Shmita Sourcebook (Complete)

reimagine society renew Jewish life release the land forgive debt rethink farming

The Hazon

‫ שמיטה‬SHMITA SOURCEBOOK

By Yigal Deutscher, Anna Hanau, and Nigel Savage September 2014/Elul 5774

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

The Hazon

‫ שמיטה‬SHMITA SOURCEBOOK

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

Hazon Shmita Sourcebook May 2014 / Sivan 5774 Yigal Deutscher, Anna Hanau and Nigel Savage Second edition, September 2014/Elul 5774 Hazon Shmita Sourcebook Copyright © 2013 by Hazon, Inc. This sourcebook is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ English translations of biblical sources are from THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES: THE SCHOCKEN BIBLE: VOLUME I by Dr. Everett Fox, copyright © 1983, 1986, 1990, 1995 by Schocken Books. Used by permission of Schocken Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. (More info: knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/schocken.) In a few instances we have adapted them. Quotations from Maimonides are from MISHNEH TORAH translation by Eliyahu Touger, copyright © 2005 by Moznaim Publishing. All rights reserved. (More info: moznaim.com.) Any third party use of these materials, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC and Moznaim Publishing for permission.

For further information and contact details: hazon.org/shmitaproject shmitaproject@hazon.org 7seeds.org info@7seeds.org

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

Hazon means vision.

We work to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

We effect change in the world in three ways: Transformative Experiences: Immersive programs that directly touch people's lives in powerful ways.

Thought-Leadership: Writing, speaking, teaching, curriculum-development, and advocacy.

Capacity-Building: Supporting great people and projects in North America and Israel.

Our fast-growing food work – the largest faith-based Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) network in the country, plus our award-winning blog, The Jew & The Carrot (jcarrot.org), Food Conferences, Food Guide, our Jewish Food Education and Shmita Networks, or curricula materials – all create opportunities to reflect on what and how we eat.

Learning leads to doing. If these texts and questions help you to learn more deeply, to eat more consciously, and to act more ethically, then renewing our relationship with Shmita will indeed lead to nourishment in the widest sense – for our families, our communities, and the physical world upon which all life depends.

“The Torah is a commentary on the world, and the world is a commentary on the Torah.”

Table of Contents Preface................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction: The Wider Context.............................................................................................. xiii Section 1: Biblical Foundations: Shmita in the Torah.................................................................... 3 Section 2: Recalling Ancient Memory: Shmita in Early Israel & Temple Periods............................ 19 Section 3: Codifying the Sabbatical: An Overview of Rabbinic Laws & Clarifications.................... 31 Part 1: Sabbatical Food Systems.................................................................................................................... 32 Part 2: Sabbatical Economic Systems........................................................................................................... 42

Section 4: Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita: From Exile to Return....................................... 51 Section 5: Back to the Land: Shmita in Israel, From Early Pioneers to Modern Times................... 63 Section 6: Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition: Exploring Shmita Today..................................... 73 Section 7: An Incentive for Shmita Today?................................................................................. 85 Part 1: An Agricultural Perspective............................................................................................................... 86 Part 2: An Economic Perspective.................................................................................................................106

Appendices............................................................................................................................ 121 Appendix A: Shmita Foods: Perennial & Wild Harvests........................................................................122 Appendix B: Shmita Economics: G’machs & Interest Free Loans......................................................126 Appendix C: Shmita For Funders.................................................................................................................130 Appendix D: Applied Shmita: For Organizations...................................................................................132 Appendix E: Shmita & Yovel Today: A Halachic Perspective ..............................................................136

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Preface CYCLES OF TIME are central to Jewish life, and they are among the most significant of our contributions to the world around us. The modern weekend of western tradition is simply the extension of the Sabbath from one day to two; without the Sabbath there would be no weekend. And without the Torah, and the Shabbat of Jewish tradition, there would be no Sabbath. That indeed is why the word for “Saturday” in Italian is sabato – because the Sabbath, introduced into Italy in Roman days by the Jews, began on the Jewish Sabbath and not on the Christian Sunday that subsequently evolved from it. In practice, today, Shabbat remains central to Jewish life, though Jewish people observe Shabbat differently from each other – it’s different in a reform synagogue than an orthodox one, and it’s observed differently by a hiloni (secular) Israeli than by someone who’s observant. But it’s literally impossible to imagine Jewish life without Shabbat.

And just as Shabbat punctuates the week, so too the chagim – the holidays – punctuate the year. Tu b’Shvat and Purim and Pesach herald the spring. Shavuot marks early summer.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur provoke self-reflection as a new Jewish year begins. Sukkot celebrates the harvest and the end of summer. Chanukah offers light in the darkness and the knowledge that a new natural cycle will shortly begin.

In recent years there’s been a flowering of interest and awareness in the rhythms of the calendar.

The every-28-years blessing of the sun was a big deal when it happened in 2009; I hope I’ll be around to celebrate the next one in 2037. This year we celebrated Chanukah and Thanksgiving together – the last time that that will occur for about 75,000 years. More prosaically: more people probably count the omer, today, than did so a dozen years ago. New books have come out looking at the entire period from Rosh Chodesh Elul through to Simchat Torah as a single period of time, focused on teshuvah. More people each cycle seem to be learning daf yomi – a seven-and-a-half year cycle of Jewish life that is an early twentieth-century innovation, but one which shows signs of lasting for a long time to come.

The one long cycle of Jewish life that remains relatively unexplored is the cycle of Shmita.

The sabbatical year is no less central in the Torah than is Shabbat itself. Six days you should work, and on the seventh you should rest; six years you should work the land, and engage in commerce; in the seventh year (somehow) the land should rest, you should rest, and debts should be annulled. After 49 days, seven cycles of seven, the 50th day is Shavuot. And after 49 years, seven cycles of seven, the 50th is Yovel – the Jubilee year.

In a formal halachic sense – in terms of Jewish law – most of the halachot of Shmita only apply in Israel. In practical terms, therefore, Shmita becomes headline news once every seven years when, invariably, there are arguments about how it should be observed in practice in the modern land and state of Israel. There is a good deal of work in Hebrew about Shmita, what it means, how it can and should be observed, and so on.

Even so, inside Israel Shmita is mostly the intellectual property of the orthodox and ultraorthodox. Until very recently, few non-orthodox Israeli Jews have engaged much with Shmita,

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either as an idea or as a potential range of practices. Outside Israel, Shmita remains obscure.

In the last two Shmita Years – in 2000-2001, and in 2007-2008 – I’m aware of a number of synagogues, mostly orthodox, which held study sessions on Shmita. Beyond a few one-off learning sessions: not much.

It was in response to this, in December 2007, following a keynote given by Nati Passow of Jewish Farm School at Hazon’s second Food Conference at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, that I said that we would launch a Shmita Project. Its goal would be – and remains – simply to put Shmita back on the agenda of the Jewish people; and in due course, through us, to start to seed it as an idea in wider public awareness, beyond the bounds of Jewish life.

There are, I think, two broad – and somewhat distinct, albeit overlapping – ways for us to engage with Shmita. One is, in a sense, instrumental; the second has a deeper kind of intellectual integrity, but may also be vaguer.

The instrumental use is simply about putting Shmita literally back on the calendar. Even in non-halachic Jewish communities, Shabbat is still different from other days of the week. Jews go to a Seder, or eat matzah on Pesach, even if they don’t keep all of the halachot of Pesach.

So Shmita ought, in the first instance, to come back into active Jewish life as a distinct timeframe – regardless of the content with which we actually mark it. I mean by this, things like: • Using the time from now until the next Shmita Year (which starts at Rosh Hashanah 5775, that is, on September 24th, 2014) as a distinct time-period in relation to Shmita: learning about it, getting people excited about it, thinking about how the Shmita Year could be different; and doing this in advance of the year itself. This involves publicly framing the Shmita Year as a year distinct in the life of a particular Jewish institution.

How could or should we be different, during this year, than during the other six years of the cycle?

• Then using the Shmita Year itself not merely to be different, in some way, than in the previous years; but also – for the first time in modern Jewish history; perhaps for the first time since Second Temple times – using the Shmita Year itself partly to start a public conversation about the entire next seven-year Shmita Cycle; • And then entering into a full seven-year cycle, from September 13th, 2015 to September 25th, 2022, with Shmita firmly on the calendar of Jewish life – with a sense of seven-year goals for institutions, being worked on through the full seven-year period, and with the seventh year itself being both a celebration, a culmination, and a period of rest and reflection, following the preceding six years.

The second way for us to engage Shmita is indeed to engage intellectually (and indeed emotionally, creatively and spiritually) with the texts themselves: the primary, secondary and tertiary texts that introduce, explicate, and comment on the various ideas encompassed by the idea of “Shmita.”

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Most of the rest of this sourcebook is devoted to these texts. I’ve been learning them steadily for the last five and a half years. The longer I have learned them the more fascinated I have become by Shmita. The primary texts are models not only of brevity but also of unclarity and contradiction. What exactly were you meant to eat in the Shmita Year? How do the different aspects of Shmita stand in relation to each other? If the Jewish people bequeathed to human history only these primary texts, what theory of Jewish tradition – of our values and aspirations – might we derive from them? The prozbol and the heter mechira: are these in some sense regretful compromises, which dilute the pureness of the original biblical texts?

Or are they vital innovations in Jewish life which should be celebrated because they are grounded in the reality of human behavior and the necessity to place central human needs (in the economies both of land and of money) above abstract aspiration?

This collection is a first draft. Shmita is the public property of the Jewish people – and a gift from us to the whole world. So we hope that you will read them – learn them – and share them. Most of all we hope that you’ll get back to us with comments, emendations, suggestions and questions. We fully intend to publish a revised and expanded edition in a few months time.

I want to express my own thanks to many people who have helped shape my thinking on Shmita: Yeshiva Chovevei Torah and Lincoln Square Synagogue did a superb day-long yom iyyun on Shmita, in December 2007, which was absolutely outstanding, which I still remember clearly, and which helped give me a sense of the range and complexity of rabbinic sources on Shmita. Adam Berman, Zelig Golden, Nati Passow, Dr Shamu Sadeh and Nili Simhai have been the key influences on me amongst my organizational friends and peers in thinking about Jewish education and relationship to land. Shuli Passow shared with me a superb essay she wrote on Hakhel. Jakir Manela put together an absolutely phenomenal beit midrash retreat on Shmita at Pearlstone Center in early 2012. It had a huge impact on those present, and provided a model of what’s possible going forwards.

Dr Jeremy Benstein has been a significant influence in helping me think freshly about relationships between Jewish tradition and ecology. In May 2012 he and I taught a beit midrash on Shmita at our Siach retreat, in Israel, which was significant for me and I think influential for many of the people who were there. I’m grateful to Rabbi Ari Hart (and Kevah) for a superb multi-week learning series on Shmita that he has been teaching – and which we are continuing – for Hazon’s staff and some of our friends and colleagues in New York.

I’m grateful to all of Hazon’s staff members and board members for indulging my wild enthusiasm for Shmita, even when they didn’t necessarily share it or fully understand it.

Huge thanks to Nati Passow for helping to produce this sourcebook and for teaching about Shmita in inspiring ways. And special thanks to Anna Hanau, has played a unique role at Hazon – helping to marshal unwieldy forces (like Yigal and me) in ways practical and kind, and thus helping good ideas to get out into the world.

I want to thank four funders who are supporting Hazon’s work on Shmita: UJA-Federation of New York; San Francisco Jewish Community Federation; Lisa & Douglas Goldman Fund; and the Opaline Fund. It has been exciting and rewarding to see these funders begin to share our sense of excitement and possibility in relation to Shmita, and we hope that others will follow in their paths. A special thanks is due to the Peoplehood Commission of UJA-Federation of New York, together with our lead partners in developing Siach: B’Maglei Tzedek and the

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Heschel Center in Israel, and the Jewish Social Action Forum in London. Siach has become an important platform both to think about Shmita and to start to disseminate ideas in lots of different ways. Dyonna Ginsburg –key instigator of Siach - continues to inspire and motivate people all over the Jewish world, and she is a key thought-partner to me in this work.

Finally, a few words about Yigal Deutscher. Yigal is, variously, an employee, a colleague, a friend, a teacher, and someone I look up to enormously. We first met in 2003, when he was still in undergrad. He became an intern with us in preparation for Hazon’s second annual NY bike ride.

After the ride, I suggested he go and see Adam Berman, and in due course he become the first Adamahnik. I’ve seen him grow and thrive in subsequent years. He was the founding director of the Shorashim/Eco-Israel organic farming apprenticeship, at the Chava v’Adam ecological center in Israel, and, more recently, he founded the 7Seeds Project. I love Yigal’s thoughtfulness, his passion, and his determination in very good ways to try to slow certain things down – to connect notions of permaculture to Jewish tradition, and to apply permaculture ideas metaphorically as well as literally. He has played a key role in leading Hazon’s work not only on the creation of this sourcebook but also, much more widely, on our work on Shmita overall. If you’re interested in developing the conversation on Shmita in your community, I hope you’ll think about reaching out to Yigal directly.

Organizationally, the Shmita ranks are growing. The Jewish Farm School and 7Seeds have been founding partners with Hazon in the Shmita Project. The Green Hevra, of which Hazon is a member, is working steadily to put the awareness of Shmita on the Jewish communal agenda. And precisely because Shmita is the shared intellectual property of the Jewish people, we fully expect and intend that many, many people and institutions will start to develop work around Shmita, and we’re happy and excited variously to partner with them, learn from them, or cheer them on from the sidelines. Already in this category I would add Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, at BJEN, and Rabbi Or Rose at Hebrew College, plus Einat Kramer at Teva Ivri in Israel. All three – together with Jeremy Benstein and the Heschel Center – are doing their own work on Shmita. We’re excited to partner with BJEN, Hebrew College and Heschel in their new Sova Project blog. Rabbis Jay Rosenstein, Jeremy Gerber and Eytan Hammerman, amongst others, have given me a platform and a warm reception to talk about Shmita in their communities. We're grateful to Charlene Seidle, executive vice-president of the Leichtag Foundation, for her essay on Shmita for Funders, and to Daniel Taub, Israel's ambassador to the UK, for his seminal essay on Shmita, written in 2000.

Finally: we’ve been working on these texts for a long while. But we’re finishing this first draft during the counting of the omer. Jewish tradition is wise, and though I can’t prove this, I think it makes me a better person. The annual rhythm of counting the omer has enriched my life significantly. In sharing these texts with you, Yigal and Anna and I, and everyone at Hazon, hopes that they will enrich your life also; and in due course play some role in creating a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

Nigel Savage Berkeley, CA 27th day of the omer 5773 22nd April 2013

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Introduction

The Wider Context: Introducing the Shmita Project THE HAZON SHMITA SOURCEBOOK offers an in-depth overview of Shmita, the Sabbatical practice introduced in the Torah. Similar to Shabbat, Shmita is something that exists within a cycle of seven, although this particular cycle is in years, not days. The intention was that in every seventh year, the people of Israel, following the same collective rhythm, would practice a cultural ‘release’ (the English meaning of the Hebrew word Shmita). This particular release was particularly rooted in agricultural and economic systems: during this period of time, debts would be forgiven, agricultural lands would lie fallow, private land holdings would become open to the commons, and staples such as food storage and perennial harvests would be freely redistributed and accessible to all. There’s a lot more to it, as you’ll see throughout this sourcebook.

Yet, many of us, even if we are Jewishly knowledgeable, know less about Shmita than we do about other Jewish traditions.

Shmita does not in practice define Jewishness like other popular rituals or time-based traditions, such as Shabbat, Yom Kippur, or Passover. This is a learning journey for many of us;

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not just individually, but collectively. Apart from provisions in relation to money, Shmita traditionally applied in the land of Israel alone. So for over 2,000 years, when the Jewish people were separated from Ha’aretz – “The land”– Jewish faith and culture developed separately from the necessity, and thus awareness, of Shmita.

However, there are a few things now that are changing our relationship to, and perception of, Shmita: 1. Since the resumption of Jewish agricultural life in Israel, which has developed enormously since the early twentieth century, Shmita is no longer an abstract ideal or a romantic notion. It is a very real part of the religious, agricultural, and economic reality in Israel today, and one that is simultaneously both very exciting and very challenging. Each time the Shmita Year arrives on the Israeli calendar, the debate about what to do with this tradition becomes increasingly harder to ignore.

2. The Jewish world is now more linked than ever – and more diverse; and there is both a need, and an incredible opportunity, for new areas of shared conversation across boundaries and difference. Shmita provides a positive, Jewishly rich, socially engaged vision that connects personal identity, activist energies, Jewish identity, community, and the values of Jewish peoplehood. In particular, Shmita engages both a sense of shared tradition (it is, literally, a shared intellectual inheritance of the Jewish people) and a sense of current and future responsibility: Shmita challenges all who learn about it to think about what our obligations are to land and people in general, and to land and people within the Jewish world and in Israel, in particular.

3. The Jewish social justice and environmental movement has grown and matured over the last twenty years, and now offers a powerful voice in how Jewish community comes together socially, religiously, and educationally, both in the context of Jewish tradition and the wider non-Jewish world. As this movement deepens, there is a new context in which to turn to the Torah for guidance, to learn timeless values and to seek to apply them to the real issues we face today.

4. The environmental degradation and economic instability we are globally experiencing make it important to reevaluate our cultural practices and norms, to really strive for sustainability and resiliency for the sake of future generations. The values inherent in the Shmita tradition challenge a contemporary world focused on continual growth, development, and individual gains. Perhaps there is a message embedded within Shmita that we can use right now to strengthen the movement for creating a healthier, more holistic and sustainable culture.

So the time has come to enter into this conversation: What is this Shmita tradition? What might it mean for us today? In Israel and beyond? And not just for farmers, but for businesses, for families, for communities, for each of us individually?

Hazon, in partnership with 7Seeds and Jewish Farm School, has created the Shmita Project to support this conversation. We believe that Shmita holds some of the greatest gifts for us, as a way to reconnect to our own ancient traditions and as a way to set healthy patterns for those generations who come after us.

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Specifically, the aims of the Shmita Project are to: • Create an entryway into exploring the primary sources, rich commentary, and history surrounding this integrative and holistic cultural tradition.

• Establish the understanding that Shmita exists within a cycle. It is not an isolated calendar year but a cycle that can be viewed as a vision for holistic cultural design, with guiding values that can enrich society as a whole, in all years.

• Translate Shmita into a modern context, by providing resources and tools to use in your own community leading up to and during the Shmita Year.

• Connect a worldwide network of individuals and organizations who are interested in exploring the possibility of infusing all aspects of the Jewish community with the values and ideals found in the Shmita Year.

It is an honor to engage in this work and it is something we are very excited about. One of our first projects has been this sourcebook. Our intention for the sourcebook is to offer an educational background so that many people can participate in this conversation together.

This is just a beginning. There is much more to explore. However, we hope this will serve in establishing a shared, common ground. From this place, we can continue the work, expanding upon our own curiosities and understanding of Shmita, and creatively apply the values of this tradition to our own lives in all the diverse ways that are possible. We hope you enjoy the sourcebook, and it finds good use in your hands, and in your community.

Shmita Sourcebook: A Look Inside Before we begin to imagine contemporary Sabbatical applications, this is an opportunity to lay the foundation: to become familiar with what our spiritual, historic and cultural tradition has to say about Shmita. There are vibrant roots deep in the soil of our tradition that are ready to give forth sweet fruits if we can nurture them and tend them with respect, curiosity, and creativity.

So here’s what’s inside this sourcebook: We begin with Biblical sources. What does the Torah say about Shmita? What is the language that is used in laying the foundation for this paradigm? We then move forward in history and include Roman as well as Jewish texts.

Between the time of first entering Israel and our forced departure in Roman times, there is not that much in our written tradition that directly speaks of Shmita, which, of course, leads to many questions regarding what it actually looked like in antiquity. But we provide a few key historical points of reference.

Then we move on to Rabbinic codifications. In the areas where Shmita is mentioned in the Bible, there are some clear points offered but much is left open to the imagination. Through Rabbinic conversations recorded in the Mishna and Talmud, much more is clarified. Seder Zeraim, the section pertaining to agricultural laws of Israel and where all Shmita laws are found, was actually not included in the more standard, widely-studied Talmud Bavli, as this was written outside of Israel, where such laws were not practiced. It is the Talmud Yerushalmi, written in the land of Israel, that records such Rabbinic conversations.

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When, in the Middle Ages, the Rambam created the Mishna Torah, a complication of laws from the Mishna and Talmud, he included the section on Zeraim. It is his teachings and codifications that we are using in the sections that deal with Rabbinic clarifications of Shmita practices.

As we see from the Rabbinic writings from Diaspora Jewish communities, the spark of Shmita was kept alive within Rabbinic teaching. Rabbis wrote about Shmita as a vision or utopian ideal, romantically celebrating the beauty that Shmita inspires. We share some of these voices, as well.

Next, closer to our present era, we present the very real dilemma that arose as more and more Jews were returning to Israel, culminating with the First Aliyah in the 1880’s, the subsequent pioneers, and then the creation of the state in 1948. Significant portions of the Jewish people were back in Israel and the provisions of Shmita became as real as those of Shabbat or any other Jewish practice. This created some big hurdles and questions for those early communities in Israel, trying on the one hand, to keep true to the ancient law of the land, and, on the other hand, to meet the conditions necessary for comforts they had grown accustomed to in modern European agricultural and economic systems.

Finally, we close with the question of what we might do with Shmita today. With the emerging interest and excitement around Shmita, we hope the next Shmita Year will be the first in a long span of Jewish history in which large numbers of Jewish people, communities, and organizations reconnect to this powerful tradition, and use it as an inspirational guide to live more ethically and sustainably, in the land of Israel and outside of it. We also hope that following the conclusion of this Shmita Year, the wider Jewish community will consciously begin preparing for Shmita from Year 1 of the seven-year cycle. So we return to powerful questions.

What do the values of Shmita mean for us now, in a society so vastly different than the early agrarian societies of our early Israelite ancestors? How can we design for Shmita to ensure the possibility of bringing this vision to life in our own day? We present a few voices to open this rich conversation, which we hope will continue in many diverse ways over the years ahead.

Shmita, as a cultural platform, exists within, and stands upon, the broader context of the Torah, as well as Jewish history, laws, tradition and thought. There are particular laws specific to the Shmita Year, and there may be very clear ways to prepare for this time. However, as students of Shmita, we invite you to explore the many ways Shmita is an extension of the rest of the Torah, both narrowly and broadly defined. As you study the specific agricultural laws of Shmita, consider: What is the larger, broader context of Jewish agricultural laws and how might this have played a part in supporting a Sabbatical release? As you study the economics of Shmita, consider: What is the larger, broader context of Jewish economic values and how might this have laid the initial framework for a Sabbatical release? What do these ideas say about Jewish tradition as a whole, beyond Shmita itself? In this way, Shmita can be seen as a culmination of all Torah values in holistic practice, and it can also be seen as a portal through which to view the entire Torah.

