The “Rest Year”

October 18, 2007 - 8:30 AM by Stephanie

I sorta figure that when a specific topic or subject comes up randomly more than once within a 24-hour period it’s time to address it.

Like yesterday. While interviewing someone for an article, she mentioned that Israel’s 60th anniversary falls during a Shmita calendar year. And later, reading blog roundups, I noticed A Mother in Israel has blogged about the same thing. Same day, same topic and I CERTAINLY need some enlightenment on the subject so won’t you come along for the ride?

What’s Shmita? It’s a sort of farmers’ sabbatical year dictated by the Hebrew bible. “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…

That means no planting crops each 7th year; the Shmita started last month with the advent of the Jewish New Year. The laws are different, by the way, for Jewish farmers living in or outside of Israel.

My first thought was: How do they get around it here? Because there has to be a safety valve of some sort otherwise what would the farming industry do for a year?

And there it was, in good ‘ol Wikipedia:

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,….this approach has not been universally accepted in the Orthodox community and has met with opposition.

You might want to look it up. Interesting topic, lots of debate. Amen. Pass the tomatoes.

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