Behar | The Sabbatical Year

 

Introduction

 

Parashat Behar, in contrast to many of the other Parashiyot of Sefer Vayikra, is devoted to a single main topic, namely the Sabbatical Year. The Torah prescribes various practices associated with the observance of the Sabbatical Year and in this week's lesson, we will explore some of them, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the Year's significance.

 

"God spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai saying: Speak to Bnei Yisrael and say to them 'when you enter the land that I am giving to you, the land shall have a rest period, a sabbath unto the Lord.  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…" (VaYikra 25:1-4). The Torah here indicates the primary observance of the Sabbatical Year: it is a year during which we desist from agrarian pursuits and allow the land to experience rest.  At first glance, the purpose of the precept seems eminently obvious, to allow the land to lie fallow so that intensive agricultural cultivation does not exhaust its life-giving fertility.  Upon closer examination, however, it emerges that in fact there are entirely different considerations at work, and these find expression in some of the year's other unusual practices.

 

 

The Theme of Relinquishment

 

"What grows (of its own accord) while the land is resting may be eaten by you, by your male and female servants, and by the workers and residents who live with you.  All the crops shall also be eaten by the domestic and wild animals that are in your land" (25:6-7).  Thus, in addition to cessation from tilling the land, the Torah here prescribes the relinquishment of ownership or control over the produce that grows on its own, for the landowner is enjoined to allow all who desire to partake of the land's natural yield.  As Rambam (12^th century, Egypt) explains in his Code: 'it is a positive command to forfeit ownership over all the produce that the earth brings forth in the seventh year, as the verse states (in a parallel passage from the Book of Shemot 23:10-11): "you may plant your land for six years and gather in 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 from your fields just as you do; the beast of the field will consume whatever is left over. This applies also to your vineyard and to your olive grove."  Whosoever locks his vineyard or fences in his field during the seventh year abrogates this commandment.  Similarly, one who gathers in all of the produce into his own house (to prevent others from partaking of it) violates this precept of the Torah.  Rather, he must declare it all ownerless so that anyone may lay equal claim to it; he himself may store up small amounts as would one who gathers from abandoned produce.' (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Shemittah and Yovel, Chapter 4:24).

 

 

The Yovel or Jubilee

 

Therefore, not only is the earth to experience a break from the farmer's hoe during the seventh year, but even the fruits and other bounty that his land produces by itself are to be shared equally with all.  He is not to prevent even the beasts from partaking of the earth's natural munificence.  The Torah goes on to detail how the observances of the seventh year are amplified by the celebration of the Yovel or Jubilee.  "You shall count seven cycles of the sabbatical year, seven years seven times, so that the seven cycles of sabbath years equal forty nine years.  You shall sound the shofar blast in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month.  On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the shofar throughout all of your land.  You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants, for each of you shall return to your ancestral inheritance and family.  It is a Yovel, the fiftieth year for you; you are not to plant, nor to harvest the field's produce or the vineyards yield.  For it the Yovel and it shall be holy unto you, you shall consume the produce from the field.  During this Yovel year, each of you shall return to your ancestral land" (VaYikra 25:8-13). 

 

Sharing many of the features of the seventh year, the Jubilee that occurs every fiftieth year is also to be observed by ceasing from cultivating the land.  The earth is to be given rest and to remain idle.  The two observances must be intrinsically related, for the Sabbatical Year is linked to the Yovel by the consecutive counting of seven sabbatical cycles.  In contrast to the Sabbatical Year, however, the Torah commands that the Yovel year is to be inaugurated by the blast of the shofar, with this solemn ceremony to take place on the Day of Atonement.  Agriculturally speaking, the Day of Atonement falls in the autumn, at the end of the farming year, just as the earth's bounty is being gathered in from the fields and the farmer begins to look forward to the rains.  The timing of the shofar blast therefore seems appropriate. 

 

At the same time, though, the Day of Atonement is traditionally dedicated to effecting Teshuva, spiritual soul-searching and self-improvement.  This is suggested by the Torah's linkage of this fast day with expiation, for in Parashat Acharei Mot it is described as "a day of afflicting the soul through fasting…for on this day (God) will atone for you and purify you from all of your iniquities" (VaYikra 16:29-30).  The sounding of the shofar, which is annually as well as typically associated with Rosh HaShanna, also carries similar connotations, for we seek to commence the new year with a revived spirit as we resolve anew to live Godly lives.  There are, however, no other obvious indications in the Torah that the Yovel is a time of self-examination.  It is therefore not immediately apparent why the shofar is to be sounded at all on Yom Kippur of the Yovel, for what special process of Teshuva is to be here announced by its resonant lament?