The questions that were raised go to the heart of contemporary conversations about shmita, and in particular to the various compromises we might make between the ideal and the real.

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The Art of Questioning This booklet is organized with a series of sources, each followed by a set of questions. Here are some suggestions for using these texts: 1. First, take time to understand the text. The questions under each source are designed to help you understand the main ideas first. The next step is to bring them to life, and we’ve included questions that we hope will be seeds for rich conversation. These are texts to prompt curiosity, debate and fresh ideas.

2. Try to make this your own. If the questions we have posed do not speak to you or stir deep curiosity, then pass on them. But please don’t pass on the source. Read it again with your own eyes and allow your own questions to emerge. Make this your own process.

And please feel free to be in touch and let us know what your own questions were. We’d love to hear them.

Cultivating a Learning Community When we learn, we acquire both facts and frameworks: new things that we didn’t know before, and new ways to understand the world by interpreting things we already knew. With both, your world gets bigger.

But there is also the less tangible, but very real, simple joy of learning itself. The setting. The people. The evening spent in discussion and the ah ha! moments of discovery. It is one thing to read a book—but it’s another thing to learn with others, to use conversation and questions to get from one place to another. We build relationships, not only with what we learn, but also with the person we are learning with. It’s the difference between eating alone and sharing a meal with others.

Hazon works to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, as a step towards creating a healthier and more sustainable world for all. The materials in this book are an important step towards this goal, not just in terms of the subject matter, but also in relationship to the process of learning together, which we feel is an essential component of a strong and healthy community.

You can use the sections in this book to host a multi-week group study circle (which we call a Beit Midrash), a one-day seminar, an evening lecture, or an informal group conversation around a dinner table or anywhere you’d like (for more ideas about how to host a Shmitarelated event in your community, visit Hazon.org/shmitaproject). However the study group comes together, a strong part of Jewish learning, in line with the intention of cultivating a learning community, is the practice of Chavruta and this is something we like to recommend as a creative method of exploring these Torah based texts.

Chavruta means “fellowship,” and refers to a traditional form of Torah or Talmud study done in pairs. Two people sit together and read a text out loud, discussing words, sentences and paragraphs as they go. Chavruta is an intense and provocative way to learn a text because you can engage deeply with a small section of what is presented, and your partner’s questions

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may be substantially different from your own. The combined exploration of the text can make for a very rich discussion. The two partners do not have to have the same amount of knowledge, although they should be interested in each other’s questions, and in encouraging the other to ask their questions.

Sharing the Vision: Creative Commons Licensing At its core, Shmita presents a paradigm that is rooted in fair share, equal access, resource distribution, a gift economy, and the collective commons. Therefore, the original material in this sourcebook is licensed within the framework of the Creative Commons, which is a licensing mechanism that applies copyright law to allow users to easily and legally share this content. For more about Creative Commons, visit creativecommons.org. Please note the translations of the biblical sources and the Rambam sources have a traditional copyright.

The legal code for the specific copyright we have chosen is “Attribution-NoncommercialShareAlike”, which can be viewd at: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Under the terms of this license, you are free to copy, share, and distribute this sourcebook as it is, and you are free to adapt the original content of this sourcebook to meet your own specific needs.

This comes along with three conditions: 1. Attribution: If you do copy, share, or adapt this, please credit Shmita Project, Hazon, and the authors.

2. Noncommercial: If you do wish to share this, do not charge for it. Keep this freely circulating.

3. Share Alike: If you do adapt or transform this work, please distribute the resulting work under the same license as this one. Teaching about Shmita in our local communities also offers an opportunity to educate about Creative Commons licensing.

We’ve chosen this license for a few reasons: • We believe this information is so valuable we want it to be widely shared, so that more and more people can come to realize the value and priceless gifts of the Shmita tradition. Many people who might deeply appreciate this content may not be able to afford it if we put a price on it. If you do greatly enjoy this work and you feel so moved, be in touch and we would gladly accept a financial donation or some other contribution.

• Many of these sources come from the Torah and from Rabbis who are no longer living.

Does anyone own the Torah? Can the Torah be copyrighted? We recognize the Torah as a collective commons of humanity, and as a free gift for all Jewish people.

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• We hope that the content, as we have organized it, will work very well for you…but we also realize it may not actually work for you, for whatever reason. You might not want to use the entire booklet as it is. Perhaps you would like to do a teaching and use a few sources from each section? The invitation is to take the core material (the sources) and make it work for you, to best suit you and your community’s needs. No reason to recreate the wheel each time we want to begin teaching about Shmita.

In general, we’d like you to know that in creating the Shmita Project our most clear intention has been to support the general process of reimagining Shmita across the wider Jewish community. In that way, we are here to be of service and support. And we hope this sourcebook will do just that.

Credits & Gratitude We are incredibly grateful to UJA-Federation of New York, Lisa & Douglas Goldman Fund, the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, the Opaline Fund of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, and Pears Foundation for their generous support of this project.

Additionally, we wish to thank the following individuals for their helpful insights, comments and contributions to this sourcebook.

Judith Belasco, Hazon Dr. Jeremy Benstein, Heschel Center Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network Dr. Mirele Goldsmith, Jewish Greening Fellowship Rabbi Ari Hart, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale / Uri L’Tzedek Rabbi David Ingber, Romemu Einat Kramer, Teva Ivri Aharon Ariel Lavi, Nettiot Network Rabbi Ebn Leader, Hebrew College Rabbi Jay Moses, Wexner Foundation Nati Passow, Jewish Farm School Dr. Jonathan Schorsch, Professor, Columbia University Rabbi David Seidenberg, Neohasid.org Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Mechon Hadar Elisheva Urbas, Hazon Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Shalom Center Much thanks, as well, to the Green Hevra, Siach Network, Sova Project, and 7Seeds for the ongoing dialogue, partnership, and collaboration in helping to expand the Shmita conversation nationally.

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Section 1

Biblical Foundations: Shmita in the Torah THE ENTIRE TORAH can be viewed as a collection of teachings and stories for a wandering people, a diverse collection of tribes, about to enter a land they will call home, where they will settle and build societal structures for generations to come.

Within the vast collection of laws, a pattern emerges around the cycle of seven, beginning with the seven days of creation.

This is a personal rhythm, as well as a collective one, for the entire nation to share in together. Today, while the weekly seven day cycle of Shabbat is widely celebrated, the yearly cycle of seven is less known. In this section are the core Biblical texts which elucidate the cultural tradition known as Shmita. Have you heard of this before? Is this something that has personal meaning for you? If so, perhaps these texts will enable you to think more deeply about this tradition. We hope these texts will introduce a whole new way of considering time, community, property, land, and food—during the Shmita Year and all years.

English translations of biblical sources are from THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES: THE SCHOCKEN BIBLE: VOLUME I by Dr. Everett Fox, copyright Š 1983, 1986, 1990, 1995

by Schocken Books. Used by permission of Schocken Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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Biblical Foundations 1. Vision for a Just Society You are not to take up an empty rumor. Do not put your hand in with a guilty person, to become a witness for wrongdoing.

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This is the first introduction to Shmita in the Torah, and it comes in Parshat Mishpatim, which presents a set of moral codes to live by, received directly after the revelation at Sinai.

What is the overarching concern that links these laws together? Is there a common, shared theme?

Why do you think this list would transition into a law describing a societal period for leaving agricultural land fallow? What is the connection between this and all the previous verses?

According to this text, what is the main intention and purpose of this time period? Who benefits most from Shmita?

Even a poor-man you are not to respect as regards his quarrel.

Now when you encounter your enemy’s ox or his donkey straying, return it, return it to him.

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And when you see the donkey of one who hates you crouching under its burden, restrain from abandoning it to him- unbind, yes, unbind it together with him.

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For six years you are to sow your land and to gather in its produce, 11 but in the seventh, you are to let it go [tishm'tenah] and to let it be [u'nitashta], that the needy of your people may eat, and what remains, the wildlife of the field shall eat. Do thus with your vineyard, with your olive-grove.

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– Exodus 23.1-11

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A sojourner, you are not to oppress: you yourselves know well the feelings of the sojourner, for sojourners were you in the land of Egypt.

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You are not to turn aside the rights of your needy as regards his quarrel.

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From a false matter, you are to keep far! And one clear and innocent, do not kill, for I do not acquit a guilty-person.

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A bribe you are not to take, for a bribe blinds the open-eyed, and twists the words of the righteous.

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You are not to go after many people to do evil. And you are not to testify in a quarrel so as to turn aside toward manyand thus turn away.

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Shmita in the Torah

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2. Shabbat of the Land The Lord spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying: 2 Speak to the Children of Israel, and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to the Lord.

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For six years you are to sow your field, for six years you are to prune your vineyard, then you are to gather in its produce, 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord: your field you are not to sow, your vineyard you are not to prune, 5 the aftergrowth of your harvest you are not to harvest, the grapes of your consecrated-vines you are not to amass; a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing shall there be for the land!

How does this text add to our understanding of Shmita from the previous source? According to this text, what is the main intention and purpose of this time period? Who benefits most from Shmita?

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What is the significance of allowing a land to ‘rest’? Why would such a period also be considered a ‘Shabbat of the Lord’?

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Now the Sabbath-yield of the land is for you, for eating: for you, for your servant and for your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you; 7 and for your domestic-animal and the wildbeast that are in your land shall be all its produce, to eat.

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– Leviticus 25.1-7

The Lord spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying…the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to the Lord:

What does the subject of Shmita have to do with Mount Sinai?

Were not all the commandments given from Sinai? This teaches that, just as concerning Shmita—its general principles and specific details were all given over at Sinai—so to all the mitzvot were given over in this way from Sinai—both in general and in particular detail.

– Rashi, Leviticus 25.1

What are the agricultural activities that are not practiced in the seventh year? What types of food can be harvested and what cannot be harvested? What questions does the text leave unanswered about this?

How might the period of Shmita connect back to Adam & Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden, when they were told (Genesis 3.17–19): ‘Cursed be the ground because of you; by toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life…By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat until you return to the ground’?

Shmita is the only mitzvah in the Torah that is directly linked with Har Sinai, the place of revelation. Rashi’s question— Ma Inyan Shmita Eytzel Har Sinai—has evolved into a phrase in modern Hebrew that is widely used outside of this context to mean 'What does one thing have to do with the other?' an expression of surprise and curiosity.

What Rashi does not answer is, out of all the mitzvot to choose from, why would the Torah specifically use Shmita to prove this point, and not Shabbat, or dietary laws, or charity, or any other commandment? Why Shmita in particular? What do you think Shmita has to do with Mount Sinai?

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Biblical Foundations 3. Shabbat of the Week In what ways is Shmita an extension of the weekly Shabbat: How are they similar?

How are they different?

In Shabbat and Shmita, what does the symbol of ‘seven’ represent? What is the significance of this number?

How do cycles play a role in your own life? What is the significance of using the rhythm of cycles to mark time?

The Children of Israel are to keep the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath-observance throughout their generations as a covenant for the ages; 17 between me and the Children of Israel a sign it is, for the ages, for in six days G!d made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day he ceased and paused-for-breath.

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– Exodus 31.16-17

In Leviticus , 25.4, as quoted on the previous page, the Shmita Year is also referred to as “Shabbat Shabbaton”, translated as the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’, a term meant to imply a level of depth beyond the weekly Shabbat. This term is also used in the Torah to describe Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16.31). How might Shmita be connected to the day of Yom Kippur, and why might these times be considered a 'Shabbat Shabbaton'?

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Throughout the Torah, the pattern of seven appears frequently, with significance in ritual and life cycles. Below are a few examples, other than Shabbat and Shmita. Where else in Jewish tradition and culture does this pattern appear?

• 7 weeks in the counting of the Omer before Shavuot (Leviticus 23.15) • 7 days of Pesach and Sukkot (Leviticus 23.6, 34) • Rosh Hashana falls on the first day of the 7th month (Leviticus 23.24) • 7 branches on the Menorah in the Temple (Exodus 25.31) • 7 celebrated species of produce of the Land of Israel (Deuteronomy 8.8) • 7 days of preparation before initiating the Mishkan service (Leviticus 8.35) • The period of Tumah (uncleanliness) lasts 7 days (Leviticus 13)

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4. Release of Debt At the end of seven years, you are to make a Release [shmita].

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Now this is the matter of the Release: he shall release, every possessor of a loan of his hand, what he has lent to his neighbor. He is not to oppress his neighbor or his brother, for the Release of the Lord has been proclaimed!...

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When there is among you a needyperson from any-one of your brothers, within one of your gates in the land that the Lord your G!d is giving you, you are not to toughen your heart, you are not to shut your hand to your brother, the needy-one.

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Why do you think the text uses language like ‘brother’, and ‘neighbor’ as it references the relationship between the lender and the person in debt? How might this be connected to the role of generously giving to the needy, as described by the text?

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Rather, you are to open, yes, open your hand to him, and are to give-pledge, yes, pledge to him, sufficient for his lack that is lacking to him.

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Take-you-care, lest there be a word in your heart, a base-one, saying: the seventh year, the Year of Release, is nearing- and your eye be set-on-ill toward your brother, the needy-one, and you not give to him, so that he calls out because of you to the Lord, and sin be incurred by you.

Why do you think forgiving debt and extending credit is linked with agricultural release in the full observance of the Shmita Year? How do you think economy and agriculture are directly related to one another?

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This text seems to understand that canceling debt is both an ideal and a challenge. What do you think about this tension?

How can you understand this from the perspective of the giver? Of the receiver?

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You are to give, yes, give freely to him, your heart is not to be ill-disposed in your giving to him, for on account of this matter the Lord your G!d will bless you in all your doings and in all the enterprises of your hand!

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For the needy will never be-gone from amid the land; therefore I command you, saying: You are to open, yes, open your hand to your brother, to your afflictedone, and to your needy-one in your land!

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– Deuteronomy 15.1-2, 7-11

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Biblical Foundations 5. Shmita & Faith The text relates to the agricultural cycle of annual crops, such as grains, which take about 8 months to mature. Taking one year off from seeding directly affects three year’s worth of food supply: Year 6 needs an abundant harvest to also cover the next year; Year 7 is a fallow period; and Year 8 (or Year 1 in the Shmita Cycle) begins without a replenished harvest from the 7th Year...in which case, there will not be available fresh food until the first planting of the 8th Year is harvested.

You are to observe my laws, my regulations you are to keep, and observe them, that you may be settled on the land in security, 19 that the land may give forth its fruit and that you may eat to beingsatisfied, and be settled in security upon it.

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Now if you should say to yourselves: What are we to eat in the seventh year?

For we may not sow, we may not gather our produce!

Then I will dispatch my blessing for you during the sixth year so that it yields produce for three years; 22 as you sow the eighth year’s seeds, you shall eat of the old produce until the ninth year; until its produce comes in, you shall be able to eat what-is-old.

– Leviticus 25.18-22

What does this text tell us about how the people might have felt about the rules of Shmita?

If you were preparing for the arrival of Shmita, what types of emotions do you think would arise for you? Would you be concerned that your most basic needs might not be met?

Or might you have faith these needs would indeed be met?

What meaning, if any, do you find in connecting the bounty or scarcity of natural resources to God’s will?

How might ‘having faith’ fit into the paradigm of ‘release’ that Shmita activates? In this source, what are we releasing?

How does this release connect to feelings of satisfaction and security (v.18)?

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6. Hakhel: Community Gathering And Moshe commanded them, saying: At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time of the year of Release, on the pilgrimage-festival of Sukkot, 11 when all Israel comes to be seen at the presence of the Lord your G!d, at the place that he chooses, you are to proclaim this Instruction in front of all Israel, in their ears.

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Assemble [hakhel] the people, the men, the women, and the little-ones, and the sojourner that is in your gates, in order that they may hearken, in order that they may learn and have awe for the Lord your G!d, to carefully observe all the words of this Instruction; 13 and that their children, who do not know, may hearken and learn to have awe before the Lord your G!d, all the days that you remain alive on the soil that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.

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– Deuteronomy 31.10-13

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Hakhel literally means ‘assemble’ and is connected to the word, Kehila, which means ‘community.’ During the times of the Temple, the Hakhel would happen during the Sukkot holiday after the Shmita Year, at which point the people would gather together and the king would read aloud selections from the Torah.

What role do you think public Torah readings serve? What might be the connection between a public reading of the Torah, leaving land fallow, and debt release?

Why do think the culmination of the Shmita Year is marked by such a wide-spread community gathering? What is the role of community relationships within the Shmita Year itself?

Why do you think the text insists on the children being in attendance?

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Biblical Foundations 7. Cycles of Shmita: The Jubilee And you are to number yourselves seven Sabbath-cycles of years- seven years, seven timesso the time of the seven Sabbathcycles of years will be for you a total of nine and forty years.

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After counting 49 years through 7 individual Shmita Cycles, the 50th, and final year, of the complete Sabbatical cycle is known as the Jubilee. Jubilee in Hebrew is Yovel, literally translated as a ram horn. Because of the nature of return that is activated this year, biblical scholar Everett Fox translates this period as the ‘Year of Homebringing’ (When the tribes of Israel first entered into the land of Israel, after traveling in the wilderness for forty years, the land was divided among 12 tribes, with each tribe receiving a certain region. It is this land which the biblical text is referring to when it mentions in v. 10: “You are to return, each-man to his holding, eachman to his clan you are to return”).

After the Jubilee year, the 50 year cycle begins again, from year 1.

What might be the significance of marking the culmination of seven complete Shmita Cycles with one extra, celebratory year? How might this cycle of 50 years resemble Sefirat Ha’Omer, the custom of counting 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot, marking the journey from slavery in Egypt towards revelation at Mount Sinai?

Why do you think the Jubilee Year begins on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? What is the significance of the shofar as marking the start of the Jubilee year?

If land had been kept through the generations with one tribe or culture, what connections do you think would develop over the years?

Is there one place that you might consider your own true home, the place you would hope to which you and your children would always be able to return?

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Then you are to give forth on the shofar a blast, in the seventh New-Moon, on the tenth after the New-Moon, on the Day of Atonement, you are to give blast on the shofar throughout all your land.

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You are to hallow the year, the fiftieth year, proclaiming freedom [dror] throughout the land and to all its inhabitants; it shall be a Jubilee for you, you are to return, each-man to his holding, eachman to his clan you are to return.

– Leviticus 25.8-10

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8. Jubilee & Personal Freedom And when your brother sinks down in poverty beside you, and sells himself to you, you are not to make him serve the servitude of a serf; 40 as a hiredhand, as a resident-settler is he to be beside you, only until the Year of Jubilee is he to serve beside you.

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Then he is to go-free from beside you, he and his children beside him; he may return to his clan, to the holding of his fathers he may return.

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In most instances, slavery in the Bible referred to individuals who sold themselves or were sold into servitude based on financial poverty or debt burdens. Slaves were to be considered as part of the Master’s household, and there were strict codes of conduct regarding physical treatment, work, and rest. Slaveholders were given a clear reminder to guide such relationships: “Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your G!d redeemed you; therefore I enjoin this commandment upon you today.” (Deuteronomy 15.15)

Did you know the verse on the US Liberty Bell is from the section of the Torah that speaks of the Jubilee: “And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land... (v.10)?” Liberty is the English translation used for the Hebrew word, Dror, which also means freedom. What is the connection between the ideals of liberty and freedom with the Shmita? In what ways does Shmita make us free? Why do you think the entire Shmita Cycle culminates with this specific manifestation?

What is the connection between the release of slaves and the return to ancestral lands?

Hebrew slaves would not have to wait until the Jubilee for their release, as they had their own personal seven year period to count: "If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free. When you set him free, do not let him go empty-handed: Furnish him out of the flock, threshing floor, and vat, with which the Lord your G!d has blessed you.” (Deuteronomy 15.12-14) After six year’s period, if the servant chose to remain within the Master’s household rather than go free, the master would pierce his ear with an awl to mark this agreement, which would override the Jubilee.

(Deuteronomy 15.16-17)

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Biblical Foundations 9. Land Value How might such a landmarket, based on a 50-year cycle, been integral to the possibility of keeping Shmita every seventh Year?

How does this relate to our modern day real estate market? What is your sense of ‘land worth’ and ‘land value’?

How might you personally measure this?

Do you agree, as verse 23 states, that we are “temporary settlers” upon the earth?

How might this change the relationship you have with the land you live on now? How would such an awareness of transience also fit into a societal system founded on long-term tribal land relationships?

Now when you sell property-for-sale to your fellow or purchase it from the hand of your fellow, do not maltreat any-man his brother!

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By the number of years after the Jubilee you are to purchase it from your fellow, by the number of years of produce left he is to sell it to you: 15

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According to the many years left, you may charge-him-much for his purchase; according to the few years left, you may charge-him-little for his purchase, since a certain number of harvests is only what he is selling to you.

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So you are not to maltreat any-man his fellow, rather, you are to hold your G!d in awe, for I the Lord am your G!d!

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The land is not to be sold in-harness (permanently), for the land is mine; for you are sojourners and resident-settlers with me, 24 throughout all the land of your holdings, you are to allow for redemption of the land.

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When your brother sinks down in poverty and has to sell some of his holding, his redeemer nearest-in-kin to him is to come and redeem the soldproperty of his brother.

Now a man- if he has no redeemer, but his hand reaches means and finds enough to redeem with, 27 he is to reckon the years since its sale, returning the surplus to the man to whom he sold it, and it is to return to his holding.

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But if his hand does not find enough means for returning it, what he sold is to remain in the hand of the one purchasing it, until the Year of Jubilee, it is to go-free in the Jubilee, and it is to return to his holding.

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– Leviticus 25.14-17, 23-28

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10. Jubilee in Urban Settings A man—if he sells a residential house in a walled town, its redemption period is [only] until the end of the year of its sale, a year-of-days shall be its redemption-period.

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If it is not redeemed before this whole year has been fulfilled, the house that is in the town that has a wall shall be established, in-harness (forever), for him who purchases it, throughout his generations: It is not to go-free in the Jubilee Year.

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But houses in villages that do not have a wall around them, they are reckoned as open-fields of the land; there may be redemption for them, and in the Jubilee Year they may go free.

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– Leviticus 25.29-31

How is a private residential house different than agricultural land, in terms of the Jubilee release? Would one be easier or harder to release back to its original owner after 50 years?

