#shmita

(Shmita related mitzvot are my favorite mitzvot if you couldn’t tell.)

From our point of view the equilibrium of the world is a combination of circumstances so ordered that our personality remains intact and seems to belong to us. All the circumstances of the past that have wounded our personality appear to us to be disturbances of balance which should infallibly be made up for one day or another by phenomena having a contrary effect. We live on the expectation of these compensations. The near approach of death is horrible chiefly because it forces the knowledge upon us that these compensations will never come.

To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that within the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so."

In light of new research on carbon sequestration, allowing soil to go fallow poses an age-old, no-maintenance way to regenerate soil at any scale. Industrial agriculture and desertification have together depleted global grasslands and prairies to the extent that, according to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center; the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of the carbon in the soil as it has entered the air as atmospheric CO2.

Young Jewish girl Ettie capping wine bottles at the Mount Carmel Winery in Rishon Lezion, Israel; 1970. x

For an Israeli wine to be certified as kosher, several requirements must be met. In the fields, the grapes of new vines can only be used for making wine after the fourth year of planting. The fields must also be left fallow every seventh year, which is known as the shmita. It is also required that vegetables or other fruits not be grown between the vines.

The S.S Negba docks with new Jewish Olim in Haifa, Israel; 1950. x

Aliyah literally translates as ‘Going up’ from Hebrew and refers to moving from the diaspora to the land of Israel due to the fact that there are Jewish scholars who consider living in Israel to be living a holier life.  Ramban argues that it is a Mitzvah just to make Aliyah due to the fact that there are so many other Mitzvot which are tied to the land of Israel; such as observing the shmita.  In the Sifre, there is a story that Ramban quotes saying that Rabbi Yehudah b. Beteira, Rabbi Mattiah b. Cheresh, Rabbi Chananiah b. Achi, Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, and Rabbi Natan were leaving Eretz Yisrael together.  At one point while they were leaving, they remembered Eretz Yisrael and had started crying and ripping their clothes as if they were in mourning.  They had said in this story that “living in Eretz Yisrael is comparable to the observance of all other mitzvot combine”.  

Shmita, the 7th year of release or rest. Firstly, let me reiterate that these are not applicable today, it’s just very interesting to know how the law applied to nature and farming in times past during Israel’s reign as well as how it will apply in times to come. After 49 years, 7 cycles of 7 years, the 50th year is then known as the Jubilee year. Leviticus 25:8-12And thou shalt number seven…