 

Finally, the Torah enjoins that during the Yovel year, all lands are to revert to their ancestral owners.  Though one may have sold his field or village home to someone else, the sale is not absolutely final, for when the Yovel falls, the land or house must leave the possession of the buyer and return to its ancestral owner.  Therefore, the Torah remarks that the value of a field or village house is to be predicated not only upon its spatial and material qualities, but upon its temporal qualities as well.  Appraisal of value is thus a function also of how many years remain until the Yovel is to occur.

 

To sum up thus far, we have seen how the simple explanation often proffered for the observance of the Sabbatical Year, namely that it is to allow the land to physically rest so as not to exhaust its nutritive utility, is insufficient to explain the other features of its observance.  According to this rationale, why should the free-growing produce of the farmer's field be treated as ownerless?  The improbability of this explanation is reinforced by the fact that when the Yovel falls, two consecutive years of no agricultural work are observed.  The Yovel's infrequency on the one hand, as well as its observance immediately after the seventh sabbatical year on the other hand, argues against its primary purpose being the renewal of the land's sustaining strength.

 

 

The Commentary of the Akedat Yitzhak

 

Perhaps one of the most moving explanations for the practice of the Sabbatical and Yovel years is provided by Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, the 15^th century Spanish scholar, in his classic homiletic commentary called the 'Akedat Yitzhak': "(The purpose of the Sabbatical Year is) to open our ears and to arouse our hearts by erecting for us great and awesome markers.  How easily are our eyes blinded by the blandishments of this world, its deceits and futilities, which cause us to sell our souls into eternal servitude of the earth after the manner of a team of senseless mules!  Did we not accept upon ourselves to serve God out of love? 

 

In order to liberate us from this self-imposed prison of desire that tightly binds us in its powerful embrace to the vanities of the hour, God has illuminated for us a clear means of marking our time in this world – our days, our weeks, and our years – that we cannot overlook except through willful blindness.  The work of six days and the cessation from labor on the seventh is true testimony that the world was purposefully brought into being by a Creator…Acknowledgement of this fact is the necessary starting point for all spiritual development" (Akedat Yitzhak, Chapter 69).

 

Thus, not only are we enjoined to record the passage of time on a weekly basis through the observance of the Shabbat, but on a yearly basis as well through the observance of the Sabbatical Year.  The purpose of both is the same, to impress upon us that God created the world.  The philosophical aspect of the doctrine of Creation is essential, for if the cosmos has existed eternally, independent of God's will, it inescapably follows that it has no ultimate purpose or direction.  By extension, our lives would therefore have no meaning or Higher Purpose, for God's role in human destiny would be correspondingly trivial.  Only if the Universe is the product of an omnipotent and involved Creator does human life have transcendent meaning and ultimate worth.

 

The Akedat Yitzhak, however, translates this abstraction into concrete reality.  We are material beings and the earth is our abode.  How devoutly we cultivate its soil, and how devotedly we dominate its riches.  Our best years are spent in endless pursuit of extracting its resources, of amassing its wealth, of attempting to thwart the unrelenting mortality that patiently awaits us all.  How painstakingly we gather landed property, precious clods of terra firma, on which to erect stalwart houses of unyielding stone to guard our gold.  But, alas, we are in fact but "dwellers in houses of clay…crushed before the moth" (Iyov/Job 4:19).  The seventh year beckons us to look at life from a different perspective.  Its observance is cessation from cultivating the soil, for how easily we can be blinded by that pursuit to imagine that we can maintain our grasp forever.  Its hallmark is relinquishment of ownership, for in reality we cannot hold on to the earth or to its precious produce in perpetuity.