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Why do you think the Jubilee release would not take effect in a walled town, but would take effect in a city without walls? What is the significance of a wall surrounding a city?

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The Shmita/Yovel system emerged out of a very agrarian based society. As a culture becomes more urbanized and further removed from its natural surroundings, how do you think this would affect the societal and personal relationship with Shmita/Yovel?

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Biblical Foundations 11. The Prophetic Blessings of Shabbat/Shmita/Yovel What are the specific points of the blessing that comes with observing the Shabbat moments in time?

What connections might this text imply by juxtaposing our history as slaves in Egypt and our tradition of a Sabbatical practice in the land we called home?

How might this connection affect our perspective and understanding of Shmita?

Why do you think the text mentions Shabbat in the plural? Can the full ‘impact’ and potential of Shabbat only be felt if the Shabbat, Shmita, and Yovel cycles are celebrated together?

Do you understand the nature of this blessing as a ‘reward’ or a ‘consequence’?

What is the difference?

My Sabbaths you are to keep, my Holy-Shrine you are to hold-in-awe, I am the Lord!

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I will give peace throughout the land, so that you will lie down with none to make you tremble…

I the Lord am your G!d who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from your being serfs to them; I broke the bars of your yoke, enabling you to walk upright!

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Threshing will overtake vintage for you, and vintage will overtake sowing; you shall eat your food to being-satisfied, and be settled in security in your land.

I will walk about in your midst, I will be for you as a G!d, and you yourselves will be for me as a people.

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If by my laws you walk, and my commandments you keep, and observe them, 4 then I will give-forth your rains in their set-time, so that the earth givesforth its yield and the trees of the field give-forth their fruit.

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12. The Prophetic Warning Against Neglecting Shabbat/Shmita/Yovel Now if, after all that, you do not hearken to me, I will continue to discipline you, sevenfold, for your sins.

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Then the land will find-acceptance regarding its Sabbaths, all the days of desolation- when you are in the land of your enemies- then the land will enjoycessation, and find-acceptance regarding its Sabbaths.

All the days of desolation it will enjoycessation, since it did not enjoy-cessation during its Sabbaths when you were settled on it.

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– Leviticus 26.18-20, 34-35

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I will break your fierce pride! I will give your heavens to be like iron, and your earth like bronze, 20 so that your power will be spent for naught; your land will not give-forth its yield, the trees of the land will not give-forth their fruit…

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Why do you think the text uses ‘fierce pride’ as the characteristic that might cause people to neglect the Shmita Cycle?

What might be the connection between Shmita and the extension of punishment 'sevenfold' times?

Similar to the language surrounding the blessings of keeping Shmita, do you understand the nature of these curses as a 'consequence' or as a 'punishment'? What is the difference?

We might read this text in terms of contemporary environmental and agricultural challenges: soil erosion, overgrazing, pollution, acid rain, climate change, etc. Do you think the sustainability movement could find strength in a text like this? Why or why not?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Biblical Foundations 13. Etymology of the Seventh Year

Title/Action of Seventh Year Period Hebrew

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Transliteration

Translation

Location (In Order of Use)

Shvi’it

Seventh

Exodus 23.11, Leviticus 25.4

Tishm’tena U'nitashta

Release & Lie Fallow, Let It Go & Let It Be

Exodus 23.11

Shabbat Lado’nay

Shabbat for God

Leviticus 25.1

Shabbat Shabbaton

Shabbat of Shabbats

Leviticus 25.4

Shabbat Ha’aretz

Shabbat of the Land

Leviticus25.6

Shmita

Release, Remission

Deuteronomy 15.1

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Shmita in the Torah

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Closing Questions: The word Shmita literally means ‘release’. What is the ‘release’, on a personal and societal level, that we are being asked to participate in, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? How easy or challenging might it be to release objects or patterns we are accustomed to?

The early Israelites lived in a largely rural, agrarian society, vastly different than our modern culture. What do you think the Shmita Year would look like if we observed it now? Agriculturally? Economically? Comunally? Personally? For more on this conversation, both in relation to Shmita in Israel and the international Jewish community, see sections 5 through 7.

Have you felt the hectic rush before Shabbat begins, of cooking, cleaning, wrapping up the work week? Or the rush before leaving to college, planning a wedding, going on vacation…anything that is a drastic shift from your day-to-day activities? Just as you would have a hard time suddenly deciding to step into these moments minutes before it starts, how (if at all) would you (and the collective culture) begin to prepare for a year-long Shabbat?

In what ways is Shmita a restful experience, and in what ways might it be the opposite? How do you think life would be different if there was a recurring, multi-year cycle of collective rest embedded in our culture?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

Section 2

Recalling Ancient Memory: Shmita in Early Israel & Temple Periods

PERHAPS one of the first questions that might come to mind after learning about Shmita, is: Was it ever entirely observed?

What historical knowledge do we have of Shmita? In truth, the evidence is sparse, which leads us to think that perhaps the tribes of Israel were not able to meet the high expectations of the Sabbatical Cycle. Below are a collection of sources (most are dating from roughly 1200BCE to 200CE, while the Rambam is writing later, but looking back towards that time) which recall the Temple periods of early Israelite culture when Shmita was and was not practiced, as well as the challenges and benefits it brought to communities trying to follow such a societal structure. Looking back at the lives of our ancestors, can you empathize with their struggles? Or do you wish they had done better in establishing a Hebrew culture rooted in the Sabbatical Cycle? Do you think Shmita, at its core, is primarily intended to be a symbolic spiritual methapor and value system? Or do you think Shmita is a cultural system that was intended to be followed strictly and literally?

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Recalling Ancient Memory 1. The First Countings When did the counting begin? After the fourteen years following the entry into Eretz Yisrael. [This is derived from Leviticus 25:3]: “Six years shall you sow your field and six years shall you trim your vineyard.” Implied is that each person must recognize his portion of the land. The people took seven years to conquer the land and seven years to divide it. Thus the counting began after the 2503rd year after the creation...

And they declared the 2510th year after the creation, which was the 21st year [14 years to conquer and settle, 7 years of counting] after the entry into Eretz Yisrael], as the Sabbatical year. They counted seven Sabbatical years and then sanctified the fiftieth year which was the 64th year after they entered Eretz Yisrael.

2

Based on the Rambam’s source, we can calculate these following years of historical Sabbatical origins: Year 2490 / 1272 B.C.E. Enter into Eretz Yisrael Year 2497 / 1265 B.C.E. Begin dividing land with tribal boundaries Year 2504 / 1258 B.C.E. Year one of counting Year 2510 / 1252 B.C.E. Start of first Shmita Year Year 2543 / 1219 B.C.E. First Jubilee Year

The Jewish people counted 17 Jubilee years from the time they entered Eretz Yisrael until they departed. The year they departed, when the Temple was destroyed the first time, was the year following the Sabbatical year and the 36th year in the Jubilee cycle. For the First Temple stood for 410 years. When it was destroyed, this reckoning ceased.

After it ceased, the land remained desolate for seventy years. Then the Second Temple was built and it stood for 420 years. In the seventh year after it was built, Ezra ascended to Eretz Yisrael. This is referred to as the second entry. From this year, they began another reckoning. They designated the thirteenth year of the Second Temple as the Sabbatical year and counted seven Sabbatical years and sanctified the fiftieth year.

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Why do you think the counting towards Shmita only began once we, as a nation, were fully settled, and each person had ‘recognized his portion of land’? What is the connection between Shmita and our relationship to being settled in the land we live on?

Why do you think the countings ceased temporarily once the First Temple was destroyed?

– Rambam, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, 10.2-3

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2. Shmita as a Marker of Time When the judges would examine the witnesses, they would approach them with seven inquiries: In what Jubilee Cycle [did this event occur]? In what year [of the specific Shmita Cycle]? In what month? On which day of the month? On which day of the week? At what hour? And at what place?

What might have been the effect of living in the Shmita Cycle and always knowing when the next one would start?

– Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 40a

How might your perspective of time be different if you were considering each day as it related to being within the context of a larger cycle?

We are commanded to count the years… seven times seven years up until the Jubilee year. And this mitzva of counting Shmita years is the responsibility of the Beit Din, i.e., the Great Sanhedrin [ Jewish Court of Law]; it is they who count each year of the fifty in the same way that each individual counts the days of the Omer… and it involves counting the years [of the Jubilee cycle] separately, as well as counting the Shmita cycles together with it.

What other cycles do you use to mark time (kids ages, periods of education, physical development, etc.)? What periods of counting time do you experience in your own life?

– Rambam, Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, #140

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Recalling Ancient Memory 3. Shmita, Exile & Return If this text is read as a historical account of Shmita observance, it seems that the tribes of Israel eventually began to neglect the Shmita practice and did not celebrate 70 consecutive Shmita Years (which would accumulate to almost 500 calendar years). Does this change your perspective of Shmita at all?

Compare this text to sources #10-11 in section 1.

How do you understand the relationship between Shmita and exile? What is your take on this text, which implies that exile is a direct consequence of Sabbatical neglect?

This passage refers to the re-commitments that the Israelites took upon themselves, after returning to Israel from Babylonian exile. It was under the guidance of the community leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah, that the covenant of the “Law of Moses” was renewed, and the culture of post-first-exile Judaism began to take shape in Israel. Do you think these returnees had a new sense of relationship to the land, after going through a forced exile? How might this have affected their understanding of Shmita?

And those (of Judah) who had escaped from the sword were taken by King Nebuchadnezzar into exile to Babylon, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power.

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The land of Israel finally enjoyed its Shabbat rests. All the days it lay desolate, it kept Shabbat/Shmita, to fulfill seventy years [of Sabbatical neglect], in fulfillment of the word of the Lord.

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– Chronicles II 36:20-21

The remainder of the people—the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the musicians, the temple servants, and all who separated themselves from the neighboring peoples of the Land for the sake of the Teaching of G!d, together with their wives and all their sons and daughters who are able to understand, 30 now join with their noble brothers of Israel, and take an oath with sanctions to follow the Teaching of G!d, given through Moses the servant of G!d, and to observe carefully all the commands, regulations and decrees of the Lord our G!d…

29

When the neighboring peoples of the Land bring their merchandise or food to sell on the Sabbath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day.

Every seventh year we will forgo working the land and every outstanding debt.

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– Nehemiah 10.29-30, 32

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Shmita in Early Israel & Temple Periods

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4. Compromise within Shmita Rabbi Shimon Ben Eliakim stated, in the names of Rabbi Elazar Ben Pedath and Rabbi Elazar Ben Shama’u: Many cities which were [originally] conquered by those Israelites who came up from Egypt were not re-conquered by those who came up from Babylon [after the return from the first exile], for he held the view that the consecration of the Holy Land on the first occasion consecrated it for the time being, but not necessarily for the future.

They therefore did not annex specific cities in order that the poor might have sustenance from them during the Sabbatical Year.

– Talmud Bavli, Chullin 7a

A certain teacher was suspected concerning Sabbatical year produce [growing and then selling the ‘ownerless’ harvest]. He was brought before Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi. R. Yehudah Hanassi said to the accusers: ‘‘What can this poor man do? He did it for the sake of his life.’’

– Talmud Yerushalmi, Ta’anit 3:1

Shmita, as a law, was specifically practiced within the designated land of Israel. According to this text, when the borders of Israel were being re-defined, upon return from the first exile period, certain cities were intentionally left out of the land of Israel so that the Shmita laws would have no effect there. In these locations, farming practices would continue without interruption during the Shmita Year.

What might have been the possible values and challenges in establishing such neighboring lands where the Shmita prohibitions did not apply? How might the economy and agricultures of neighboring lands impact the observance of Shmita in Israel?

From the original sources in the Torah (see section 1, sources #1-2), it seems a core intention of the Shmita Year is to allow for the poor of the land to have food. From these texts, what can we learn about the ways the Shmita Year may have realistically been taking shape?

Do you see these rulings as compassionate and caring compromises? Or as easy solutions to avoid the radical challenges that come along with Shmita?

What might we learn today from the flexibilities that were created around Shmita during the Second Temple era?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Recalling Ancient Memory 5. Between Shmita & the State

These sources offer a glimpse into the practice of Shmita during the Second Temple period, specifically under Roman rule. At one point, the Jewish communities were exempt from taxes on the Seventh year. When this decree was annulled, the Rabbis allowed the land to be tilled and planted, so as to provide resources to support the paying of taxes.

Do you think Shmita can be observed within the context of separation of Church and State? How might Shmita present a unique challenge to this division?

Julius Caesar, imperator the second time, has ordained, “That all the country of the Jews, do pay tribute yearly for the city Jerusalem, excepting the Seventh, which they call the Sabbatical Year, because thereon they neither receive the fruits of the trees, nor do they sow their land; and that they pay their tribute in Sidon on the second year [of that sabbatical period], the fourth part of what was sown: besides this, they are to pay the same tithes to Hyrcanus and his sons which they paid to their forefathers. And that no one, neither president, nor lieutenant, nor ambassador, raise auxiliaries within the bounds of Judea; nor may soldiers exact money of them for winter quarters, or under any other pretense; but that they be free from all sorts of injuries; and that whatsoever they shall hereafter have, and are in possession of, or have bought, they shall retain them all.

– Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIV, Chapter 10, Section 6 (Flavius Josephus 90CE) When the oppressors grew in number: these are the collectors of Arnona (tax).

Rav Jannai proclaimed: “Go and sow your seed even in the Sabbatical year, because of the collectors of the taxes.”

– Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 26a

Do you think Shmita can be observed without the support of governmental policies? If not, what types of policies would need to be in place to make Shmita possible?

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6. Shmita as a Collective Agreement Once Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi wanted to annul the Sabbatical Year.

Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair went to him. Rabbi asked Pinchas, “How are your grains doing?” Pinchas said to him, “The endives [wild] are growing fine.” Rabbi once again said to him: “How are your grains doing?” Pinchas replied to him, again, “The endives are growing fine.”

And by this, Rabbi understood that Pinchas did not agree with him about annulling the Sabbatical year.

– Talmud Yerushalmi, Demai 1:3

A certain man called after another, ‘You are a stranger [convert] and you are the son of a stranger.’ The convert responded, ‘May I merit Divine reward as I do not eat cultivated foods during the Sabbatical Year like you.’

Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, also known as Rabbi, or Judah the Prince, was a 2nd century CE rabbi and chief redactor of the Mishnah. He was a key leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Judea, and served as the head of the Sanhedrin (Jewish Court of Law).

In his time, he was known to rule leniently in regards to the laws of Shmita. (See page 21 for another example.) This interaction, between two leading figures, captures the subtle tension within the Shmita debate that must have been a fierce issue at the time.

– Talmud Bavli, Bekoroth 30a

These people are ineligible to be witnesses or judges in the court of law: A gambler of dice, a usurer, a pigeon-trainer [for robbery], and traders in the produce of the Shmita year.

– Mishnah, Sanhedrin 3.3

Unlike many mitzvot, which are based on individual personal practice, Shmita relies on both personal and communal participation. How does this affect the possibility of a successful Shmita Year? Based on these texts, do you think the integrity of Shmita is only possible when the entire culture is following this tradition together, in collective agreement and with mutual responsibility? Or is a personal Shmita practice just as important even if the collective is not observing together?

What is the common link between the people listed who cannot serve as witnesses or judges in the courts? Why do you think a person who buys and sells Shmita harvests would be in the same category as the others?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Recalling Ancient Memory 7. Shmita as a Period of Challenge…

This historical text, about the struggles the community faced leading up to the victory of the Maccabees over King Antiochus (which is celebrated every Chanukah), clearly offers a recollection of Shmita as a period of drastic challenge.

When you imagine Shmita, is this a period of abundance or scarcity? What is the main challenge these people faced within this period of battle?

What conditions are necessary so that the observance of Shmita does not become a societal burden, for peaceful times as well as during drastic periods of challenge?

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But Judas, seeing the strength of the enemy, retired to Jerusalem, and prepared to endure a siege. As for Antiochus, he sent part of his army to Bethsura, to besiege it, and with the rest of his army he came against Jerusalem; but the inhabitants of Bethsura were terrified at his strength; and seeing that their provisions grew scarce, they delivered themselves up on the security of oaths that they should suffer no hard treatment from the king. . . . But then their provisions failed them; what fruits of the ground they had laid up were spent and the land being not ploughed that year, continued unsowed, because it was the seventh year, on which, by our laws, we are obliged to let it lay uncultivated. And withal, so many of the besieged ran away for want of necessaries, that but a few only were left in the Temple.

– Antiquities of the Jews, Book XII, Chapter 9, Section 5 (See 1 Maccabees 6:48-49…Second Temple Period, 165 BCE)

Shmita in Early Israel & Temple Periods

R. Abbahu opened his discourse with the text, They that sit in the gate talk of me (Ps. 69.13): This refers to the nations of the world who sit in theatres and circuses. ‘And I am the song of the drunkards’: after they have sat eating and drinking and become intoxicated, they sit and talk of me, scoffing at me and saying, ‘We have no need to eat carobs like the Jews ‘! They ask one another, ‘How long do you wish to live?’

To which they reply, ‘As long as the shirt of a Jew which is worn on the Sabbath’! They then take a camel into their theatres, put their shirts upon it, and ask one another, ‘Why is it in mourning?’ To which they reply, ‘The Jews observe the law of the Sabbatical year and they have no vegetables, so they eat this camel’s thorns, and that is why it is in mourning’!

– Eicha Rabba Prologue 17 (200 CE)

2

Harvesting and eating the fruits of trees are permissible during the Shmita Year. Carob is a Mediterranean tree that produces seed pods which are edible and sweet, yet which are hard to process and have not become a traditionally mainstream food. ‘Camel’s Thorn’ is a type of acacia tree that produces excellent animal fodder, yet is less traditionally recognized as food for human consumption.

Based on this text, and your own imagination, how do you think those who were going about their regular farming/economic activity would regard the act of observing Shmita? How would you feel as the one being observed?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Recalling Ancient Memory 8. …And Shmita as a Period of Abundance Biur refers to an aspect of the Shmita Year which adheres to eating a seasonal diet. When foods are in season, they can be freely harvested and stored. When they are no longer found naturally in season, in the wild, all harvests (fresh, dried and preserved) must be shared with the public.

For more on Biur, see section 3.1, source #5.

Why do you think there was a necessity for such a system of community storehouses during the Shmita Year?

Initially, agents of the court would sit at the gates of the city. Everyone who brought fruits in his hand would have the fruits removed and be given enough food for three meals in exchange. The rest would be entered into the storehouse.

When it came time for dates, the agents of the court would hire workers to gather them together, make them into pressed cakes and enter them into the storehouse of the city. When it came time for grapes, agents of the court would hire workers, squeeze the grapes, press them, enter them into jugs and place them in the city storehouse. When it came time for olives, agents of the court would hire workers to prepare and press them in the oil press and enter the oil into jugs and place them in the city storehouses. These products would be distributed on the eve of Shabbat, every person according to the needs of his household.

Someone who has fruit from shevi’it (Shmita) when the hour for biur arrived distributes the fruits to neighbors and relatives and people he knows. He then goes out and places the fruits on his doorstep and says, “My brothers from the house of Israel, anyone who needs may come and take.” He then returns and enters back into his house and eats until they are gone.

– Tosefta Shevi’it 8.1 (Written in 220 CE Mishna Period, recollecting times from the temple period)

How would you feel being dependent upon a centralized community storehouse that distributed foods to the public? Would you feel comfortable donating your harvests to this system, or would you rather keep your harvests private? What are some key practices of this storehouse that ensured a fair distribution system?

The person who shares his/ her produce with the public, announces “…anyone who needs may come and take.”

How might this be similar to the opening line of the Passover Seder, “All who are hungry may come and eat”?

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Closing Questions: Shmita seems to be rooted in a series of ideals, which in practice had a wide range of consequences. What do you see as the greatest value of Shmita? The greatest challenge?

Do you consider the Shmita tradition more of a ‘religious’ observance or a ‘cultural’ observance? Is there a difference? If so, what? How might such a perspective shifted through history?

Does the historical observance of Shmita (or lack of it) affect or frame your own personal link to Shmita today? What can we learn from these historical accounts for the way Shmita re-emerges today, for ourselves, our families, our communities?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Section 3

Codifying The Sabbatical: An Overview of Rabbinic Laws & Clarifications IN THE 11TH CENTURY, Maimonides (Rambam) sought to codify and explain Jewish laws on a range of topics, and his master work is known as the Mishna Torah. Within this collection, the Sefer Zera’im (Book of Seeds) deals specifically with all agricultural laws and practices, and it is here where much attention is dedicated to Shmita, both from an agrarian and economic perspective. The sources Maimonides uses in this compilation primarily comes from the biblical Shmita texts, as well as rulings within the Mishna and Talmud. Beyond being a practical list of laws, his clarifications help us to understand the ways in which the Shmita Year might affect a society that observed it.

You can read the texts in the next two sections in two ways: 1. Since the Torah isn’t always thorough or clear, what are the actual rules to observe while keeping Shmita?

2. How might we use Shmita as a lens to examine our contemporary food and economic systems?

Feel free to explore these texts, at either level or both.

English translations from Maimonides are from MISHNEH TORAH by Eliyahu Touger, copyright © 2005 by Moznaim Publishing. All rights reserved.

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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3.1

Codifying the Sabbatical PART 1: SABBATICAL FOOD SYSTEMS Agriculture is at the root of our wider cultural systems. For all our production, consumption, creativity, and growth, it is agriculture that provides the nourishment and the energy for our own physical development.

Agriculture is an intimate relationship of delicate giving and receiving. It is the collective process of working with land for production and consumption, using the life of the soil and plant communities to collect for our own needs. While we are not all farmers, we are all consumers of food that has been farmed. The way we develop our food system—the practices, ethics, and values of the way we plant, harvest, and consume foods—has a direct parallel on our own culture. A healthy agricultural system will likely manifest in a healthy societal system, and vice versa. In this section, we explore the food system of the Sabbatical year. How did agriculture change during this year? What foods were eaten at this time? How were foods distributed? And how would these Sabbatical food ethics affect the relationships and practices within the wider society?

1. Agricultural Practices of the Shmita Year How does this text build on the first two Torah sources from Exodus and Leviticus? (section 1, sources # 1-2) Why might further restrictions have been added to Shmita agricultural laws?

Why do you think these specific actions have been highlighted as work that should not be done on the Shmita Year? Do you think this is to benefit the land? To give farmers a rest?

Another reason?

Are these the types of activities you are personally involved with? If so, how often? Do such Shmita prohibitions feel like they would directly affect you?

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According to Scriptural Law, a person does not incur guilt except for the following labors: sowing, trimming, harvesting grain or fruit - both from vineyards and from other trees.

