Note: This diary was authored by our brand new Kossack as of May 5th, dssayani, a chazan (cantor) in New York City. Unfortunately, he sent it to my mailbox rather than publishing it directly. He's promised to do another D'var Torah in two weeks when he'll be able to publish it directly. We welcome Cantor dssayani to Daily Kos and to Elders of Zion and look forward to his active participation in our website. Shabbat Shalom
Navy Vet Terp
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The Torah is no stranger to social and economic legislation that is inherently radical and countercultural, and this is most evident in Parshat Behar, where the Torah discusses the commandments pertinent to the sabbatical year (shenat haShemitta) and the Jubilee year (shenat haYovel):
“When you enter the land ... the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord... But you may eat whatever the land during its sabbath will produce - you, your male and female slaves, the hired and bound laborers who live with you.”
(Leviticus 25:2-6)
This presents a vision for society that links economic and personal liberation to environmental justice, one that is dramatically at odds with the infatuation with private property and individual ownership seen in contemporary American society. Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, a noted Religious Zionist thinker, describes this social aspect of shemitta as follows:
“What stands out first is the social aspect. The Sabbath of the land is a renunciation of private ownership of all the fruits of this year... If in the course of the year class conflicts have arisen, they become null and void... The master has no more rights than the slave... Whoever follows the Torah, observing this commandment ... would bring about an entire social revolution, quietly and without violent means, wiping out with a stroke of the hand all social conflicts that human society has struggled with since time immemorial... Here we have a commandment that concerns relations between our fellow human beings. How remarkable is the might of the Torah, skillfully providing a solution by means of these commandments of shemitta and jubilee year to the problem of social inequality, regulating relations between rich and poor - something which economic experts have long been trying to do without success.”
(“Be Tzet haShanah,” republished in the book Be-Ma'agalei ha-Shevi'it, ed. R. Yigal Ariel, Midreshet ha-Golan 1994, translation, Dr. Amnon Shapira).
The great test of faith involved in observing the shemitta year is the realization that even if for only one year, private ownership is done away with as a testimony to the fact that God is the only rightful owner of the land (Leviticus 25:23- “for the land is Mine”), and in the seventh year, the land is returned to its rightful owner, as the earth (and G-d Himself) “rest” in this special Sabbath period (the shemitta year could indeed be characterized as a “sanctuary in time,” an “island of stillness where humanity can enter a harbor and reclaim its dignity,” to borrow the phraseology of Abraham Joshua Heschel).
In an age of ever-increasing materialism and infatuation over claims of individual ownership, the Torah’s teachings on shemitta are a refreshing antidote to the ill effects of unbridled capitalism (Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, the decades-long dean of American Centrist Orthodoxy, even says “we believe in the socialism of shemitta” amid his discussion of Judaism entailing “a dialectic of delicately balanced ideas.” (See Heshie Billet, “Rav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik zt”l: Role Model Par Excellence,” in Mentor of Generations: Reflections on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. Zev Eleff, Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2008).
In an age in which self-designated, so-called people of faith preach from a soapbox of Ayn Rand hedonistic capitalism (the current Speaker of the House sadly comes to mind), Prosperity Gospel theology (an odd convergence of Pentecostalism and Calvinism, in which the number of Bentleys a person owns is indicative of God’s Spirit “moving” in their lives, which has unfortunately been taken up by one darling Orthodox rabbi of the Christian Right, Daniel Lapin), and utter greed, it becomes obvious that the current religious climate unfortunately does not grasp that the very text they claim to uphold supports a vision for social justice and transformation fundamentally at odds with their own socioeconomic agenda.
Astoundingly, the same demagogues will argue that Leviticus 19’s prohibition on male-on-male anal sex somehow outlines a platform for denying homosexuals equal and fair treatment as God’s children, while ignoring the social ethos commanded and engendered just six chapters later in the same biblical book.
John Gladwin, of the Church of England’s Board for Social Responsibility, writes of the shemitta commandment:
“God saw a need for a redistributive principle whose aim was to restore justice and peace. The operations of the free market in land sales and its impact on people are not trusted in Scripture”
(“Centralist Economics,” ed. Robert Clouse, Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1984). Gladwin’s words are deeply consonant with Judaism’s understanding of the role property and wealth ought to play in the unfolding of the social order in light of the sabbatical year and jubilee year commandments.
May the eyes of our leaders and those in authority be opened to these fundamental truths, and may their eyes be opened to the glory and splendor of the God who commands us to be good stewards of the earth’s finite resources in the pursuit of justice, peace, and healing.