, became a prototype of how Judaism was later to adapt to the destruction of the Second Temple and maintain a system based on Biblical law under very different conditions.
Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor developed a device to permit agriculture to continue during the Shmita year in the late 19th century, in the early days of Zionism. The basis of the device, accepted by Modern Orthodox Judaism, is that only land owned by Jews must be left fallow, which was interpreted to mean that Jews are permitted to farm fields owned by non-Jews during the Sabbatical. However, as with many matters in contemporary halakhic development, this approach has not been univerally accepted in the Orthodox community and has met with opposition, particularly from Haredi poskim (authorities of Jewish law), from the time it was first proposed and to this day. The Chazon Ish, a leading early twentieth-century authority, wrote an opinion that even produce grown on land owned by non-Jews is subject to the Shmita.
[edit] Modern observance in Israel
It has become customary in contemporary practice, particularly in Modern Orthodox practice, to use the rabbinic leniencies systematically, selling all fields in Israel to a loyal non-Jew for the symbolic price of one shekel before the Sabbatical. They are then bought back for the same price after the Sabbatical. Thus, the fields can be farmed anyway. This procedure has been accepted and carried out by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.
Many Haredi Jews do not avail themselves of this leniency, and Haredi farmers leave their fields fallow every seven years and are supported by communal funds during this period.
Haredi influence on the Israeli Rabbinate has been increasing of late. In 2000, Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron withdrew religious certification of the validity of permits for the sale of land to non-Jews during the Shmita year following protests against his endorsement of the leniency by members of the Haredi community.
The Biblical practice of bonded servitude until the Shmita year e.g. as punishment for crime is not currently practiced in contemporary Judaism. Contemporary religious courts do not have jurisdiction over criminal matters or authority to administer such a procedure.
While obligatory to the Orthodox as a matter of religious observance, observance of the rules of Shmita is voluntary so far as the civil government is concerned in the contemporary State of Israel. Civil courts do not enforce the rules. A debt would be transferred to a religious court for a document of prosbul only if both parties voluntarily agreed to do so. Many non-religious Israeli Jews do not observe these rules, although some non-religious farmers participate in the symbolic sale of land to non-Jews to permit their produce to be considered kosher and sellable to Orthodox Jews who permit the leniency.
The first Shmita year in the modern State of Israel was 1951 (5712 in the Hebrew calendar) Subsequent Shmita years have been 1958 (5719), 1965 (5726), 1972 (5733), 1979 (5740), 1986 (5747), 1993 (5754), and 2000 (5761). As of 2006, the year 2007 (5768) will be the next Shmita year.
The 50th year of the land, which is also a Shabbat of the land, is called "Yovel" in Hebrew, which is the origin of the Latin term "Jubilee", also meaning 50th. . The time of the occurrence of the Jubilee Year though may be in doubt.
[edit] Biblical criticism perspectives
According to [specify], debts were to be suspended for the year rather than remitted entirely. This practice was, presumably, instituted to prevent the resources of the debtor, already stretched thin due to the land lying fallow, being exhausted by the discharging of debts.
Some claim that there is "little notice of the observance of this year in Biblical history". It appears to have been much neglected. This statement in 2 Chronicles states that the first Temple was destroyed due to there not being an observance of the Sabbatical year.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Yeshivat Ohr Yerushalayim Jewish Law Website: Shmita
- Jewish Encyclopedia, ""Sabbatical Year and Jubilee", 1906
- "Shmita: 5712", Time Magazine, October 20, 1952
This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