2

When a person digs or plows for the sake of the land, removes stones, fertilizes the land, or performs another similar type of work on the land or grafts, plants, or performs other similar types of work with trees, he incurs guilt [according to Rabbinic decree].

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 1.2 & 4

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According to Talmud Bavli, Avoda Zara 50b, it is permissible to do certain pruning to preserve the life of a tree. Similarly, the Rambam 1.8–10 allows irrigating trees in an orchard so that the soil does not become parched and the trees die. The intention of this year is to cease from agricultural work, but if this will threaten the life of certain plants, it is permissible to do what is necessary to keep them alive.

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2. Hefker: Communal Access And the after-growth of your harvest you shall not reap: With the intention of taking possession and ownership of it, like other harvests. Rather it shall be hefker [ownerless] for all to take freely.

And the produce of the Shabbat of the land shall be yours to eat: Although I have prohibited the produce of the Shmita Year to you, I did not prohibit you from eating it or deriving benefit from it- only that you should not treat it as its owner. Rather all should have equal rights to the produce of the seventh year, you, your hired worker, and those who reside with you.

– Rashi, Leviticus 25.5-6 Rashi is attempting to clarify the Biblical text (Leviticus 25.5-6) which, on the one hand, mentions “You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest,” and, on the other hand, offers that “Whatever the land yields, will be food for you.” According to Rashi, harvesting is fine as long as it is without the intention of sole personal ownership. This understanding of the Shmita harvests and property ownership can be better understood in the wider context of other Jewish agricultural laws, such as Peah and Leket. Peah literally means ‘corner’ and was a space of a farmer’s field that was planted specifically to be harvested by those who were landless peasants. Leket is the practice of allowing gleaners onto your field during harvest periods to collect what drops or is unharvested. The source for these laws come from Leviticus 19.9-10: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”

It is a commandment to divest one’s self from everything that the land produces in the seventh year, as Exodus 23.11 states: “In the seventh year, you shall leave it untended and unharvested.” Anyone who locks his vineyard or fences off his agricultural field in the Sabbatical year has nullified a positive commandment.

This also holds true if he gathered all of his produce into his home. Instead, he should leave everything ownerless [hefker]. Thus everyone, [rich and poor], have equal rights in every place, as Exodus 23.11 states: “And the poor of your people shall partake of it.” One may only bring a small amount of produce into one’s home, just as one brings from ownerless property.

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How does the Maimonides text build on Rashi’s idea?

Do you agree that a normal ‘harvest’ implies the intention of ownership and possession?

Do you consider your garden produce, or even the produce you buy in the market, your own property? Similarly, if we removed fences around our property lines, how might this affect the way we recognize land ownership?

For more on ‘private ownership’ in agricultural systems, see the Kli Yakar in section 4, source #5.

Today, our agricultural landscapes are quite different than during biblical times, as farms have been consolidated on rural lands, and most populations reside in cities.

Beyond the intention of open field access and shared harvests, what are some other ways you might consider expanding fair and healthy food access for all peoples, inspired by Shmita-values?

How might we look at Shmita values in relation to urban ‘food-deserts’?

How would you feel if you could only harvest enough for a few meals at a time, and not stock your pantry with cases of food?

How might this affect the way you prepare and consume food at home?

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, 4.24 JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 3. Wild & Perennial: Harvests of the Shmita Year What do you think the benefits may have been—for the body and the land—in consuming such foods for a year?

Do you think you would be able to sustain yourself for a full year on a diet of perennial, wild or uncultivated foods?

What would your diet look like?

Think about what you ate recently. Can you identify which foods were perennials and which were annuals?

Are such foods balanced in your own eating preferences and habits? Note that five of the seven Shivat Minim (Deuteronomy 8:8) were perennials. This is a list of seven species mentioned in the Torah, celebrating the abundance of the land of Israel. The perennials in this list include: figs, grapes, dates, olives, and pomegranates. The annuals in this list are wheat and barley.

Consider how the primary fruit and vegetable varieties we eat today have been domesticated from their original, wild form.

How do you see the difference between a wild strawberry or apple and a cultivated one?

Have you ever harvested foods from the wild? What was this experience like for you?

Do you think the rabbis made a fair call by prohibiting all Sfichim from public consumption?

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All that grows [unsown and uncultivated] from the earth in the Sabbatical year, whether it grew from seeds that fell into the earth before the Sabbatical year, or it grew from roots whose plants were harvested previously, but nevertheless grew again – in both instances such produce is referred to with the term Safiach, grasses and vegetables that grew on their own accord in the Sabbatical year. These are permitted to be eaten according to Scriptural Law. 1

According to Rabbinic decree, all the sfichim are forbidden to be eaten. Why was a decree established concerning them? Because of the transgressors, so that they could not go and sow grain, beans, and garden vegetables in one’s field discreetly and when they grow, partake of them, saying that they are actually sfichim.

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Thus we have learned that the only produce of the Shmita Year of which one may partake are the harvest of fruit trees and vines, as well as wild plants that are not typically sown in a garden, such as rue, amaranth, and the like [since the restriction of leaving the land fallow does not apply to perennial/wild produce]. With regards to vegetables that most people sow in their gardens and species of grains and beans, by contrast, anything that grows from these species is forbidden according to Rabbinic decree.

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 4.1-3

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Plant Life Cycles & Shmita The laws of the Shmita Year apply specifically to plants which need their seeds to be sown, and the soil they’ll be planted in to be tilled. These are generally plants that are considered ‘Annuals.’ They are called Annuals because they complete their life cycle in one season (once they produce the next generation of seeds, the plant dies). Hence, they must begin their life cycle anew each season, which generally requires soil preparation (tilling) and sowing. Most vegetables are annuals.

Perennials, on the other hand, live for many years (while they may produce seed each season, the plant body still lives).

Trees, and most vines and herbs are perennial plants. These plants do not need their seed to be sown each season (as their new annual growth comes from their long-living wood and root structure), nor do they need the soil to be continually tilled (the soil is tilled once, for planting…and then that plant settles in for the years ahead).

Wild plants are also not affected by Shmita laws, as these plants (whether they are annual or perennial) are not ‘farmed’ and grow naturally without human intervention.

Lastly, there is a plant category for the Shmita Year known as Sfichim. These are common garden annuals that may become wild from seeds which dropped in the previous season and grew again, or from roots which continue to produce a stem/ leaf body after an initial harvest (Biennials may also fall into this category. These are annuals plants which do not produce their seed until the second season of growth). Sfichim is the area of contention the Rambam is discussing.

See Appendix A for ‘Shmita Food’ ideas.

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 4. Eat Fresh & Ripe The ‘tithes’ mentioned by the Rambam is the portion of the harvest that is called ‘ma’aser,’ literally, ‘a tenth.’ This portion was a percentage of the harvest, dedicated towards the Levites (a landless tribe, whose members served in the Temple and in spiritual leadership for the larger society) and the poor.

The separating of ma’aser would not happen until the crop was ripe enough to be eaten.

We do not harvest the produce of the Sabbatical year when it is not yet ripe, as it says (Leviticus 25:12) "And you shall partake of its produce," implying that the fruits may not be eaten until they are considered as produce. However, [in order to taste them] one may partake of a small amount of them in the field while they are still underdeveloped, as one partakes in other years. One should not bring the produce into one's home until it reaches the stage when the obligation to separate tithes takes effect [marking its ripeness].

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 5.15

Do you agree with the Rambam’s classification that until a fruit is fully ripe, it is not actually considered as produce? Compare the sensory impression and flavor of biting into a fresh, ripe peach versus an unripe, greenish peach.

Consider the nutrient richness of a ripe food, as well. How might this be different than the nutrients before ripeness?

What are the challenges of allowing fruit to ripen on the plant? In our modern industrial agricultural system, why do you think there might be a preference to harvest produce before full ripeness?

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5. Biur: Seasonal Diet We may only partake of the produce of the Sabbatical year as long as that species is still found growing in the field. This is derived from Leviticus 25:7: “For the animal and the beast in your land will be all the produce to eat.” This implies that as long as a beast [chaya] can be eating from this species in the field, one may eat from what he has collected at home.

When there is no longer any of that species for the beast to eat in the field, one is obligated to remove that species from his home [and make it available to the public]. This is the obligation of Biur which applies to the produce of the Sabbatical year.

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What is implied? If a person has dried figs at home, he may partake of them as long as there are figs on the trees in the field. When there are no longer figs in the field, it is forbidden for him to partake of the figs he has at home and he must instead remove them.

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When a person pickles three types of produce in one barrel, if one of these types of produce is no longer available in the field, that type of produce should be removed from the barrel.

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Note that the Hebrew word for animal that the Rambam chooses is very specific: “chay’a,” translated as “beast.”

This is not a domesticated animal, such as a cow, goat or sheep. This is in reference to wild animals. What do you think of this comparison the Rambam is making, from the Torah verse, between the eating patterns of humans and wild animals, in regards to seasonality?

Is seasonal eating something that is a priority for you? How challenging or easy would this be in the climate you live in?

If you are not growing your own food, how do you generally find out if food is in season? What foods do you associate with a specific season, if any?

How much of your diet is based on food preservation?

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 7.1-2, 6

Besides for the focus on seasonal eating, Biur adds another dimension to the Sabbatical food system, in regards to food security. Once the time of Biur has passed (meaning a specific food is no longer found in the wild), this specific food could not be held in private storage. Instead, this food must be made available to the public until it was fully consumed. If you happened to have a large amount of this food in storage, you would be guided to ‘distribute a quantity sufficient for three meals’ to as many people as you can (Rambam 7.3). How would your sense of food security shift if this was dependent upon community sharing rather than personal storage?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 6. Eat Local “Even to Suria” suggests that exports between Israel and Suria were common enough to be taken for granted and potentially not seen as ‘transporting’. How do you define ‘local’ as it relates to food production and consumption? How close should a food be grown for you to consider it ‘local’?

The produce of the Sabbatical year may not be transported from Eretz Yisrael to the Diaspora, not even to Suria.

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, 5.13

What is the most local food you’ve ever eaten? The least local? In either case, was there an appreciation of how far or short that food traveled to get to your mouth?

What type of agricultural and economic systems would need to be in place to ensure a vibrant local ‘foodshed’ (total geographic area where your food is grown)? What would be the benefits and challenges in relying on local food production?

What is your own most local food source? If you were creating a local diet for the Shmita Year, what would you have to sacrifice? Where would you be willing to make a compromise? How would you seek creative alternatives for the foods you would be missing out on?

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What is Suria?

The territory of Suria is comprised of what would be considered modern day Syria. This land was annexed to the land of Israel during the reign of King David, but it was not fully recognized within the borders that marked the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael. As for Shmita observance, the land of Suria had a unique status, in which some restrictions of the year applied, and some did not. For further discussion on this land and its role during the Shmita year, see Talmud Yerushalmi, Shvi’it, 47b-48a.

Is importing produce allowed?

While the Rambam speaks specifically about the prohibition of exporting produce outside of Israel, it is understood that importing produce was not allowed either, and it was only once the Shmita year ended that these vegetables from outside Israel would available for sale in the marketplace, to supplement the domestic supply of produce. For a deeper discussion on the role of imported produce after Shmita, see Talmud Yerushalmi, Shvi’it, 50b.

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7. Kedushat Shvi’it A great principle was stated with regard to the produce of the Sabbatical year: Whatever is distinguished as being for human consumption, e.g., wheat, figs, grapes, and the like, should not be used as a compress or a bandage, even for a person, as implied by the phrase in Leviticus 25.6: “It shall be a Shabbat of the Land for you, so that you may eat of it,” i.e., whatever is distinguished as being for you [your consumption], should be used as food.

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, 5.11

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Building upon the essence of this verse (Leviticus 25.6), the Rabbis determined that all produce of the Shmita Yearwhatever is fit and intended for human consumptionshould specifically be used in such manner. Such produce must be eaten and enjoyed to their full potential as food.

None of it should be left to turn into garbage, and none of it should be prepared or used in a wasteful manner.

This general intention is called Kedushat Shvi’it, literally ‘The Sanctity of the Seventh [Year Harvest].’

Have you considered how much food is wasted by the agricultural industry, restaurants and the marketplace? Have you ever attempted to measure how much food is wasted in your own kitchen?

What might you or your family do on a Shmita Year (or in your daily practice) to help minimize your own food waste?

The contemporary world involves many instances of food substances being turned into non-food substances: products as different as ethanol, cars running on used vegetable oil, and compostable utensils and dishes are three obvious examples. The text, on the face of it, would seem to suggest rabbinic disapprobation of such products, for the Shmita Year.

What is your view? Do you think transforming food into useful non-edible substances would be considered a waste of food?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 8. Shmita & Animals Just as we have learned that the produce of the Shmita Year can be harvested when it is treated as ownerless (and fences blocking such open access is removed), how can we expand this towards animals? How would removing all fences and cages around our domesticated animals, allowing them free access to wild pasture and food, affect our systems of animal husbandry and crop farming?

What does the second source imply about the relationship between domesticated animals and wild animals, based on their food needs and Biur?

How do you think our relationships with animals are directly connected to the wider paradigm of Shmita values and ideals?

Produce that is set aside for human consumption should not be fed to domesticated animals, beasts, and fowl. If an animal went under a fig tree under its own initiative and began eating the fruit, we do not require [the owner] to bring it back, for [Leviticus 25:7] states: “And for the animal and the beast in your land shall be all the produce to eat.”

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Just as one is obligated to remove food stored for human consumption [at the time of Biur], so too, must he remove animal feed from his home and he may no longer feed it to a domesticated animal, if that type of produce is no longer available in the field [for a wild animal to eat of it].

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, 5.5 & 7.6

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See section 4, source #4 for a further reading on this.

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Closing Questions: What do you think the significance was for all farmers to create a fallow, non-agricultural year all at once, rather than ensure individual fallow periods for each farm’s own particular schedule and need?

What is your relationship to your local foodshed: growing, harvesting, distributing, processing, consuming? How directly would you be affected by such a year as Shmita?

How might anticipation of the Shmita Year affect the design of our food systems during the first six years of the cycle so that we can ensure local food systems based in perennial and wild plants, and shared diets based on seasonal and ripe foods?

If eating perennial, local, seasonal, and fresh food is already something that’s important to you, how does knowing that these are key components of the Shmita ideal affect your relationship to your food choices? To Jewish tradition? If these aren’t food habits you’ve taken on in your life, how does reading about them in the context of Shmita change their value to you? Take a moment to fully consider the benefits and challenges of eating in such a way.

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical PART 2: SABBATICAL ECONOMIC SYSTEMS The Shmita Year was directly linked to economic systems, as much as it was to agricultural systems. Similar to agriculture, our economic systems are a clear reflection on society’s wider values and priorities, especially in terms of how we determine wealth and its measurements. At its core, an economy is a collection of societal agreements based upon on how people come together to produce, consume, and exchange products, commodities, and services. So in this section, we explore Sabbatical economics and its systems of exchange.

How was the marketplace affected during this Shmita Year? How did business transactions and monetary use change during this time period? What was the nature of the debt release? How were relationships between rich and poor affected? And perhaps most important, what were the interpersonal dynamics between giver and receiver, between producer and consumer, on this year, and during the other six years, in anticipation of the Shmita Year?

1. Sale of Produce What are the distinctions between selling food in a Shmita Year and the traditional market sale of produce during all other years?

The opening line of this source states that we cannot use the produce of Shmita for ‘commercial activity.’ Beyond the further references in the source, what other actions or intentions would you consider to fall under the category of ‘commercial activity’?

Once food is no longer marked with a price tag, and is no longer bought in a marketplace, how might your perspective of food change? How much of your relationship to food is determined by its price?

If you would not be able to purchase your produce at the market, what are other ways you might consider to ensure you can access produce?

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JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

We may not use the produce of the Sabbatical year for commercial activity. If one desires to sell a small amount of the produce of the Sabbatical year, he may.

However, the money he receives [in return] has the same holy status as the produce of the Sabbatical year. He should use it only to purchase food and eat that food according to the restrictions of the holiness of the Sabbatical year. The produce that was sold retains the holiness it possessed previously.

[In the Sabbatical year,] one should not reap vegetables from a field and sell them… because this is using the produce of the Sabbatical year for commercial activity. If one reaped vegetables to partake of them and some were left over, he may sell the remainder (since the harvest was clearly for personal use).

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 6.1-2

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2. The Value of Money Just as one must remove the produce of the Sabbatical year, so too, one must remove the money [that was received in exchange for it]. What is implied? One sold pomegranates of the Sabbatical year and used the money received in return for them [to purchase] food. When there are no longer any pomegranates on the trees in the field, but he remains in possession of the money he received for selling them, he is obligated to remove it from his possession.

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 7.7

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How is this passage’s treatment of seasonality similar to the text about Biur (section 3.1, source #5)?

How does the use of money shift during the Shmita Year, specifically in regards to selling or buying foods? What does it mean for money to have a ‘holy status,’ as stated in the previous source?

What happens to money when its value is not determined by banks or governments, but is instead directly connected to the sanctity and availability of food?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 3. The Casual Marketplace Elsewhere the Torah does indeed stress the importance of adding weights and measures: “Do not falsify measurements of length, weight or volume. You must have an honest balance, honest weights, an honest dry measure, and an honest liquid measure” (Leviticus 19.35-36). How does such a radical departure from this practice affect the overall marketplace? How might you feel selling or buying food in this manner?

When the produce of the Sabbatical year is sold, it should not be sold by measure, nor by weight, nor by number, so that it will not appear that one is selling produce in the Sabbatical year. Instead, one should sell a small amount by estimation to make it known that [the produce] is ownerless.

And the proceeds of the sale should only be used to purchase other food.

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 6.3

Why would ‘estimation’ be preferred? Where else might you trade or sell casually? How might this shift your perspective of an economic transaction?

How can something that is ‘ownerless’ be sold?

How might this shift your perspective on economic transactions and property?

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4. Regulated Sales These are the utensils which a craftsman is not permitted to sell in the Sabbatical year to someone who is suspected of violating the Sabbatical laws: a plow and all of its accessories, a yoke for a team of oxen, a winnowing fork, and a mattock (hand-tool similar to pick-axe). This is the general principle: Any [utensil] that is exclusively used for a type of work that is forbidden in the Sabbatical year is forbidden to be sold to a person suspect [to violate the laws of ] the Sabbatical year.

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Do you agree with the rabbis’ implication that it should be our personal responsibility to not support those who are not observing the Shmita Year?

What else would you consider taking off the market during the Shmita Year? What wider implications would Shmita have beyond agricultural production?

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 8.2

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 5. Debt Release In Jewish economic law, interest is not allowed to be charged on a loan, as stated in Exodus 22.25: “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not act toward him as a demanding creditor. Do not charge any interest upon him.” Do you think a debt release is more feasible if the debts did not come with the added expenses of interest?

For more on Jewish lending, see section 4, source #7 and Appendix B. What is significant about the debt being canceled at the end of the Shmita Year as opposed to its beginning?

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It is a positive commandment to nullify a loan in the Sabbatical year, as [Deuteronomy 15:2] states: “All of those who bear debt must release their hold.”

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The Sabbatical year does not nullify debts until its conclusion. [This is derived as follows: Deuteronomy 15:1-2] states: “At the end of seven years, you shall effect a remission.” Therefore if one lent money to a colleague in the Sabbatical year itself, he may demand payment of his debt for the entire year. When the sun sets on the night of Rosh HaShanah of the eighth year, the debt is nullified.

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 9.1 & 4

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6. Returning Debt Whenever anyone returns a debt, despite the fact that the Sabbatical year has passed, the spirits of our Sages are gratified because of him…When returning a loan, the debtor should not tell the creditor: “I am giving this to you as payment of my debt.” Instead, he should tell him: “This money is mine, and I am giving it to you as a present.”

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If a debtor returned a debt, but did not make the above statement, the lender should turn the conversation to the point where the debtor says: “This money is mine, and I am giving it to you as a present.” If the debtor does not make such statements, the creditor should not accept it from him.

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 9.28-29

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Although debts were in fact released on the Shmita Year, the hope would be that those who borrowed would eventually find a way to return the loan, when enough funds were available. Do you think this intention of returning payment was critical in supporting a successful debt release every seven years?

Why do you think the verbal statement clarifying the payment as a gift was such an important part of this interaction? What changes when a re-payment of a debt is offered as a gift? For the lender? For the borrower?

How might gift giving/ receiving fit into your own economic exchanges?

What are some ways we might facilitate and support such interpersonal relationships between lender and borrower today, especially in such a fast-paced, global economy?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Codifying the Sabbatical 7. Pruzbol A Pruzbol simply means a ‘legal amendment.’ The debt cancellation during the Shmita Year was specific to peer-to-peer loans. However, loans that were issued by the courts would not be canceled.

So a Pruzbol allows a lender to transfer his or her ‘loan’ to the courts for the Shmita Year and reclaim it after the Shmita Year has passed. In this way, the debt is not canceled.

How do you feel about this rabbinic decree? Do you think Hillel was justified in his decision?

Hillel is famous for the story of standing on one foot and teaching that the ‘entire’ Torah can be distilled into the command to ‘that which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.’ How do you think the Pruzbol fits in with this teaching?

When Hillel the Elder saw that the people would refrain from lending to each other and thus violated the words of the Torah [Deuteronomy 15:9]: “Lest there be a wicked thought in your heart,” [to cease from lending because of fear that the debts would be released], he ordained a pruzbol [literally, a legal amendment] so that debts would not be nullified and people would still lend to each other.

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This represents the body of a pruzbol: “I am notifying you, so-and-so and soand-so, (the two judges of the court), that I reserve the right to collect all the debts [owed] to me at any time I desire.” The judges or the witnesses should sign below.

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A pruzbol may be composed only when [the borrower possesses] land. If the borrower does not possess land, the lender should grant the borrower even the slightest amount of land—even enough to grow a cabbage stalk—in his field. [Even if ] he lent him place for an oven or a range, a pruzbol may be composed.

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– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 9.16 & 8-19

Why do you think it was so important in Hillel’s time to clarify that a Pruzbol could only be composed if the person in debt had access to a piece of land?

See section 1, source #9 for a glimpse into biblical land markets.

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Pruzbol & Generous Giving As you consider the Pruzbol, also think of the forewarning we received through the Torah (Deuteronomy 15.9/section 1, source #4): “Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: ‘The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,’ so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing…[rather] give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart.”

If someone approached you for a loan, would you offer it knowing that when the Shmita year arrived, it might be canceled?

To learn more about different types of economic lending aligned with Shmita values, see appendix B: Shmita Economics.

