Shabbat Beha; By Rabbi Denise L. Eger

Shabbat Shalom

This week’s Torah portion Behar/Behukotai has within it a radical plan for wealth redistribution. We don’t think of the Torah necessarily as an economic text. But all areas of life are touched by our tradition including the economic structure of the ideal society. The sabbatical year –or shemitta year is nothing short of a wealth redistribution plan. It is a way to uplift the poor and remind those with means of their communal obligations.

Each seventh year one must give the land a complete rest from harvesting, sowing, or reaping. That in itself was radical. This agricultural wisdom of letting the land lie fallow to recharge the nutrients and minerals is brilliant in itself. It teaches us how to care for the land and that we can just take and take and take. Just as human beings and animals must have a Shabbat, so too the earth itself. But even without intentional planting and sowing some produce and grains will still sprout and grow. The torah is very clear that one is not allowed to use even these for personal gain. They cannot be harvested and sold. They must be given to the poor.
In truth, the landowner and farmer can eat of this and can share in this food that simply grows in the seventh year. But what this sabbatical does is put the land owner and those who are too poor to own or farm a stretch of land on equal footing if but for a year.
There have been times in Jewish history however when rabbinic dictum set aside the provisions of the sabbatical year. Even as late at 1889, the early settlers of Israel, then Palestine, appealed to great teachers in Europe to set aside the provisions of the sabbatical year because it would do great harm to the fledgling local economy. They were trying so hard to rebuild and resettle our ancient land. The Yishuv-the early settlers, the pioneers were just opening markets for their produce. The provisions of the sabbatical year would wipe them out they feared. A creative way was found called a hetter mechira. This was in essence a way to sell the land for a year to a non-Jew. Even the great Rav Kook came to understand the need for this leniency once he saw the pioneering efforts of the settlers and how that the sabbatical provisions would harm their efforts. Yet his reasons for supporting the sabbatical year were not indefinite. He thought there would be a time in Eretz Yisrael when it would be strong enough to observe this ancient rite.
But this seventh year sabbatical is not for land only—it was also a time for remission of debts. If we read Deuteronomy (15:1-10) most debts were cancelled at the end of a sabbatical year! Imagine having your slate wiped clean every seventh year. Great if you owe –not so great if you are a lender.
Indeed this ending of indebtedness in the seventh year was another way our tradition had of trying to equalize everyone in society—rich and poor. In practice however, there was not a remission of indebtedness when it came to wages an individual was owed, loans secured by pledges or merchandise bought on credit. And in fact, the great Rabbi Hillel saw that this law was being abused. As the seventh year approached lenders would refuse to loan money to the poor for fear that they would not be repaid. Thus he instituted a very famous rabbinical legal action called the prozbul. The prozbul is indeed a creative Jewish legal response to a difficult situation in Hillel’s time. Mishnah Gittin 4.3 states: "Hillel established the prozbul in order to repair the world." But in the Mishna, Shevi’it 10:3 we learn details of Hillel’s action. The prozbul was a document that would overturn this law of debt remission. He placed the supervision of loans into the hands of the Beit Din-the local court and thus loans could be collected even after the sabbatical year because the loan was now owned by the court. The Beit Din (here read community agency) owned the loan technically not the lender and the lender could collect because he or she was acting on behalf of the community court! The rabbis further understood that the provisions of the Sabbatical year were applicable only in the land of Israel. After all this was God’s holy land.
One other even more radical economic plan is also discussed in this week’s portion Behar. In a Jubilee year which is once every fifty years and follows a sabbatical year (the seventh in a seven year cycle) land holdings reverted to their original owners. So even if you bought a plot of land built on it, harvested it-it automatically reverted to the original owners who owned it at the time of Joshua’s conquest of the land. In other words all land in Eretz Yisrael according to this was nothing more than leased land. And not even for 99 years!
This economic plan of the Torah seems unwieldy and seems as if it would present many other difficulties. Clearly Rabbi Hillel saw the practical difficulties and made a creative legal response – the prozbul- to help. Rav Kook understood that the strictures of the sabbatical year would do great harm to the early halutzim who were settling the land of Israel. So we must ask what is at work in these Levitical passages? What is the Torah trying to teach us even today?
First and foremost the Torah is reiterating our responsibility to the poor. These measures are designed in part to care for those in society who have little. In our day and in our city the poor, the working poor and the homeless have great needs. We must focus our attention to the disparities between rich and poor which is exactly what this Biblical section is talking about. The sabbatical year makes us focus our attention on that great gap. In our day time—the gap grows daily.
“The new data based on 2005 figures the last year it is available shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.” (International Herald Tribune, March 29, 2007 by David Cay Johnston “The Gap between Rich and Poor Grows in the United States”)”
The Torah is trying radical means of focusing our attention and re-ordering society so this doesn’t happen. That doesn’t mean that all will be equal in the end. But one year out of every seven the focus on earning more, on growing more will subside and neighbors can and must be concerned with one another.
What else is going on in this Torah portion is a very strong reminder that the land is not ours. Ownership is a funny thing. With ownership not only comes responsibility but a bit of pride and sometimes arrogance. The focus is about the individual and his or her abilities and strengths. But this section of torah is reminding us that ownership is not ours. Rather when it comes to the land of Israel—there is but one owner—God. God is at the core, at the center and whether every seven years or every 50 years we are going to be reminded of that. Our land will not be worked. It must be for God’s care. Every fifty years, our homes and land we bought are not really ours and revert to the original grantee as dictated by God. And every fifty years—the Jubilee year—all slaves go free—again you thought you owned property but the Torah teaches us that human beings can not be property at all. They might work for a while but they are not yours.
Instead these teachings are helping us learn that in everything we do—God must be present. Not just in temple. Not just on a Jewish holy day or holiday—but even and perhaps especially when we do business. More importantly the sabbatical and jubilee years are also reminders that we have an obligation to help and focus our efforts on narrowing the gap between rich and poor. This will no doubt cause us to both give tzedakah as one way to solve the problem but also perhaps use our business skills to uplift the poorest workers and help them move ahead. These passages of Torah teach us that all workers must share in the profits—not just those at the top—because the rule of the sabbatical year equalized us all.
And although the sabbatical and Jubilee years were incumbent upon those who dwelt in the land of Israel –it is instructive even if we live outside—because we now have a glimpse of the way our tradition and our God want us to reconcile with each other.
May we strive for such spirituality and may we strive to live up to this economic ideal.