 

 

The Motif of Seven

 

The number seven figures most prominently in the marking of the Sabbatical Year, for in the Torah's frame of reference, seven represents the basic cycle of time.  But this cycle is not only a convenient means of keeping time.  The six days of Creation are expressed in ordinal terms (First day, Second day, etc.) for they derive their meaning from the Shabbat, the seventh day.  The process of Creation as it unfolded during those six days, inanimate to living and simple to complex, expresses the dynamic of purposeful movement towards an encounter with God.  It culminates in the Shabbat, the "Crown of Creation."  A cycle of time predicated upon the number seven is therefore one that speaks not of  amorphous minutes and hours, days and years indistinguishable in their monotony, but rather of precious and unique moments awaiting sanctification.  

 

"You shall count seven cycles of the sabbatical year, seven years seven times, so that the seven cycles of sabbath years equal forty nine years.  You shall sound the shofar blast in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month.  On the Day of Atonement, you shall sound the shofar throughout all of your land.  You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants, for each of you shall return to your ancestral inheritance and family."  By marking our years according to the seven-year cycle, we remain always cognizant of life's priorities, for the period of a Yovel is a lifetime.  A person may merit to experience two Jubilees, at most three, but the average person will see but one.  The typical human life span, though steadily increasing in the developed world, still allows for no more than about fifty productive years. 

 

 

The Lifetime of the Jubilee

 

The interval of the Yovel therefore represents the period of time during which a person can make their mark in the world.  But what should be a person's direction and what should be their goal?  That is intimated by the blast of the shofar on the Day of Atonement.  The practicing Jew knows of a Teshuva that colors each and every day, as well as of a Teshuva that ushers in every New Year, but here the Torah speaks of the Teshuva of a lifetime.  The freedom that the Yovel announces is not only the physical freedom of the slave and the liberation of the land from its most recent owner, but most importantly the emancipation of the human spirit from the iron grip of acquisitiveness.  To internalize the message of the Yovel, to understand the haunting summons of its shofar blast, is to relax our grasp on the illusion of physical permanence that land purchase and ownership affords, "for you are but strangers and temporary residents with Me" (25:23).  Our life spans, even when considered only in relation to the brief epoch that constitutes recorded human history, are short. Land in the human psyche expresses permanence, and our feeble attempts to hold on to it are futile grasping for immortality in disguise.  The land and wealth that we amass will not afford us the eternity that we crave, for its Source is to be found elsewhere.

 

To again quote the Akedat Yitzhak: "the purpose of the gift of the land of Israel is not in order that we might devote our labors to it for the sake of extracting its riches and wealth (thus becoming its servants in the process).  This is the intention of all other nations in their respective lands… The purpose is rather that we should search for spiritual perfection in accordance with the will of the Creator, that the land should provide the necessary sustenance for this endeavor to be pursued.  In order to reinforce this essential truth, the Torah commands that the earth be worked for six years and relinquished during the seventh.  This is to clearly indicate that not through the exercise of material acquisition is the purpose of life realized but rather through spiritual growth and perfection."  Let us not misunderstand the words of the Akedat Yitzhak to imply a denigration of our corporeal existence, as if it is to be considered as sullied or unworthy of our attention.  Rather, he indicates to us that the goal of the Jew is to give meaning to matter, to sanctify the physical by infusing it with Godliness.  This is only possible once we are able to adopt the perspective suggested by A. J. Heschel: "In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude – to have them and to know how to do without them."

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

Notes:  see the passage in Shemot 21:1-6 that speaks of the Hebrew slave.  If after his requisite six years of labor he desires to stay on, he is to be brought before the court where his ear is pierced against the door.  Then he serves his master "forever" (LeOlam).  Traditional sources explain, however, that "forever" means until the Yovel, for afterwards he must go free.  This exegesis has often been accused of being divorced from the text, for the verse clearly states "forever."  According to the above analysis, though, the intent of this "forever" is to imply "for a lifetime," and indeed the interval of the Yovel from the perspective of the individual human being is in fact just that.  See also the commentary of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra there.

 

Consider also the perfect parallel between the seven weeks separating Pesach from Shavuot, which falls on the "fiftieth day," and the seven sabbatical cycles that culminate in the Yovel.  In both cases there is an intimation of progress, of direction, and of dynamic movement from physical liberation to spiritual redemption.  Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, the awareness that bereft of spiritual purpose we are never truly free at all.  Yovel commemorates the potential of living our most productive years unfettered by a desire for material permanence that distracts us from our true spiritual purpose.