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Closing Questions: What is true wealth in a Shmita Year? How is this measured?

Do you think the release of debts commanded for the Shmita Year is realistic? Why or why not? What systems would need to be in place to make it possible?

What is your own relationship to money and the marketplace? What do you think would need to change in today’s economy to support the values and ideals of the Shmita tradition? Are these changes ones you would want to support?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Section 4

Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita: From Exile to Return TRADITIONALLY, Shmita applied only in the land of Israel. It is not considered a halacha (law) to observe Shmita outside of Israel. In the more than 2,000 years since being exiled from the land of Israel, Jewish tradition continued to evolve and develop, forming a strong identity that did not include the practice of Shmita. Yet, throughout this time, Jewish sages and leaders carried the spark of this tradition, writing romantically and powerfully about this practice. In this section, we offer a few of these voices, ranging in time from the immediate post-exile period to the early settlements in pre-state Israel.

As you read these texts, consider how the Rabbis had the opportunity to explore Shmita and embrace its spiritual and moral values without also having to face the challenges it came with. How do you think this may have changed their relationship with this law? What do you think the intention of the Rabbis were, in teaching about Shmita, and keeping its memory alive, in a period when it was not being observed? And for those of us still living outside of Israel, how might these voices influence our own thinking about Shmita today?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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4

Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita 1. Shmita as the Heart of Torah In what way do you think the commitment to enter into relationship with the Shmita Cycle would ‘prepare’ the tribes to be able to fully receive the Torah?

Why do you think Rabbi Yishmael chose Shmita as the archetypal commandment to agree to, which would symbolize and represent all laws to follow?

Which commandment would you choose?

This midrash below adds imagery and texture to a powerful moment in Jewish tradition: Following the revelation on the mountain, where the tribes of Israel received the 10 Commandments, Moses offered further guidance, while reading from the Book of the Covenant. Upon his conclusion, the tribes of Israel famously responded, “Na’ase V’nishma” “We will do and we will listen.”

“And Moses took the book of the covenant, and read so the people could hear; and they said: ‘All that God has spoken we will do, we will obey.”

(Leviticus 24.7) Rabbi Yishmael asked: From where did Moshe begin to read? “When you settle the land, the land shall observe a Sabbath of the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field…but in the Seventh Year the land shall have a complete rest.” Shmita, Yovel, blessings, and curses. And how did he conclude? “These are the laws, statutes and teachings.” They said, “We accept!” When he saw that they had received it upon themselves, he said: “Behold, you are prepared. Tomorrow come and receive all the laws upon yourselves.”

– Mechilta of Rabbi Yishmael, Parashat Yitro, 3 (300 CE)

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From Exile to Return

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2. Shmita & Personal Strength “The mighty in strength that fulfill His word” (Psalms 103:20). To whom does the Scripture refer? R. Isaac said, “To those who are willing to observe the Sabbatical Year. In the way of the world, a man may be willing to observe a commandment for a day, a week, a month, but is he likely to continue to do so through the remaining days of the year? But throughout that year this mighty man sees his field declared ownerless, his fences broken down, and his produce consumed by others, yet he continues to give up his produce without saying a word. Can you conceive a person mightier than such as he?”

– Midrash Rabbah, Leviticus 1.1 (400 CE)

The Rabbis are designating respect and honor to those who are able to keep the Shmita Year. Do you think the challenges of the Shmita Year would be ones you would be able to deal with?

According to this midrash, what is the essence of the 'might' and 'strength' that characterizes the person who keeps Shmita?

Many of the mitzvot are challenging in their own ways.

Why do you think Rabbi Isaac chose Shmita beyond all the other mitzvot to personify ‘the mighty in strength’?

One who prepared before Shabbat will eat on Shabbat; but one who didn’t prepare before Shabbat, what will he eat on the Shabbat?

– Talmud Bavli, Avoda Zara 3a

Replace the word Shabbat with Shmita, which itself is a yearlong Shabbat.

What would be involved in preparing for Shmita? Do you think this work is a part of the 'might' and 'strength' that the earlier midrash celebrates?

What is the balance between faith and active preparation within the Shmita Cycle?

JEWISH INSPIRATION. SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES.

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Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita 3. Shmita & Our Relationship to Land How might your relationship to land and other personal resources/property change when you release your own sense of control? If such a ‘release’ became a continual practice, how would this shape your sense of ownership?

What is the potential consquence of thinking property and resources belong to you? How might this consciousness be affecting our global environmental and social health today?

How does the practice of Shmita imply receiving ‘a legacy’ or a heritage?

Is there any piece of land that you have been in relationship with in such a way? What are some ways to ‘merit’ the opportunity to call a land home for generations?

A disciple came and asked R. Abbahu: ‘What is the reason for the Sabbatical year?’ ‘Now,’ said R. Abbahu, ‘Sow for six years and let go of the land in the seventh year: in order that you know that the land is Mine” – Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 39a

“When you come into the land” (Leviticus 25.2) implies no conquest but the acquisition of a legacy. This may foster the illusion that the Land belongs to Israel permanently and unconditionally, to be inherited by their children to be tilled and cultivated, and to reap the fruits of their sweat and toil. To counter any such notion, God says, the Land which I give to you, i.e. it is not a Land given as an irreversible inheritance, but a pledge renewed on condition that you merit it. However, if you turn away from Me, I shall take it away from you and give it to others.”

– Rabbi Moshe Alshich (16th Century) For the full text referenced here, from Leviticus 25.2, as well as its direct connection to Shmita, see section 1, source #2. And for a reference to the way land was valued in relation to the Jubilee Cycle, see section 1, sources #8-9.

Why do you think the Rabbis chose these particular actions as a trigger for exile? What is the connecting link between them?

What is exile to you? How do you experience this in your own life and how might you sense it in the society you live in?

How is exile connected to our relationship with food and economy? How might these values of Shmita offer us a redemption from this sense of exile, and a return ‘home’?

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Exile comes upon the world on account of idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, and the failure to observe the Shmita.

– Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers), 5.11 (3rd Century)

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4. A Return to Eden ‘And the wolf shall lie down with the lamb’ (Isaiah 11.16)—this was how it was in the time of Adam and at the beginning of the creation, and we also know very clearly that the Earth is now cursed with thorns and thistles whereas it never used to be, and animals never used to tear each other up for food, etc. So as a reminder of the past and to serve as inspiration for the future, the Almighty has commanded the mitzvah of the Shmita Year which draws our attention to the time of the creation and the time of the coming of the Messiah…’And for your cattle and for the beast which is in the your land shall all the produce be to eat, etc.’(Leviticus 25.7), it is in fact a kind of promise, that is to say, if you do all of this, the time will come when cattle and beasts will eat together etc. For their abandoning everything in the year of the Shmita to the cattle and the beasts is a sign of what was and will again be, for no longer will they eat bread by the sweat of their brow, and the wild animals will not harm the cattle. So therefore, whoever observes the mitzvot which signify this, will be privileged to experience all of these things.”

– Rabbi Saul Mortera, Sefer Giv’at Shaul (17th Century)

Do you see a correlation between the reality of Shmita and the utopia that is depicted in the Garden of Eden? Is this the ultimate ‘home’ Shmita will bring us back to?

What are the characteristics of this reality that Rabbi Mortera is highlighting?

Why do you think Rabbi Mortera is referencing ‘by the sweat of their brow’, as in the curse Adam and Eve were given upon being sent out of Eden? Is Shmita a rectification for this curse?

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Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita 5. What’s Mine is Yours If private acquisition and ownership creates a sense of ‘what’s mine is mine’, how does Shmita promote a sense of ‘what’s mine is yours’?

See source #2 in section 3.1 for more background on these topics.

What are some moments in your life where you would rather say ‘what’s mine is mine’? And in what ways do you practice sharing of resources and property, rooted in the value of ‘what’s mine is yours’?

The year of Shmita…promotes a sense of fellowship and peace...for one is not allowed to exercise over any of the seventh year produce the right of private ownership. And this is undoubtedly a primary factor in promoting peace since most dissension originates from the attitudes of ‘mine is mine,’ one person claiming ‘it is all mine’ and the other also claiming ‘it is all mine.’

But in the seventh year all are equal, and this is the real essence of peace.

– Kli Yakar, on Devarim 31.12 (16th Century) The matter of Shmita and Yovel correspond to the way of acting, mentioned in the Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers, 5:10]: 'One who says "What's mine is yours, and what's yours is yours," this is a righteous person'.

- Mei Shiloach (19th Century)

Do you think those who were keeping Shmita and being sieged by the army of Antiochus would have agreed with the Kli Yakar? (section 2, source #7) Or how about those who were donating their harvests to the collective storehouses? (section 2, source #8)

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6. A Temple in Time The Shmita Year teaches us further that the rich should not lord it over the poor.

Accordingly, the Torah ordained that all should be equal during the seventh year, both the rich and the needy having access to the gardens and fields to eat their fill…Yet another reason [for Shmita]: in order that they should not always be preoccupied with working the soil to provide for their material needs. For in this one year, they would be completely free. The liberation from the yoke of work would give them the opportunity for studying Torah and wisdom. Those who are not students will be occupied with crafts and building and supplying these needs in Eretz Yisrael. Those endowed with special skills will invent new methods in this free time for the benefit of the world.

– Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Sefer Habrit, Behar (19th Century)

The Seventh Millennia:

It has been taught in accordance with Rav Kattina: Just as the seventh year is one year of release in seven, so is the world: One thousand years out of seven shall be fallow, as it is written… ‘A Psalm and song for the Sabbath day’ (Psalm 92) meaning an era that will be entirely Shabbat.

– Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 97a

According to Rabbinic tradition, just as the cycle of seven appears in days, weeks, and years, so does it also appear in millennia. On the year 6000 of the Hebrew calendar, which marks the start of the seventh millennium, a radically new era will begin and the great thousand-year ‘Temple in Time’ will arrive. This period is associated with the Messianic era. Can you imagine Shmita as a microcosm of a thousand-year-long Shabbat? Based on the values of Shmita and Shabbat, how would you envision this time?

What is the link between Rabbi Kalischer’s two reasons for Shmita? Is the ideal of a Sabbatical only a luxury the rich can afford? How could we create societal systems which would support the possibility of a Sabbatical for all societal classes?

Have you ever taken a personal Sabbatical? What was that experience like? If not, how would you fill your time if you had one year of rest from work? What goals would you have for this year?

From what you know of Shmita, do you think this period of time would create a sense of personal freedom?

Imagine if our society functioned in such a way that every career included one year off, every seven years. How do you think this might change the way our society functions?

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Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita 7. The Balancing of the Seventh Year Do you see Shmita as a societal re-set, setting straight ‘societal ills’ and inequalities, as Rav Kook describes?

Do you agree with Rav Kook’s statement that debt has become ‘a major source of power for the elite’? If so, who are the elite? Do you feel empowered/ disempowered in your role as lender/borrower? How might this relate to a teaching from the Rambam that lending is the highest form of charity, because, if done correctly, it truly empowers the borrower (Mishne Torah, Seder Zera’im, Gifts to the Poor, 10.7)?

How could and should we develop healthier models of giving? Healthier models of entering into debt?

Rav Kook (1865 – 1935) was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Palestine. He was a teacher, writer, and poet. His works were filled with the love of the land of Israel as a home for the spiritual maturation of Jewish tradition. He was known for his universalistic appreciation for humanity and creation, as well as his efforts to build relationships between the religious and secular communities in the development of Israel. He authored Shabbat Ha’aretz, which was partly a poetic, spiritual celebration of the importance of Shmita, as well as a detailed account of the laws relating to the usage of Heter Mechira (see section 5, source #2).

The seventh year serves to rectify the social ills and inequalities that accumulate in society over the years. When poorer segments of society borrow from the wealthy, they feel beholden to the affluent elite. “The debtor is a servant of the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). This form of subservience can corrupt even honest individuals in their dealings with the rich and powerful.

The Sabbatical year comes to correct this situation of inequality and societal rifts, by removing a major source of power of the elite: debts owed to them.

– Rav Kook (early 20th century), adapted by Rabbi Chanan Morrison

For more on Jewish practices of giving, see Appendix B.

What do you think Shabbat achieves for the individual, and how does Shmita transfer this to the nation, as a whole?

On a personal level, how might the practice of Shmita stir one’s own spiritual practice?

What changes about food when it is simply food, and not a part of commerce? How does the economy of food play in to the ‘coveting of wealth’?

See section 3.1, source #2 and section 3.2, source #1 for more discussion about food and commerce.

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What the Sabbath achieves regarding the individual, the Shmita achieves with regard to the nation as a whole. A year of solemn rest is essential for both the nation and the land, a year of peace and quiet without oppressor and tyrant…It is a year of equality and rest, in which the soul reaches out towards divine justice, towards God who sustains the living creatures with loving kindness. There is no private property and no punctilious privilege but the peace of God reigns over all in which there is the breath of life. Sanctity is not profaned by the exercise of private acquisitiveness over all this year’s produce, and the covetousness of wealth stirred up by commerce is forgotten.

For food – but not for commerce.

Life can only be perfected through the affording of a breathing space from the bustle of everyday life. The individual shakes himself free from ordinary weekday life at short and regular intervals-on every Sabbath…

– Rav Kook, Shabbat Ha’Aretz

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Closing Questions: Does the perspective of Shmita shift for you, when considering it simply as a system of values and ethics? Do you think Jewish culture could more deeply embody these values?

If so, how?

Do you think the Rabbis see the idealistic possibilities and utopian potential of Shmita as the core reason of its observance or as an added romantic layer? How do you think the fact that they were not actually observing Shmita affected their own personal perspectives?

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Rabbinic Voices & Visioning of Shmita

Shabbat Ha’aretz: The Vision for & Complexity of Shmita In September 2014, on the eve of the shmita year of 5775, Hazon will be publishing an English/Hebrew bilingual edition of Rav Kook's Shabbat Ha'aretz. The translation and accompanying notes were written by Rabbi Julian Sinclair, Hazon's Senior Rabbinical Scholar and Vice President at Energiya Global, an Israeli solar energy company. Below, Rabbi Sinclair offers an overview of the profound message of Shmita, as shared by Rav Kook in his Shabbat Ha’aretz.

Shabbat Ha’aretz, published by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook on the eve of the 1909-10 Shmita year, is undoubtedly the most important and influential book on Shmita to have appeared in the modern era. It is indispensable to understanding how Shmita is currently observed and not observed. The context, arguments and aftermath of Shabbat Ha’aretz remain formative forces upon the status of Shmita in the State of Israel today.

In advance of the 1909–10 Shmita, Rav Kook, who was then Chief Rabbi of Jaffa, saw that the rigorous observance of the commandment to cease agricultural work for a year could starve the pioneering Jewish farmers and uproot the precarious foothold they had established in the Land of Israel. He therefore permitted the farmers to sell their land to non-Jews for the duration of the Shmita, allowing them to work and avoid impoverishment. This permit, known as the Heter Mechirah had first been issued for the pioneering farmers of Israel during the Shmita year of 1888–9.

In Shabbat Ha’aretz, Rav Kook provided a thorough halachic grounding of the practice, which had the effect of essentially institutionalizing the Heter. Within the book is a rigorous and detailed halachic treatment of what was and wasn’t to be done in the Shmita of 1909– 10 and why. However, Rav Kook prefaced the book with an introduction that is a poetic and mystical paean to the possibilities of Shmita. The introduction is an ecstatic effort to render the reminder, as vivid as possible, of what Shmita could one day become.

In the prefatory section, Rav Kook paints a picture of Shmita as enabling a renewed connection to the divine life-force in each individual and within us collectively. Like Shabbat, Shmita quietens the tumult of the intervening periods and restores a more authentic relationship to ourselves, to each other, to nature, and to God. Its observance reveals the unique weave of socio-economic relationships that the Torah would have us pattern. The Jubilee year is a revelation of the cumulative insight and holiness that we will have achieved in the previous seven Shmita cycles. Its ideals of liberty and emancipation bear universal meanings for the whole of humanity.

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Rav Kook outlines a biblically-based schema of Jewish history in which our ancestors’ avaricious neglect of Shmita led to exile from the Land of Israel and a prolonged divorce from the earthly, physical dimensions of life. This lengthy period of ethereal existence refined the people’s ethical sensibility and they began once more to long for a return to their homeland.

Rav Kook hoped that this nascent resettlement of the land would lead one day to the mitzvot connected to the land, Shmita foremost among them, being observed in all their glory. Yet he realized that the state of the agricultural pioneers was still precarious and that most would need to avail themselves of the Heter Mechirah, so that the Yishuv could continue to grow and flourish to the point where a full Shmita observance would eventually become possible. Meanwhile, he urged his readers to continue to study all they could about Shmita, as learning lead to action and would help bring closer the day when Shmita would be observed in Israel as it was intended.

Shabbat Ha’aretz became a defining piece of Religious Zionist psak halachah (halachic decision-making) and has served as a lightning rod for controversy between Religious Zionists and Haredim (ultra-religious) about the proper parameters of halachic innovation in Israel. Yet throughout Shabbat Ha’aretz, and particularly its introduction, shines a vision of how Shmita could be much more than it is today. Rav Kook believed in the power for social and spiritual reawakening embodied in Shmita. He hoped that the temporary leniency he was proposing—enabling the land to be sold and Shmita effectively not observed—was actually one step on the journey towards the eventual and full renewal of Shmita. As he wrote in Shabbat Ha'aretz: “We must recognize that we are obligated to strive with all our strength so that in the end the sabbatical year will be increasingly observed in all its holiness.”

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Section 5

Back To The Land: Shmita in Israel, From Early Pioneers to Modern Times IT HAS BEEN

over 100 years since the Jewish people have returned to the land of their ancestors, the stories of their indigenous past. It has been 65 years since the formal state of Israel has been estbalished, and the question of what to do with Shmita is very much alive. Today, the arrival of the Shmita Year in Israel brings with it heated debates. For some, this tradition is a burden, an archaic notion worth forgetting. For others, it is a symbol of the hopeful culture that the Torah challenges us to create. As you read these texts considering Shmita in Israel today, try and shift your perspective towards the emotions, hopes, fears and desires of a young nation, taking shape once again, on a land they only dreamed about until now. Not only must they learn how to live on a land so different from where they came, they simultaneously must face many cultural riddles of how to renew the relationship between Torah laws and the land, in modern times. For Shmita, this means bringing abstract ideals to real-time applications. In this section, we introduce some voices grappling with this Shmita riddle, and some of the creative solutions that are emerging.

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Back To The Land 1. A First Impression Do you resonate with the feelings the Shlah Hakodesh was having upon his arrival to Israel? Do you think you would feel a personal connection to observing Shmita if you arrived in Israel on the Shmita Year?

Do you agree with his statement that ‘what is lost will be more than what is gained’ in terms of living in Israel while not following the commandments of the land? Is the holiness of living in this land lost by not observing its laws?

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One year after I arrived in the Holy City of Jerusalem, it is the Sabbatical year. Many of the inhabitants of the Holy Land wish to exempt themselves because of the great difficulty; the year preceding Shmita there was a famine in the land and there was insufficient food, day by day…I have contemplated the matter to myself and have thought, “I have a greater obligation to observe than they do, and even to sell the shirt off my back.

God will say to me, Why have you come from a place where you were exempt from this and come to a place of obligation? And now in this place you will abandon this mitzvah? Why have you come to profane my land?”...The mitzvah of dwelling in the Land of Israel should not come through the sins of ignoring the mitzvoth of the Land, in which case what is lost will be more than what is gained.

– Rabbi Isaiah ben Avraham HaLevi, Shlah HaKodesh (16th Century)

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2. Recalling an Ancient Practice & Its Challenges Since the Zionist movement began to encourage agriculture in Palestine, the observance of Shmita has become a problem for solution. The leaders of the movement, who had the interest of the colonists at heart and feared that the Shmita might jeopardize their existence, claimed that the law is now obsolete.

The Jewish periodicals, especially “Ha-Meliz,” strenuously objected to enforcing the law of Shmita upon the colonists. When the Shmita Year 5649 (= 188889) approached, the question was submitted to the chief rabbis in Europe and Palestine. Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spector was inclined to be lenient, and advocated a nominal sale of the land to a non-Jew [Heter Mechira] and the employment of non-Jewish laborers during Shmita. But the Ashkenazic rabbis in Jerusalem opposed any subterfuge, and issued the following declaration: (“Ha-Habazzelet,” Oct. 26, 1888, No. 6; “Jew. World,” Nov. 16, 1888)

What are arguments for and against Heter Mechira?

Agriculturally? Economically?

Spiritually? In early times and in our current era?

If you had been an early settler in Israel, would you agree with Rabbi Spector or Baron de Rothschild? If you lived outside of Israel, would you have contributed to Dr. Hildesheim’s campaign?

“As the year of the Shmita, 5649, is drawing nigh, we inform our brethren the colonists that, according to our religion, they are not permitted to plow or sow or reap, or allow Gentiles to perform these agricultural operations on their fields (except such work as may be necessary to keep the trees in a healthy state, which is legally permitted). Inasmuch as the colonists have hitherto endeavored to obey God’s law, they will, we trust, not violate this Biblical command.

An appeal, signed by prominent Jews in Jerusalem, for funds to enable the colonists to observe the Shmita was directed to the Jews outside the Holy Land. Dr. Hildesheim as president of the society Lema’an Ziyyon, in Frankfort-on-the-Main, collected donations for this purpose. Baron Edmond de Rothschild, being informed by Rabbi Diskin that the law of Shmita is valid, ordered the colonists under his protection in Palestine to cease work during the Sabbatical year.

– Jewish Encyclopedia, 1900

Heter Mechira literally means ‘Permit of Sale.’ Heter Mechira allows for the symbolic selling of agricultural land to a non-Jew, for the one-year Shmita period. Once the ownership of land has been transferred to someone who is not Jewish, the laws of Shmita no longer apply to the land itself, and food can be grown on it. While the state of Israel has developed a successfully strong and secure agricultural sector since its early pioneer days and the initial use of Heter Mechira, this method of symbolic land transfer is still the normative practice on a Shmita Year.

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Back To The Land 2. Recalling an Ancient Practice & Its Challenges Compare this text with Rav Kook’s writings in section 4, source #7.

What tensions does he feel around the observance of Shmita? What was at stake?

This is merely a temporary measure that we implemented only because of the overwhelming need to do so. God forbid that one should consider annulling a great and central mitzvah [commandment] such as the holiness of the Shmita unless it is a matter of life and death, such that if we do not sell the land, many will die of starvation and the fledging new Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael will be destroyed. However, at a time that a competent Beit Din [ Jewish Court] will conclude that the sale is not necessary and that the nation can observe Shmita without endangering lives, then God forbid that the sale should take place in such circumstances.

– Rav Kook (Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, Israel, 1921-35) For further reference to the concerns around Heter Mechira, read an excerpt of a letter from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, dated from 1958, over 20 years after Rav Kook’s time:

As we approach the Shmita Year 5719 we solemnly declare that it is our aim to uphold the laws of the Shmita Year in all their details.

Unfortunately, however, the prevailing circumstances force us to make use again—as a temporary measure—of the Heter mechirah in accordance with the practice of our learned and pious predecessors of blessed memory.

The Heter is granted to all those who signed the prepared authorization.

Detailed instructions as to the kinds of work permitted or forbidden during the Shmita Year will be given in due course by the Chief Rabbinate.

May the Almighty in His great mercy hasten the time of our complete redemption so that we may be privileged to observe the laws of Shmita and Yovel in their entirety, as well as the other laws referring to the soil of the Holy Land, including those referring to the Holy Temple. May it be rebuilt speedily in our days. Amen.

– Chief Rabbinate, 1958

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3. Modern Tensions Those who do not wish to rely on this Heter Mechira have the option of going to the trouble of importing produce from abroad. If they [believe] that the holiness of Shmita does not apply to produce grown by a non-Jew…they may purchase produce from the fields cultivate by Arabs. But what of this running to a lone fruit and vegetable seller in order to pay exorbitant prices for the produce grown by non-Jews, when the people buying are so annoyed by the trip and expenses, on the one hand, and half-proud of themselves for their ‘great righteousness,’ on the other? What has this to do with the biblical rule that “you may eat whatever the land produces during its Sabbath”? Is there any recognizable connection between this pride [of buying kosher Shmita produce] and the feeling of man’s subservience and the Creator’s supremacy, which lies at the heart of the mitzvah of Shmita? Among those who are punctilious about observing the prohibition on uncultivated produce, how many of them accept and live the Shmita Year in simple joy, as opposed to the many who are waiting, with all but bated breath, for it to end?

Rabbi Lichtenstein is highlighting the stress and paradox that the Shmita Year brings up. Those who do follow the laws in a modern context seem quite removed from the original intention of the law.

Do you think observance of the laws of Shmita without a connection to the original intention of the law serves any value?

Should this be pursued even if it is causing wider tension on a societal level?

– Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Yeshivat Har Etzion, Israel, 1973 The mitzvah of Shmita was intended for a simple agricultural society. Most Jews in the Land of Israel in biblical and Talmudic times grew the food they required. During the Shmita Year, it was relatively easy to stop working the land and eat whatever grew on its own. The crops in the field were left unclaimed, and the poor and the city dwellers could come and eat. If we lived in such a society today, we could probably observe the mitzvah of Shmita as it was legislated. But, today, 95% of the country’s inhabitants live in cities, far from food sources. If all the kibbutzim and moshavim observed Shmita as it was legislated, a life-threatening situation would develop. In addition, at the present time, most of Israel’s agricultural produce is destined for export.

Agrexco – the Israel Agricultural Export Company – exports 4 billion shekels (1 billion dollars) of produce every year. If all the farmers were to observe the mitzvah of Shmita according to biblical law, Israeli agriculture would collapse and this could bring disaster to the State of Israel… If sowing in the seventh year was allowed in order to pay taxes, it is even more justified to allow this to ensure the livelihood of tens of thousands of Jewish farmers and in order to ensure the economic viability of the State of Israel!

Do you agree that Shmita is only relevant to a rural agricultural society, where most people were engaged in land cultivation and food production? Since our modern societies today are predominantly urban, should Shmita no longer be an obligation?

To learn more about the leniencies of Shmita practice during Temple times due to taxes, see section 2, source #5

– Rabbi David Golinkin, Jerusalem, 1985 (excerpt from extensive halachic teshuva/ responsa on the question of observing Shmita in modern times)

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Back To The Land 4. Shmita in Israel Today If you were a farmer in Israel, what would your approach be during the Shmita Year? And if you were a consumer? What would you add to this debate, if anything?

Do you think Shmita is meant to be followed by the strict letter of the law or should it be adapted for modern times?

As Israel’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables. Rabbis are pitted against one another, the state and the religious authorities are in conflict, the Israeli Supreme Court is involved, the devout are confused and the cost of produce is rising. And a country in love with flowers and proud of “making the desert bloom,” in its own disputatious way, is letting much of its land go to seed. This year, 5768 by the Jewish calendar, is a Shmita, or sabbatical year…

That presumably worked fine in a primitive economy before decent fertilizer, but Shmita presented problems for the new Jewish state. Zionism was founded on the notion of a return to the land, but a modern country cannot live on what falls to the ground.

– As Farmers and Fields Rest, a Land Grows Restless, NY Times Oct. 7, 2007 Yochay Sorok and thousands of his fellow farmers should be taking the year off right now, allowing their land, and themselves, to rest in observance of a Jewish tradition that dates to Leviticus. But Sorok, customer relations manager for the Chubeza organic farm outside Jerusalem, is working—as are the vast majority of Israeli farmers. Just before the start of the Jewish New Year on Sept. 13, Sorok signed papers at the offices of his local chief rabbi, technically selling the farm to a non-Jew. He never met his farm’s “buyer” and doesn’t need to.

Next September, the purchase check will be torn up and everything will return to normal. “It’s a trick. But it’s a smart trick,” Sorok said of the nominal land sale. “That’s the Jewish way of dealing with the Torah. You reinterpret—not for small, selfish reasons but for good reasons. . . . Giving people a living is a higher cause.”

– In Israel, It’s Temple vs. State Over Farming, Los Angeles Times Dec. 7, 2007 Every seven years, an increasing number of farmers defy economic logic and leave their lands fallow for the agricultural sabbatical. In the 1950s and '60s, only about 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of land lay fallow. Seven years ago, in 2001, it was about 220,000 dunams. And next year, 3,000-3,500 farmers will observe shmita, and 400,000 dunams will lie fallow, according to Keren Shvi'it.

"This is very exciting," said Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America. "We are hopeful that with the proper support, close to 40 percent of arable land in Israel will be resting this year." Over the last few decades agriculture in Israel has moved from a mom-and-pop based system, in which individual families tilled a plot of land, to one made up of large-scale operators who work thousands of dunams. On his recent visit in preparation for the coming shmita, Bloom said he spoke to farmers who gross $1.5 million a year who were willing to shut down operations for Shmita.

– Michal Lando, Mitzva Makers, Jerusalem Post, July 24, 2007

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Beyond Heter Mechira, these are other creative approaches practiced in Israel today in relationship to Shmita: Otzar Beit Din: The Rabbinic Court ‘hires’ a farmer to supply them with permissible foods during the Shmita Year. In buying this food, the court remains within the boundaries of religious law, as they are paying the farmer only for his time as a ‘worker’ of the court, and not for the actual food that he is providing. The next step is getting the food to the customer.

Before the Shmita Year, stores sign up as in the court’s distribution system, paying for ‘membership’ rather than for the food they are receiving. In this way, no food is actually being sold even though harvests are still being distributed through the networks of the modern marketplace. (For the original model of Otzar Beit Din, see section 2, source #8) Shmita Farming: Foods which are permissible to be harvested during the Shmita Year are perennial harvests (fruits, nuts, vine crops, herbs). Foods which are permissible to be cultivated are those grown in systems which are not directly touching the ‘land’ of Israel, such as raised beds and hydroponics. Lastly, foods grown outside of the biblical borders of Israel, e.g. farms in the Golan and the Negev, are not affected by the laws of Shmita.

Leaving The Land Fallow: Keren HaShvi’it is a public fund established in Israel to raise money for religious farmers who choose to follow the practices of the Shmita Year. This fund provides the farmers with financial support to compensate for lost income. In addition, they also offer guidance and advice to make sure the farmers fully understand how they can best prepare for the Shmita (focus on storage crops, perennial plants) and what agricultural practices they can continue with, once the Shmita Year has arrived.

Debt Release: Keren Nediveh Aretz is a public loan amnesty fund, established to help bail out those in debt. This fund raises money which is distributed, as a loan, towards the end of the Shmita Year, to specific individuals the fund is working with. At the end of the Shmita Year, the ‘loan’ is forfeited, and the recipient uses this money to pay back his or her remaining debts.

Closing Questions: As Israel further develops as a Jewish country, there is the opportunity and challenges of building modern systems, rooted in practical halachot. Where should we celebrate and invest in this opportunity? And where should we develop separations to keep a healthy balance?

Is Shmita today a question primarily for Israel, or is this a system that we should consider adopting internationally, for all Jewish communities? What might Shmita look like outside of Israel?

How might Jewish communities in the Diaspora play a role in supporting the rise of the Shmita practice in Israel today?

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Back To The Land

Shmita Yisraeli: The Israel Shmita Initiative The fringe has made its way into the status quo. The social justice protests of the summer of 2011 heralded a growing (and, some would say, unusually mainstream) openness to questioning the social order, economic system, and political power structure in Israel. In this new reality, it is par for the course to hear ordinary Israelis discussing complex social and environmental issues. Even better, many are even beginning to talk about why it is a “Jewish thing” to work for change.

This is an amazing achievement. However, even if we could say “mission accomplished” on a certain stage in Israel’s societal evolution, it seemed clear to me that we are ready to take the conversation one step further…The 5775 Shmita year is timed perfectly to be just the sort of catalyst and medium Israeli society needs right now.

The Torah relates to Shmita primarily in the context of an agricultural society. But a contemporary approach understands Shmita as a lens through which to address pressing issues in the realms of education, social equity, culture, industry, and more.

Clearly, the above-described ideal has not yet caught on in the modern State of Israel. Instead, Shmita has become mired in legal, political, and economic issues that obscure its historical and ethical origins. For most Israelis, the topic of Shmita has been relegated either to the kitchen (kashrut observers must choose between a complex set of Shmita standards) or the garden (when am I allowed to cut the grass?!). The fierce debates around these issues not only exacerbate tensions between the secular and religious communities, but also detract from the underlying significance of Shmita.

It is time that we transcend these conflicts, and return Shmita to its rightful place in Jewish life – as a once-in-seven-years chance for reflection and rejuvenation in all sectors of society.

– Einat Kramer, Times of Israel, The Next Chapter in the Social Change Movement: Israeli Shmita, February 25, 2014

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In December 2013, the “Israeli Shmita Declaration” was signed in Tel Aviv by the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau, as well as tens of representatives of Jewish identity organizations, social activism NGOs, educational institutions, and businesses, marking the launch of the groundbreaking Israeli Shmita Initiative. At the launch event, round table discussion groups addressed the question “What is Shmita?” in the context of education, economy, welfare, environment, social justice, Israel-Diaspora relations, national unity, local community-building, and the business world. Shortly after, a special session in the Knesset featured ministers and MKs (led by MK Ruth Calderon, Chair of the Opposition, and MK Yitzchak Herzog) stating their commitment to promote a meaningful Shmita year in Israel.

Since then, the above-mentioned conference participants and government officials have been busy working together to build a wide-scale coalition that will effectively put the Shmita year back on the Jewish calendar year in the modern State of Israel, as a time of self-reflection, social involvement, and environmental responsibility. The initiative is a platform of individuals, NGOs, government officials, and corporate executives from all points on the Jewish spectrum. The Initiative is coordinated by Einat Kramer, Director of Teva Ivri, who works together with a wide range of organizations that share both the deep values of Shmita and a strong desire for change in Israeli society.

The Israeli Shmita Initiative, now in full swing leading up to the 5775 Shmita year, is introducing a range of programs, including free admission to nature reserves, debt relief for families in need, volunteer time banks, nation-wide Jewish learning, and more. Learn more at ishmita.co.il (Hebrew) o or shmitaproject.org/overview/israel-today (English).

The Israel Shmita Declaration The ancient mandate of Shmita obligates all farmers in the Land of Israel, once every seven years, to leave their fields fallow, relinquish ownership of the produce, let the soil rest, and enable all people (and animals, both wild and domestic) to take part in the land’s blessing. During this year, financial debts are cancelled, and people receive the opportunity to start over in a new period of financial and social freedom.

During Shmita, property assumes less importance, time is less pressured, and nature becomes much more than a resource to be exploited. Shmita presents an alternative to the race of modern life and is characterized by love of the people and Land of Israel, a heightened sense of social responsibility, and a framework for environmental practice. Shmita invites us to renew quality of life in all spheres of reality, through a unique public effort.

It is a year of social involvement, spiritual and ethical renewal, and environmental reflection.

It is a year of brotherhood and sisterhood, culture, spirit, family, and community.

It is a gateway in time, once in seven years, to renew the covenant between humans and earth.

It is a year that leaves a distinct impression on the subsequent six years.

Recognizing that the values of Shmita are fundamental to education in Israel, and with an understanding that with the return of the Jewish people to Zion, the Shmita year can now be actualized, we, the undersigned, seek to revitalize the Shmita year and establish it as a year of individual, social, communal, and national significance.

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Section 6

Reclaiming The Sabbatical Tradition: Exploring Shmita Today WE NOW STAND in an age of global connectivity, in an age of interfaith sharing, in an age of diversified, multi-layered, international Judaism. While Shmita may not define us as a Jewish people or be on our highest cultural priority list, a conversation and movement is growing to reclaim and re-imagine Shmita for our modern era. If Shmita was a radical, challenging proposition back in early Israelite culture, how much more so today, in an era of industrial agriculture and the global marketplace! After all this time of dormancy, the time has come to once again explore this question of Shmita. And in so doing, let us meet this ancient tradition anew, ripe and fresh, to harvest her lessons for us today, and begin a conversation which will ripple into years to come, many generations ahead. What does Shmita mean for you today? What do you think we should do with Shmita right now?

And how can we creatively adopt the core values and principles of this tradition to empower healthier, more sustainable, and resilient Jewish communities, both in Israel and beyond?

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Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition 1. Shmita as a Bubble in Time…

According to the authors, what is the purpose of Shmita and how might it co-exist with the other six years of the cycle?

Do you agree that ‘free economic competition is one of the most powerful motivations in life’ and that ‘humanity needs it’?

The Shmita/Jubilee idea is not dissimilar to the Socialist order: for it aims that society should, periodically, institute a great fundamental social revolution; that it should equalize all classes; that it should take from the wealthy and give to the destitute. There is, however, one real difference: the Shmita/Jubilee idea infers that after such a revolution, every man is free to start anew his social battle, free again to aspire, to utilize his energies and talents according to his desire. Here we do not find any 'once and for all'; here the reverse is true…

This concept of repeated economic upheavals [such as Shmita/Jubilee] is an attempt to correct the ills of economic liberalism, not to forestall them.

Quite on the contrary, this concept is clearly based on the conviction that free economic competition is one of the most powerful motivations in life. Let people struggle, lose and win. It is only necessary to cushion the arena with soft grass, so that whoever falls will not be too painfully injured.

This cushion is the Sabbath [and Shmita], the gleanings, the tithes, all the various means by which the State takes pains to prevent use from turning into exploitation, and poverty from becoming destitution.

– Zev Jabotinsky, The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings

It is difficult not to be impressed by the profundity of the idea that moves cautiously between the desire to preserve private property and the wish not to see property as the be-all and end-all. Shmita is a call to set apart a bubble in time, which slows economic activity down, and which fosters care, compassion and even partnership between all those who share the earth, including animals. The race will resume in the eighth year, because humanity needs it, but the idea and its memory will linger on beyond the confines of the sabbatical year, to the other six years of feverish productivity.

– Avi Sagi and Yedidya Stern, Rest, Share, Release, Ha’Aretz, Sept 24, 2007

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2. Shmita as the Ultimate Aim… The forcefulness that is inevitably a part of our regular, public lives lessens our moral refinement. There is always a tension between the ideal of listening to the voice inside us that calls us to be kind, truthful and merciful, and the conflict, compulsion, and pressure to be unyielding that surrounds buying, selling and acquiring things. These aspects of the world of action distance us from the divine light and prevent its being discernible in the public life of the nation. This distancing also permeates the morality of individuals like poison. Stilling the tumult of social life from time to time in certain predictable ways, is meant to move this nation, when it is well-ordered, to rise towards an encounter with the heights of its inner moral and spiritual life. We touch the divine qualities inside us that transcend all the stratagems of the social order, and that cultivates and elevates our social arrangements, bringing them towards perfection.

According to Rav Kook, what is the ultimate purpose of Shmita in relation to the other six years? How is this similar or different to the views of the authors on the previous page?

Which perspective do you resonate with more strongly?

Do you think that striving towards the values of Shmita can serve to bring us towards ‘perfection’?

– Rav Kook, Shabbat Ha’aretz We have here more than the commonplace struggle between a radical religious demand and an unconsenting world. Rather we have here an institution that in essence contests the legitimacy of that world, and threatens to become not merely the symbolic repudiation of its normal social and economic patterns, but its real menace and ultimately its victor. The potency of Shmita has been its historical doom.

– Gerald Blidstein, Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year

Do you think there can be a balance between the values of Shmita and the values of the ‘six year economy’? Or are the tensions between the notions of Shmita and the marketplace too radically in opposition to allow for a dynamic relationship?

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Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition 3. Tapping into Personal Faith Do you agree about the impractical nature of Shmita? If so, do you think Shmita itself is inherently impractical or does it just seem so because of the current cultural systems we have designed for ourselves?

How do you think personal sacrifice comes into play with the Shmita tradition? Note: The Hebrew word for sacrifice, Korban, shares the same root letters as the word me’karev, ‘to draw close together.’

How might this shift your perspective? What would your own personal sacrifice be in forming a relationship with a Shmita observance?

One should not be deterred from Shmita observance by the obvious impracticality of the mitzvah. Shmita, unlike many other mitzvot, becomes a test of belief and faith. The Torah, which otherwise adamantly dictates a practical approach to life, here demands a leap of faith and an abandonment of the everyday practicalities of living. I have felt that the mitzvah of Shmita is the Jewish community’s communal equivalent of the akeidah (sacrifice) of Yitzchak by Avraham, which was ordained on a personal level. The akeidah also was the height of impracticality. It flew in the face of all of the moral teachings and behavior of Avraham until that moment. Thus, it became the supreme test of faith in the lives of Avraham and Yitzchak and remains the symbol of Jewish belief and sacrifice until today…The modern world is long on narcissistic pleasure and short on faith and sacrifice. But without faith, without a feeling of the spiritual and supernatural, life is a very scary place and experience.

– Rabbi Berel Wein

What is your own personal relationship to faith, trust, and belief? Is this something you try to cultivate in your life? How? What security might you find by ‘touching what is underneath the speed’? Is the possibility of letting go of that speed something you would like to invite into your life? Is there a fear that comes along with such an idea?

Something miraculous happens when we stop. We get to experience the power that nature knows called dormancy. Dormancy, that which is holding; the heartbeat that rests; the hibernating animals, all of winter; waiting and waiting…There are seeds inside each and every one of us, inside this culture, that cannot emerge because we do not know that dormancy does not mean death, resting does not mean disappearing.

What keeps us from stopping is that we are terrified of resting. We are afraid of the imaginative terrible things we will feel in the quiet. We fear that when we stop, even for a moment, the sheer enormity of our lives will overwhelm us. Our outspoken nd unspoken fears, they speed up our lives.

Like a stone being thrown over a lake, we've learned to skip so we don’t get too wet, and we are terrified that if we let the stone fall, we will disappear.

And so we think that our speed will save us from the void. We dance around the security that is offered from touching what is underneath the speed. Can we let go of the obsession of finishing what can’t be finished?

– Rabbi David Ingber, Shabbat Behar sermon, Romemu

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4. Cycles of Growth and Rest What would have happened if God had not paused—had become so joyful in the process of creating the Six Days that S/He had continued straight on, into a seventh and an eighth day of work?…An artist will tell you: if you are painting a picture, there comes a moment when one more paint stroke will ruin it. You have to know when to stop, catch your breath, and be at peace with your painting.

Then, on another canvas, you can start over. But always, in a rhythm, there most be a pause to not-do. If you will not stop to rest, the work will stop anyway willy nilly. By ruination, if we refuse to rest.

We need the Sabbath. It is the acceptance of a Mystery, the celebration of a Mystery rather than of Mastery…This does not mean cursing technology, work, production, consumption, accumulation. It means putting them in their proper place: within the framework of the Sabbath. [And] let it be clear that when I say the Sabbath, I do not mean only the literal Sabbath of the seventh day, nor even the extended Sabbaths of the seventh month, the seventh year, the fiftieth year. I mean a whole approach of mind and practice, a path of life that would affirm the worth of dawdling on the path.

As the artist of your own life, where would you like to put down the paint brush?

What is your personal relationship to this rhythm of creation and rest? Is this a rhythm you feel in-tune with?

Have you had moments where you have felt that times of non-action have been more productive and rewarding than the action itself?

– Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Godwrestling, Round2 What if we looked at Shmita not as a problem, but as a solution, and then considered what problems it’s meant to solve? In that light, Shmita becomes a political statement of social and environmental import, raising deep questions about the nature of a healthy and sustainable life, for individuals, society and the land.

For instance, currently only academics have a sabbatical year. Why? Our “affluent” society actually decreases leisure and family time, as more people not only choose to work to fulfill what they want to be, but feel compelled to work, in order to afford what society says they should have. Consumerism necessitates “producerism” to keep both supply and demand high. Yet as Shmita hints, people are indeed like the land, in ways that are more obvious in the modern world: For both, when overwork leads to exhaustion, we engineer continued “vitality” not with true renewal, but with chemicals… Just as silence is an integral part of speech, punctuated periods of fallowness are crucial for guaranteeing continued fertility.

How often to you experience a personal ‘fallow’ period? How do you perceive this period: is there any self-judgment or guilt? Or is there simple pleasure? Does it feel like an escape, or a return?

If you can craft a full year Sabbatical, how would you fill this time?

– Rabbi Jeremy Benstein, Stop the Machine! The Jerusalem Repot May 21, 2001

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Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition 5. Inviting Wilderness into Our Lives As of 2008, 27% of the land area in the United States was under some type of ‘protected’ status.

According to the Bureau of Land Management (U.S. Department of the Interior), there is only 2.5% of wilderness land in the lower 48 states.

This percentage is not evenly distributed across the country.

How might our human landscapes and societal culture be altered if a ‘seventh’ of each country, each state, each city, and each property was devoted to wilderness preservation?

How might you consider infusing an aspect of ‘wilderness’ into a ‘seventh’ of your own life practices?

Do you agree that the way we celebrate our relations with time should be reflected in the way we design our relations with space? What would this look like to you?

Man-made landscapes survive only at the sufferance of the wildness around them, or the wildness that remains in them. The flow of energy, water, nutrients, and genetic information; the maintenance of temperature and the mix of atmospheric gases within narrow limits; the fertility of the soil: all these are achieved by wild nature in ways we do not fully understand…In other words, humans and their allies are able to conquer the world, but they are not able to run it all by themselves. If the waves of human advance go too far or run too deep, they may finally bring about their own undoing.

Ecologists estimate that at a bare minimum, 5 to 10 percent of an ecosystem must be preserved if it is at all to stay healthy. Make it a seventh and you have a margin of error. Besides, it is hardly arbitrary—or it is arbitrary in a useful way—to join a culture’s sense of space to its sense of time, and to ground both in the bedrock of ancient symbols… If we can set aside sevenths of our time for holiness—that is, for purposes higher than human aggrandizement—why not sevenths of our space?

– Evan Eisenberg, Wilderness in Time, Sabbath in Space, Torah of the Earth Vol. 2

The land is a resource that belongs to God, not a resource that belongs to us.

The land requires redemption. What does that mean? When people require redemption it means they’ve been sold into slavery or they’ve been sent into exile and they are to be brought back. When the land requires redemption, it means restoration to its state of fertility and connection to God. And how does this redemption get accomplished? The land has to be fallow. It needs this period of rest, which is also a period of temporary wildness in order to be whole. And this process of re-entering that state of rest and fallowness is holy, just like the Temple. The Jubillee is a massive Temple in time; it’s a time when all space becomes sacred space that is owned by God…So the rule of the Sabbatical Year is not only a technical mitzvah. It’s a reminder that letting the earth be free of our control is good for us, and it is what God wants. Wild spaces are a delight for God, we need them, and they may save our lives.

– Rabbi Jill Hammer, Romemu, Shabbat Behar sermon

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6. Long Term Planning When you take the time to slow down and simply observe something—a plot of land, a group dynamic in your office or chicken flock, it gives you time to reflect on what is actually happening right in front of you.

This gives you information that can be useful as you move forward in creating better, more efficient, and abundant designs for living. The classic exhortation in a Permaculture design system is to observe your land for ONE YEAR before placing any permanent features. This gives you time to observe microclimates, the path of the sun, different types of soil in your plot, rainfall, neighbor impacts, and so on. When every action is a response to what you are actively observing, your efforts become more effective and there is less need to undo mistakes.

– K Ruby Bloom, Institute For Urban Homesteading

Permaculture is a social and ecological design system that is modeled upon interconnected relationships and patterns of resiliency we see in nature and all her diverse ecosystems. It stands for ‘Permanent Agriculture’ or ‘Permanent Culture,’ which its design principles aspire to help its users create.

Do you see a connection between the Shmita Cycle and the concept of observation, as practiced in Permaculture Design?

How often do you jump into a project without a clear and well thought-out plan of action?

What value does our society place on fast-paced action?

What might be accomplished if we were to dedicate time for observation before action?

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the Seventh generation.

– Great Law of the Iroquois

In what areas of your life do you engage in multi-year planning? How different or similar was your life 7 years ago? How easy (or hard) is it to imagine your life 7 years from now?

Do you think that wrestling with the challenges of Shmita today will help to create healthier, more abundant lives for our children’s children? Consider the source in section 1, source #6 on the tradition of Hakhel, and the role of children there.

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Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition 7. A Vision Whose Time Has Come The idea of a ‘sabbatical leave’ has become popular in certain professional fields. Beyond this one adaptation of Shmita, do you think this seven-year cycle, in all its components, can evolve into a universal message, similar to how the Sabbath has?

Do you think this is a tradition that is meant to be shared with the wider world, and practiced on a global scale?

By strange coincidence, I will be spending the sabbatical year… on sabbatical. And some weeks into my fallow year, I find myself joining the ranks of the Sabbateans. Sure, it was a mammoth task to clear my desk, tough to leave the shelter of my routine, and even harder to come to terms with the fact that I was not as indispensable as I liked to think. But all this only serves to convince me more of the universal need for time out; time to see ourselves not in terms of what we do, but what we are, and even, what we might become.

Run our lives according to ancient tenets? It wouldn’t be the first time. In a society in which, as recently as the last century, it was the norm for slaves to work from Christmas to Christmas, it was the notion of a universal weekly day of rest – the biblical edict of the Sabbath – that had more impact than any other single institution on preserving the dignity of the individual and improving their quality of life. If the weekly Sabbath could have such an impact, why not the sabbatical year? It may just be that the universal sabbatical is a 3000 year old idea whose time has come.

– Daniel Taub, Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom

The great prophets and sages of Judaism have always known that Halacha is not a closed system, but a set of practices that point towards a higher ethics and morality that ultimately create a vision for all of humanity, and that the Jewish mission is to carry this message forward towards ultimate acceptance by all of humankind. The stirrings in Israel and the Jewish world around a broadening and universalization of Shmita and its meaning indicate that the time has perhaps come in which, like the Sabbath, the message of Shmita can be heard by a humanity thirsty for a way forward towards a more just, beautiful and sustainable world. If we can articulate this message in contemporary terms, the Jewish people may once again make an enormous contribution to a global culture profoundly in need of guidance, meaning, and a unifying ethics.

– Micha Odenheimer, Judaism’s Next Great Gift to Humankind, Times of Israel, May 7 2014

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8. The Narrative of Shmita Let’s face it: Shmita has a marketing problem. It comes only once every seven years. It has little name recognition. It treads perilously close to being confused with the handy but derogating Yiddish word shmata – rag.

It has no memorable ritual to ground it; no identifiable symbol associated with it; no compelling narrative to frame it. It is – as presented in the Torah and in tradition – just a series of laws…So how do we capture the power of the seventh year in an image or symbol that can move the spirit?

As a start, we have to embed it in a story. Perhaps that is one of our first jobs this coming Shmita year: figuring out how to articulate, frame and fashion Shmita’s irresistible, inspiring, integrated story.

How would you share the message of Shmita with those who have not yet heard of it before, in a clear, compelling way? And even while talking among people who are familiar with Shmita, what part of the tradition resonates with you the most that it becomes the center of your own Shmita ‘story’?

– Nina Beth Cardin, The Narrative of Shmita, The Sova Blog, February 3, 2014

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Reclaiming the Sabbatical Tradition 9. Wrapping the Bundle: These are the core practices of the ‘Shmita paradigm’ as gathered from the three mentions of Shmita in the Torah, and numerous halachot compiled by the Rambam.

Seeing the entire package all at once, can you imagine how all the pieces fit together? If so, what would the complete picture of this puzzle look like?

Where in our culture today are the tensions with these points? Where are some of these points already being observed, even loosely?

An Overview of Sabbatical Principles A Yearlong Shabbat 1. Let Rest & Lie Fallow: Take the time to form a new relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your body, your workers, your economy of production and consumption, to rest.

2. Release With Faith: We are reminded we do not own our land, resources, or even time, and that these are Divine gifts. To enter into Shmita is to embrace a sense of security that is beyond our control.

A Sabbatical Food System 3. Land Stewardship: There is no seeding or plowing of agricultural land during the Shmita Year.

4. Perennial/Wild Harvest: Primary harvests include wild edibles and perennial produce.

5. Eat Local: Harvests must be eaten locally. They cannot be exported.

6. Seasonal Diet: Harvests should be gathered at full ripeness, and eaten in their natural growing season.

7. Animal Care: Wild and domesticated animals must have free access to range and food.

Community & Food Security 8. Creating Commons: All private agricultural lands are declared public and become community commons.

9. Shared Harvest: All harvested and stored produce are declared ‘ownerless’ and shared equally.

10. Fair Distribution: When harvesting, only collect specific to your immediate needs and not beyond.

11. Waste Reduction: Harvests have a special sanctity. They cannot be wasted or thrown away.

Community & Economic Resiliency 12. Land Value: Land is not a commodity, and has no market value. If land is sold, the price is based on the potential harvest seasons remaining until the Jubilee.

13. De-Commercialization: Produce can be harvested and shared for nourishment and enjoyment; not sold in the marketplace as a commodity.

14. Generous Giving: The value of exchange is based on generous giving and lending practices, without the need for profit or monetary gain.

15. Debt Release: All debts from previous years are canceled at the conclusion of the Shmita Year.

Jubilee Release 16. Land Redemption: Land is linked to family heritage and ancestral lineage, and always returns to such tribal connections.

17. Release of Slaves: Slaves are released from their work and are free to return home, to their community and land.

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10. Blueprint for Sustainability The whole purpose of the covenant at Sinai is to create a society that observed Shmita…The Sabbatical year was the guarantor and the ultimate fulfillment of the justice that Torah teaches us to practice in everyday life, and it was a justice that embraced not just fellow human beings, but the land and all life…

In modern parlance we call it “sustainability,” but that’s just today’s buzzword.

It’s called Shmita in the holy tongue, “release”—releasing each other from debts, releasing the land from work, releasing ourselves from our illusions of selfhood into the freedom of living with others and living for the sake of all life…This is what it means to “choose life so you may live, you and your seed after you.”

(Deut. 30:19) This is what it means to “increase your days and your children’s days on the ground for as long as the skies are over the land.” (Deut. 11:21)

Do you think that Shmita, during biblical times, was a commandment rooted in ‘sustainability’ or is this more of a modern reading?

How might Shmita be used today as a Jewish offering to support the global movement for sustainability?

What implications could Shmita have beyond Jewish communities?

– Rabbi David Seidenberg, Shmita: The Purpose of Sinai Does thinking about Shmita in terms of a giant cycle of seven make it seem more or less “possible”?

Taken on its own, Shmita is a riddle with no answer. In order to begin to understand the intricate puzzle that is Shmita, we must first connect the 6 years to the 7th, the individual parts of the cycle to its flowering conclusion. The 6 years of the Shmita Cycle are those of cultural design, and the 7th year is the indicator year; the ultimate ‘check-in’ to see how we are collectively doing as a culture. Shmita itself is not an isolated moment in time, but rather a cyclical expression of a vibrant culture rooted in local food systems, economic resiliency, and community empowerment. For us today, the Shmita Cycle can take shape as a story of transition, from the isolated self towards holistic community; from perceived scarcity towards revealed abundance. It is a story so old and ancient that we have forgotten just how much we need it today, now, for our own survival, for our own evolution and growth.

How can we begin connecting the 6 years to the seventh year, so that the values and ideals of Shmita can influence the way we design our economies, food systems, and communities at all times?

– Yigal Deutscher, Envisioning Sabbatical Culture

Closing Questions: In which direction would you personally want to see this ‘Shmita movement’ go?

What are your burning questions for this conversation? What are some ideas that you would love to see take shape? What is your Shmita Project?

The next Shmita Year begins on Rosh Hashana 5775 (2014-2015). How will we greet this year? And, perhaps just as important, is what we will be doing after Rosh Hashana 5776, when we have an entire Shmita Cycle ahead of us: How shall we, as individuals and communities, begin to prepare, from day one, for the seventh year? What are your seven-year goals, thinking ahead towards the next Shmita Year in 2021?

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TODAY'S MODERN

cultural systems seem to be dramatically shifting. The symptoms of cultural uncertainties are hard to ignore, as climate change, economic collapse, loss of local community culture, and rising social inequality have become widespread concerns. The doubts are growing around our industrial agricultural systems and speculative economic systems, and the voices in this conversation are becoming more and more pronounced.

From this perspective, the rise of curiosity around Shmita today seems quite timely. While Shmita is not a synonym of “sustainability” or “social justice,” many of the components of this ancient system can lead us in that direction. On the one hand, we know this tradition comes along with deep, unsettling challenges. On the other hand, it is the values inherent within these challenges that seem to hold the idealistic vision for a long-term, holistic, sustainable future.

In this section, we have highlighted some of the agricultural and economic challenges that we face today, and paired each one with relevant Shmita principles. Far from seeking to reduce Shmita to a directive, we present these texts as a place to begin a conversation around making Shmita more relevant and accessible, in modern terms. Ideally, by looking at such societal patterns and challenges in this way, we can begin to creatively think about how to brink Shmita to life today. And not just for one year out of seven, but for all years of the Shmita Cycle.

This section has been adapted from educational resources created by 7Seeds. To learn more about the link between Shmita values, community resiliency, and Permaculture Design, visit 7seeds.org.

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Shmita Principle #1: Land Stewardship There is no seeding or plowing of agricultural land during the Shmita Year.

During the Shmita year, the soil was meant to rest, free from plowing and all forms of cultivation. On this year, we are not forcing anything out of the ground, even with the best of intentions. This fallow period provides an invitation to be in relationship with land as land itself: soil, minerals, rocks, communities of fungi, bacteria, earthworms, all nourishing the roots of plants, purifying the underground waters, generously supporting so many diverse forms of life. This year provides a much needed time to rejuvenate the health of the soil: an invaluable and integral part of our own life system, one that we perhaps easily overlook and take for granted.

THE ISSUE: LAND DEGRADATION A major recent study published in Science pegged the cost of soil erosion at $44 billion per year in the US alone. Reliable estimates contend that up to half of America’s topsoil has run to the rivers and seas since the white settlement of this continent. Meanwhile, the average rate of topsoil erosion in the US continues at five tons per acre per year; for croplands it is nine tons per acre per year. But can soil erosion be such a dangerous problem if it has been going on for thousands of years? First, contrary to the thinking implicit in this question, the damaging and widespread effects of soil erosion have already appeared numerous times. History bears out a disturbing pattern: worn out and eroded soils cause civilizations to crash, and if they do rebound it is to a reduced level. Secondly, the question itself reflects the seriousness of the problem. Food depends on soil. Agricultural use of fossil fuel inputs cannot mask the true costs of soil loss forever, and the confidence in a future high-tech soil alternative is sorely misplaced. According to Donald Worster, chair of The Land Institute’s board and the Hall Distinguished Professor in history at the University of Kansas, “the common American confidence in technological remedies for erosion must appear dangerously naive. We can no more manufacture a soil with a tank of chemicals than we can invent a rainforest or produce a single bird.” In short, soil is the only medium in which enough plants will grow to capture and convert sunlight into the food we need.

– Jacob Gatschet, Natural Systems Agriculture at The Land Institute Between plowing, harrowing, subsoiling, bedding, and cultivating, we are literally working the life out of our soils.

Constant tillage oxidizes soil organic matter away as CO2. As the organic matter (OM) disappears, so do the earthworms and other beneficial organisms that depend on OM to survive. Many of these organisms provide the “glue” that hold the soil aggregates together to give us good soil structure. As the aggregates are broken down by tillage, and not replaced due to loss of OM and soil organisms, the soil air pores associated with the aggregates disappear too…Loss of organic matter can also cause the soil on the surface to plate or crust, making an almost impenetrable barrier, which prevents seed emergence and leads to water pooling, low oxygen conditions and even lower biological activity. The horizontal pressure at the bottom of a plow or disk-harrow can produce sub-surface plow and disc-pans over time. Compacted plow pans often prevent root growth beyond 8-12 inches deep and lead to drainage problems, disease problems, reduced yields, and additional tillage costs. A compacted soil depleted in OM retains too little water during dry weather and floods and ponds during wet periods.

– Jude Boucher, Soil Health & Deep Zone Tillage, University of Connecticut

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Conservation Tillage & No-Till Systems: Conservation Tillage is a method of soil cultivation that keeps plant residue on the field at all times. After harvest, any remaining plant material is shredded or rolled down and left on the field to dry. In No-Till Farming, seeds are subsequently planted directly into this plant residue. In Strip-Tillage, narrow rows are given a shallow plowing for seedbed preparation, while leaving the spaces between the rows untilled. Organic, herbicide-free methods of conservation tillage protect the delicate life systems of the soil’s ecological community. Furthermore, the remaining dry plant residue, or natural ‘mulch,’ adds organic matter to the soil, blocks soil erosion, improves water retention by the soil, and protects soil from direct sun and wind exposure. The thicker the mulch becomes, the more this layer will also block weed seeds from germinating.

On small-scale farms and gardens, no-till farming can more easily be achieved by creating permanently raised garden beds. These beds can be constructed from reclaimed materials or they can naturally be established in a design called ‘sheet-mulching,’ where the ground is first covered by a weed barrier (cardboard, for example), followed by alternating layers of woody and leafy material and compost.

Learn more: panutrientmgmt.cas.psu.edu/pdf/rp_better_soils_with_noTill.pdf wildwillowdesign.com/2011/06/three-ways-to-sheet-mulch

Soil Fertility Management: Plants grow by feeding on the nutrients within the soil. Between each planting cycle, from seed to harvest, the nutrients removed from the soils must be returned to rebalance soil fertility. Compost, the natural byproduct of decomposed plant material or animal manure, should be added direct to the soil before and after plantings. Another method of managing soil health is to rotate your vegetable plantings with a ‘cover crop’ or ‘green manure crop,’ which is a specific mix of leguminous nitrogen-fixing plants, such as vetch, peas, or clover, that naturally add fertility to the soil through synergistic relationships they have with mycorrhizal fungi that live on their roots. While these plants are still in their stage of green-growth, before setting seed, they are rolled down and left as mulch in conservation tillage systems, or they are shredded and tilled to add organic matter to the soil.

Learn more: organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/cover-crop-basics organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/composting-101

QUESTIONS • What cultural and economic value might we gain by leaving land wild and fallow for a year? How can we invest in soil health in all years, to strengthen this community of life, and the home of our plant roots?

• If you’ve ever grown food, how did the experience change your relationship to soil and land? If you’ve never grown food, what relationship do you have, if any, with soil and earth?

• Does being a food eater, if not a grower, entail a responsibility to consider soil health? If you are part of a CSA or purchase regularly from one farm, how much do you know about their soil management practices?

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Shmita Principle #11: Land Value Land is not a commodity, and has no market value. If land is sold, the price is based on the potential harvest seasons remaining until the Jubilee Year.

Within the larger Shmita cycles of the Jubilee, lands were available to be exchanged and traded on the market; however, it was never the land itself that was the commodity in such exchanges, since land itself had no market value. Rather, the commodity being traded was the potential amount of harvest that could be grown. And even in such instances of exchange, the lands reverted to its ancestral owner on the Jubilee (50th year). This is a very different paradigm than our modern real estate market, where farmland can reach a point of becoming prohibitively expensive and lost to non-agricultural development.

THE ISSUE: LOSS OF FARMLAND We’re needlessly wasting one of the world’s most important resources. Less than one-fifth of U.S. land is high quality, and we are losing this finest land to development at an accelerating rate. U.S. agricultural land provides the nation—and the world— with an unparalleled abundance of food. But farmland means much more than food. Well-managed farmland shelters wildlife, supplies scenic open space, and helps filter impurities from our air and water…It makes no sense to develop our best farmland.

Instead, we have a responsibility to protect this most valuable resource for future generations.

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In America, we’ve been losing more than an acre of farmland per minute. Between 2002 and 2007, 4,080,300 acres of agricultural land were converted to developed uses—an area the size of Massachusetts.

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Between 1982 and 2007, 41,324,800 acres of rural land (i.e. crop, pasture, range, land formerly enrolled in CPR, forest ad other rural land) were converted to developed uses. This represents an area about the size of Illinois and New Jersey combined.

- American Farmland Trust Land is not a commodity! Think about it. Human beings did not grow the land or create the land. It is a gift given by the universe to all of us. The consequences of treating farmland as a commodity are tragic. Consider the following: When capital is used to buy farmland under the current systems, that capital becomes unproductive. This is because that capital has not been used to bring anything new into existence, which is the ultimate mission of capital. The land is still farmed as it was before. What does happen is that the land becomes more expensive. Because the capital is tied up in it, the land values appreciate and the farm rents rise. Farmland thus becomes less and less affordable to farmers.

The value of the land is no longer tied to what a farmer can pay, but rather to what an investor can pay. This, in turn, leads to the rampant conversion of farmland into subdivisions and other development, the results of which we witness every day in the loss of beauty, productivity and biodiversity from our landscape.

A transformation in how we think about the land will only happen gradually, but we must start now to pioneer a new approach—to think of land, even privately-owned land, as a commons that should be tended with the best interests of the earth and the community in mind.

– Robert Karp, Land is Not A Commodity, Guernica, Nov 12 2009

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Agricultural Land Trusts: Agricultural Land Trusts are regional non-profit organizations that work with protecting and conserving local farmlands.

These land trusts accept financial donations to purchase farmlands, available on the marketplace, which might otherwise be developed. They also purchase conservation easements from land owners, creating a legal agreement between landowner and the land trust that prohibits non-agricultural residential or commercial development, subdivision, and practices which would be destructive to the agricultural potential of the land. The land is taken out of the real estate market and its value is specifically determined based on its potential to be used in agriculture, without fluctuation based on potential to be used as development property. Land Trusts then lease or sell such land to farmers to ensure that the land is being used to its full potential by farmers that are aligned with the values of the land trusts’ mission. The easement creates a legacy for the land, as future owners are bound by this agreement.

Learn more: youngfarmers.org/reports/conservation2.0.pdf

Land Sharing & Farm Link Programs: As the traditional method of land ownership becomes less accessible to many farmers- due to distance from the city and cost of land- a creative solution that has emerged is peer-to-peer land sharing. Many landowners may have large yards or parts of their property that they would like to have cultivated, yet they do not know how to farm. Others may have the skills and experience, without access to land. Websites have been created to map land availability, and to match partners together. These connections can result in spreading decentralized local food production throughout your area, on what would otherwise be unutilized land. Partners share certain responsibilities, as well as the harvest. In some cases, farmers make this a business, by managing a mosaic of many donated or rented micro plots throughout their neighborhood.

In more rural locations, Farm Link programs work with farmers who would rather not sell their land for non-agricultural purposes, or who are nearing retirement age and do not have children to pass the land onto or. The Farm Link programs help these landowners register their land and, through a matching program, create agreements to successfully transfer land rights, through sale, lease, or rental, to aspiring farmers.

Learn more: urbangardenshare.org/ cfra.org/resources/beginning_farmer/linking_programs

QUESTIONS: • How might we reconcile the economic value of land with the non-commercial, priceless value that is land itself, as a part of our history, and as an important part of an ecological community?

• How can we work to preserve farmland, and keep such food-producing lands close to where we live, while also investing in the fertility and ‘natural capital’ of the soil?

• Can you think of any land in your community that could be used to grow food? What questions would need to be addressed to get a garden growing there?

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Shmita Principle #3: Perennial/Wild Harvest Primary harvests include wild edibles and perennial produce.

The Shmita prohibition to till and sow most directly affects the growing and harvesting of annual plants (grains and vegetables), but not perennials. As fruit and nut trees do not need seasonal sowing or tilling, these plants still produce abundant harvests during the Shmita year. However, the conventional, large-scale mechanized and chemical monoculture farming systems in place today are best suited for the production of annual plants, which are primarily grown for processing and for animal feed. Clearing land for such large scale annual-based agricultural systems results in increasing levels of deforestation and soil erosion.

THE ISSUE: IMPACT OF ANNUAL CROP FARMING Humans have been cutting down forests for thousands of years, practically since they invented agriculture. Although forests themselves can be a source of many kinds of foods and useful products, fundamentally forests and agriculture are in conflict since, in many parts of the world, trees must be cleared to grow crops or graze livestock.

Until recently, deforestation has only been a local or regional concern, but today we live in a globalized world in which the forests of Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa are connected economically to consumers around the world. Growing global demand for agricultural commodities has led to increased tropical deforestation, which not only affects biodiversity and the livelihood of forest peoples but also contributes to global warming. – What is Driving Deforestation Today? Union of Concerned Scientists Most of the food consumed by humans comes from annual grains, legumes, and oil seed crops, either directly or indirectly.

We may eat the grains ourselves, or feed them to livestock that we eventually consume. Roughly 70 percent of global agricultural land is dedicated to producing them. Unfortunately, the way these crops are grown, even the very nature of the crops themselves, is destroying priceless ecological capital.

Annual crops are detrimental to soil, a natural resource in many ways more valuable than oil. In some cases, farmers plow deep furrows through the earth to plant their seeds. Other farmers rely on erosion lessening no-till planting methods. The first one results in bare earth that extends an invitation to invasive weeds and leads to considerable erosion. The second relies on an arsenal of chemicals to subdue competitive plants. – The Land Institute

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Perennial Plant Research: The Land Institute, based in Salinas, Kansas, is a non-profit farm-research facility dedicated to renewing a perennialbased agriculture. For over 30 years, the institute has been experimenting with breeding new varieties of perennial grains and legumes, in an effort to restore the diversity and ecological stability of the perennial prairie, while keeping yields comparable to the production levels of annual crops. Working with domesticating wild perennial grains for food production, or breeding annual grains with related perennial species, they have made progress with developing new perennial varieties of wheat, sunflowers, and sorghum.

Learn more: landinstitute.org

Perennial Polycultures & Food Forests: A perennial polyculture is a diverse, mixed plant community, comprised of many different perennial plant varieties growing together in the same landscape. These plants are chosen due to their complementary relationships, as each plant mutually supporting the other’s growth. Some farms use a method called Alley Cropping, which alternates between one row of mixed tree crops, and one row of annual vegetables. Another method is called a Food Forest, which is a unique type of orchard design that uses edible plants to mimic the natural synergy found in the multi-layered growth of the wild forest ecosystems. Whether the polyculture is grown in rows or in larger orchards, the plant communities usually include diverse varieties of ground covers, insectary plants, vines, bushes/berries, and fruit/nut trees.

Learn more: edibleforestgardens.com beaconfoodforest.org

Community Fruit Tree Projects: While it is critical to introduce more perennial plantings on our farms, there is tremendous opportunity much closer to home in introducing fruit trees to our urban and suburban landscapes. Local neighborhood-based fruit tree projects include initiatives to organize tree plantings on private and public land, map local fruit trees, collectively care for trees during their growth, as well as collectively harvest and share the fruits. For more info questions and information about perennial plant ideas for your neighborhood, see Appendix A: Shmita Foods.

Learn more: portlandfruit.org bostontreeparty.org

QUESTIONS • Do you know which of your favorite foods are annuals and perennials? What perennial foods might you add to your diet during the Shmita Year?

• How does (if at all) knowing how food grows affect your enjoyment of it?

• Planting trees- which often take years to bear fruit- is a key Jewish idea of building for the future. Do you have a location where you could plant a fruit or nut tree? How, if at all, would doing so change your relationship to that place?

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Shmita Principle #2: Land Stewardship There is no seeding or plowing of agricultural land during the Shmita Year.

The Shmita year was a period of re-wilding, in which we ceased from our agricultural efforts to control land through cultivation. In creating a period of agricultural fallow, we stepped back from our interaction with land as farmers. Landscapes that were otherwise dominated and shaped by human hands and tools were now freely open to the growth of wild plants and animal communities. In the ideal sense, the Shmita year shaped the process of rejuvenating wild ecologies.

THE ISSUE: LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY/WILDLIFE Pesticides have impacts far beyond their target organisms. Scientists at Cornell University estimate that 67 million birds are killed each year in the United States from pesticides. Many individuals of some bird species have died after eating sprayed insects. Pesticides from agriculture flow into aquatic systems via runoff of surface water, soil erosion, and drainage into groundwater. Pesticide residues in streams, lakes, bays, and coral reefs kill aquatic plants and zooplankton (microscopic animals) that fish require for food. More directly, very low concentrations of pesticides in water have been shown to increase the mortality of young fish and amphibians.

Pesticides and other toxins have an important effect on wildlife through "bioaccumulation." Certain kinds of pesticides are persistent, that is, they do not break down as they pass through the food chain. They can be taken up by small aquatic organisms and insects and are then passed on to the fish that eat them. Those fish are eaten by larger fish, which are eaten by predators such as eagles, pelicans, seals, and bears. The toxins become increasingly concentrated in the higher levels in this food chain, so top predators accumulate dangerous concentrations.

– Niles Eldredge, Life on Earth: An Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, Ecology, and Evolution Habitat destruction—which includes clearing of vegetation, replacing one kind of vegetation with another, and urbanizing and polluting natural areas—has contributed to the extinction or endangerment of about 90 percent of threatened species. Agriculture is the leading cause of habitat destruction in terrestrial ecosystems. As much as 40 percent of global net primary productivity—the base of all food chains—has been appropriated by humans and their commensal species. On land, the lion’s share of this appropriation involves agriculture. Of the 8.9 billion hectares of the Earth’s land area that are capable of supporting substantial vegetation, 1.5 billion hectares are currently used for production of agricultural crops and 3.3 billion hectares are used to pasture livestock. Thus, many natural ecosystems have significantly shrunk, primarily because people have converted the original vegetation to farmland or pasture.

– Catherine Badgley, Can Agriculture & Biodiversity Coexist? Fatal Harvest

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Wild Land Trusts (WLTs): Wild Land Trusts are regionally based non-profit organizations that work to permanently protect and steward diverse types of wild ecological habitats and landscapes, including forests, meadows, prairies, coastal areas, wetlands, and river systems. Through the financial support of private donors, local governments, and philanthropic foundations, WLTs purchase open, wild land available on the market. Once purchased, these lands are protected through conservation easements, and are managed, through the WLT and their partners, in a way that supports and encourages its wild ecology, for the sake of ecological restoration and local education. WLTS also work to purchase private land ‘inholdings’ within designated wilderness areas that would otherwise be vulnerable to logging, mining, oil/gas drilling, and development. These parcels are then donated to federal agencies to be formally protected within the wider wilderness areas.

Learn more: nature.org/about-us/private-lands-conservation wildernesslandtrust.org

Farming With The Wild: Wild Farm Alliance is a national non-profit organization empowering farm practices that work with wild ecologies.

As part of their mission, they believe agriculture must be conducted in ways that are compatible with preservation of native plants and animals. Rather than create a sterile ecological canvas, through mowing, tilling, weeding, and monocrop farming, this work aims to design farm landscapes that are thriving wild food-producing ecologies.

Suggested farm practices include restoration of wetlands and riparian (river-edge) zones, inclusion of nativespecies hedgerows and windbreaks, and addition of pollinator gardens and other animal habitats. The added wild biodiversity benefits the cultivated landscape by stabilizing runoff, improving soil health, attracting beneficial insects and natural predators, and creating a strong sense of place.

Learn more: wildfarmalliance.org

QUESTIONS • If you grow food, what measures could you or do you already take to support wildlife habitat?

• The cessation of tilling during the Shmita Year can have the effect of allowing other natural systems to flourish.

In a metaphorical sense, how might you use the Shmita Year to “rebalance” your own ecosystem?

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Shmita Principle #6: Animal Care Animals must have free access to range and food.

The produce of the Shmita year was intended to be freely and fairly available, not just to landowners, hired workers, and all community members, but to wild and domesticated animals as well. The intention during the Shmita Year was to unlock fences surrounding our agricultural fields so that anyone in need would have free access to come and harvest. This would have affected our relationship with animals, as much as with our human neighbors. Just as we unlocked fences for our human neighbors, would we unlock the fences keeping in our domesticated animals? Would we change the diet we fed our animals on this year?

THE ISSUE: ANIMAL TREATMENT IN AGRICULTURE To visit a modern CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) is to enter a world that, for all its technological sophistication, is still designed according to Cartesian principles: animals are machines incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this any more, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert your eyes on the part of everyone else.

From everything I’ve read, egg and hog operations are the worst. Beef cattle in America at least still live outdoors, albeit standing ankle deep in their own waste eating a diet that makes them sick. And broiler chickens, although they do get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their eight-week lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing. That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet. Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral “vices” that can include cannibalizing her cagemates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.

More than any other institution, the American industrial animal farm offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism can look like in the absence of moral or regulatory constraint. Here in these places life itself is redefined–as protein production–and with it suffering. That venerable word becomes “stress,” an economic problem in search of a cost-effective solution, like tail-docking or beak-clipping or, in the industry’s latest plan, by simply engineering the “stress gene” out of pigs and chickens. “Our own worst nightmare” such a place may well be; it is also real life for the billions of animals unlucky enough to have been born beneath these grim steel roofs, into the brief, pitiless life of a “production unit” in the days before the suffering gene was found.

– Michael Pollan, An Animal’s Place, The New York Times Magazine, November 10, 2002

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Pasture Raised Animals: The idea of raising your animals on pasture is actually a portal into a wider scope of holistic land management. Many farmers who raise their animals on pasture tend to see themselves as grass farmers, because this becomes the main food source for their animals. In such systems, farmers manage their pasture as a bio-diverse ecosystem in itself, creating a plant diet rich in nutrients for their animals. And the animals play a part, too, in growing their own food.

Free-range animals tend to managed in rotational blocks. With the help of portable fencing, flocks of chickens or herds of cattle remain on a piece of grass until they have eaten their fair share, and are then rotated to a fresher area.

The continual shearing of the grass keeps the growth healthy, and the animal manure dropped in the fields adds to the natural fertility of such fields. The build up of organic matter in the soils creates stronger grasslands, which feeds healthier animals.

Learn more: savoryinstitute.com/science/holistic-management-overview

Community Supported Meat: Industrial feedlot animal production relies heavily on grain diets, rather than fresh grazing. The industrial system is mechanized, subsidized, and, with the help of artificial hormones and select breeds, quick (in terms of reaching animal slaughter weight). When this is translated into dollars, animal products from such production methods are much cheaper than animals raised on pasture. For customers who would prefer to support free-range animal systems, and holistic land management, but cannot easily afford to, one option is to join a Meat CSA. Different versions of this Community Supported Agriculture program allows farmers to sell an entire cow to a group of customers, and who divide the meat among themselves.

Learn more: phillycowshare.com For kosher free-range animal products, visit: growandbehold.com kolfoods.com empirekosher.com wiseorganicpastures.com

QUESTIONS • How can we use the Shmita year as an inspiration to support healthy forms of animal husbandry practices, which truly honor the life of such animals, and respect the dignity of their wildness?

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Shmita Principle #4: Eat Local Harvests must be eaten locally. They cannot be exported.

During the Shmita year, harvests were consumed in the region they were grown, as foods were not meant to travel beyond the local community connected with that region. Today, our food system is complex and global.

With a few exceptions, government support for local food economies and holistic, sustainable ‘food sheds’ tend to be bypassed in favor of subsidies given to large farms that grow food for global industry and export market.

This has directly affected the security and strength of local food systems, both ecologically and socially.

THE ISSUE: GLOBAL FOOD TRADE Global food is based on an economic theory: instead of producing a diverse range of food crops, every nation and region should specialize in one or two globally-traded commodities—those they can produce cheaply enough to compete with every other producer. The proceeds from exporting those commodities are then used to buy food for local consumption.

According to this theory, everyone will benefit. Rather than providing universal benefits, the global food system has been a major cause of hunger and environmental destruction around the world…

The global food system demands centralized collection of tremendous quantities of single crops, leading to the creation of huge monocultures. Monocultures, in turn, require massive inputs of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers. These practices systematically eliminate biodiversity from farmland, and lead to soil erosion, eutrophication of waterways, and the poisoning of surrounding ecosystems.

Because of the global food system, people around the world are induced to eat largely the same foods. In this way, farm monocultures go hand in hand with a spreading human monoculture, in which people’s tastes and habits are homogenized—in part through advertising, which promotes foods suited to monocultural production, mechanized harvesting, long-distance transport and long-term storage.

– Helena Norberg-Hodge, Think Global…Eat Local, The Ecologist, September 2002 In the United States, the most frequently cited statistic is that food travels 1,500 miles on average from farm to consumer.

That figure comes from work led by Rich Pirog, the associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. In 2001, in some of the country's first food-miles research, Pirog and a group of researchers analyzed the transport of 28 fruits and vegetables to Iowa markets via local, regional, and conventional food distribution systems. The team calculated that produce in the conventional system-a national network using semitrailer trucks to haul food to large grocery stores-traveled an average of 1,518 miles (about 2,400 kilometers).

Pirog's team found that the conventional food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more CO2 than the local and regional (the latter of which roughly meant Iowa-wide) systems. Similarly, a Canadian study estimated that replacing imported food with equivalent items locally grown in the Waterloo, Ontario, region would save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50,000 metric tons of CO2, or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.

– Sarah DeWeerdt, Is Local Food Better? WorldWatch Institute

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An Agricultural Perspective: Global Food Trade

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Farmers’ Market: A farmers' market is a weekly community-driven market, where farmers have an opportunity to offer direct sales to local customers during the growing season. Markets are usually organized and managed by farmers’ groups, community groups, non-profits, or local government councils, and are hosted in centrally located public spaces, such as parking lots, blocked-off streets, and downtown plazas. The market offers a low-cost way for farmers to provide fresh, local, seasonally grown produce that requires minimal packaging and transport. Customers get a chance to taste the flavors of their own region, support their local famers, and enjoy the diverse flavors of their region through the offerings of vegetables, fruits, baked goods, preserves, honey, poultry, meat, eggs, and more. Markets also provide the opportunity for community gatherings, and the experience is supplemented with live music, cooking demos, and educational stands.

Find a farmers market near you: localharvest.org/farmers-markets/

Locavore Challenge: In 2007, the Oxford Dictionary listed ‘Locavore’ as the ‘Word of the Year.’ It means ‘a person whose diet consists only or principally of locally-grown or produced food.’ That year, the book ‘The 100 Mile Diet’ was published, and it told the story of two individuals who, for one year, committed to limit their diet to foods that were grown within 100 miles of their residence. Since then, different ‘locavore challenges’ have been created, sponsored by food-oriented organizations, and the challenges vary by intensity and length of time, and cover a broad range of ways you can begin to practice a more locally based, natural diet. Examples include: purchasing from a farmers market, joining a CSA, preserving food through the winter, foraging wild edibles, going on a farm tour, finding creative replacements for the exotic foods in your diet, hosting locally-sourced dinners for your friends, and more. Ultimately, these diets must be crafted to the needs of each individual, as ‘local’ is a relative term, and everyone must make their own choices on where they compromise and what they are willing to sacrifice.

Learn more: nofany.org/events/locavore-challenge foodroutes.org

QUESTIONS • To fully ‘eat local’ during the Shmita Year, what systems would need to be in place the other 6 years to make this possible where you live?

• In what ways do you and your community already support local food systems? What are some of the challenges and benefits?

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Shmita Principle #12: De-Commercialization Produce can be harvested for nourishment & enjoyment; but not sold as a commodity.

During the Shmita year, all produce was treated as ‘ownerless’ and therefore no one had the ability to claim it as ‘property’, to be brought to the market and sold for a profit. Instead, harvests were gathered directly by those who would consume them, or they were brought to a local community pantry for non-commercial distribution.

Today, most food distribution channels occur through the economic marketplaces, where food is treated as a commodity of exchange. As with all commodities, the main initiative is to grow profits, and in many cases, as food prices rise, affordable food choices become limited.

THE ISSUE: RISING FOOD PRICES Continuing a decade-long increase, global food prices rose 2.7 percent in 2012, reaching levels not seen since the 1960s and 1970s but still well below the price spike of 1974. Between 2000 and 2012, the World Bank global food price index increased 104.5 percent, at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent… There is reason to believe that food commodity prices will be both higher and more volatile in the decades to come. As climate change increases the incidence of extreme weather events, production shocks will become more frequent. Food prices will also likely be driven up by population growth, increasing global affluence, stronger linkages between agriculture and energy markets, and natural resource constraints.

– Sophie Wenzlau, Global Food Prices Continue to Rise, Worldwatch Institute, April 11, 2013 The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that every 10 per cent increase in the price of its food basket means it has to find an extra US$200 million a year for food assistance.

– José Graziano da Silva, Tackling The Root Causes Of High Food Prices And Hunger, U.N. World Food Programme, Sept 2012 For decades, the futures market for agricultural commodities served a useful, stabilizing purpose. The tightly-regulated exchanges allowed farmers and wholesalers to sell their future output to processors, at a locked-in price, months before harvest. These contracts insulated the entire agricultural sector from dramatic and sudden pricing shifts caused by external factors, such as weather or the cost of fuel. There was little, if any, Wall Street participation.

But, beginning in the 1980s, rapid changes began to transform the food market as regulators started to spend more time and resources policing other, more complex, markets. A series of subsequent policy moves by the Commodities Futures Trading Commissions (CFTC) and the U.S. government allowed for the influx of speculation on agricultural futures by banks, hedge funds, pension managers and university endowments.

When the housing bubble began to deflate in 2007, food futures became the new infatuation of Wall Street, where corn, grain and rice futures were quickly bid into the stratosphere. Speculation of agricultural commodities reached its peak in 2008, when corn, wheat and rice futures all nearly tripled in price from 2005. Even though prices for food staples have fallen about 50 percent in the last year, the consequences of rapid food inflation have been devastating in the developing world. A poor family is typically faced with an untenable choice: Either pay 75 percent of its income on food or simply not eat enough.

– Ruth Messinger, Food: Commodity or Human Right? Huffington Post, Dec 10, 2009

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An Agricultural Perspective: Rising Food Prices

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Local Food Co-Op: Food cooperatives are models that source food and sell food with environmental, social, and local concerns taken into account. Co-ops exist primarily for the benefit of their members, as opposed to maximizing profits.

Since consumers are owners in this model, there is a sense of shared interests, democratic governance, and equal investment. Members take part in shared decision-making and have direct choice and voting power over what food is sold, where it is sourced from & how much it is sold for. Members take part in managing store needs, from cashier roles to management, by taking on work hour shifts, divided and rotated among all members. By purchasing in bulk quantity, direct from wholesalers, and by taking on volunteer work roles, co-ops can offer sales for significant price reduction in comparison to retail costs of similar items. Besides the financial reasons, there are also the social benefits of being part of a co-op, as many stores use the space to host educational and community events.

Find a food co-op near you: localharvest.org/food-coops

Crop Swaps: A crop swap is a gathering of local gardeners coming together during the growing season to share and exchange harvests, without cost. In a typical urban/suburban setting, whether you are gardening in your own yard or at a community garden, space is a challenge. And with a small growing area, there is less possibility for expanding the diversity of the crops you grow. However, when each small garden becomes linked together in a network, the possibility of food production spreads beyond your own lot. Each garden has its own micro-climate, its own soil, and perhaps its own unique harvest. In each of these gardens, there is a different source of abundance and lack.

Crop swaps allows gardeners to bring their excess, and share with others, while receiving what they are lacking in return, all free of charge, with no money changing hands. Gardeners bring their fruits, nuts, vegetables. Some brings eggs and dairy products. Some bring prepared foods. Others bring seeds and transplants. Crop Swaps are hosted in central open-access public areas, and are organized by volunteer community members, or by a local community organization. This is also an opportunity for neighbors to meet and get to know one another, sharing gardening advice, recipes and stories.

Learn more: berkeleyside.com/2011/07/19/lemons-loquats-and-greens-berkeley-crop-swap-kicks-off

QUESTIONS • How does the privatization and commercialization of agriculture and farming affect issues of food security? • How can we support free access to food today, in a way that recognizes food as an equal right for all, and not as a commodity?

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Shmita Principle #4: Eat Local Harvests must be eaten locally. They cannot be exported.

Shmita Principle #5: Seasonal Diet Harvests should be gathered at full ripeness, and eaten in their natural growing season.

During the Shmita year, the ideal diet included perennial foods and wild edibles, which were harvested locally, in their natural growing season, and when fully ripe for the picking. Fresh harvests were supplemented by dried harvests, stored from previous years, and animal proteins. Considering our modern food industry, this Shmita diet would limit the diversity of possibilities we have available in the selection of processed, nonlocal, and/ or non-seasonal foods we can find in the common super-market. The Shmita year created an opportunity to explore the rich possibilities of a simple, natural diet.

THE ISSUE: UNHEALTHY FOOD CHOICES Studies published within the past 15 years show that much of our produce is relatively low in phytonutrients, which are the compounds with the potential to reduce the risk of four of our modern scourges: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. The loss of these beneficial nutrients did not begin 50 or 100 years ago, as many assume. Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000 years ago and became farmers.

Each fruit and vegetable in our stores has a unique history of nutrient loss, I’ve discovered, but there are two common themes.

Throughout the ages, our farming ancestors have chosen the least bitter plants to grow in their gardens. It is now known that many of the most beneficial phytonutrients have a bitter, sour or astringent taste. Second, early farmers favored plants that were relatively low in fiber and high in sugar, starch and oil. These energy-dense plants were pleasurable to eat and provided the calories needed to fuel a strenuous lifestyle. The more palatable our fruits and vegetables became, however, the less advantageous they were for our health.

– Jo Robinson, Breeding the Nutrition Out Of Our Food, The New York Times, May 25, 2013 All of our uncertainties about nutrition should not obscure the plain fact that the chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food: the rise of highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn, and soy. These changes have given us the Western diet that we take for granted: lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything—except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. That such a diet makes people sick and fat we have known for a long time. Early in the twentieth century, an intrepid group of doctors and medical workers stationed overseas observed that wherever in the world people gave up their traditional way of eating and adopted the Western diet, there soon followed a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. They called these the Western diseases and, though the precise causal mechanisms were (and remain) uncertain, these observers had little doubt these chronic diseases shared a common etiology: the Western diet.

– Michael Pollan, In Defense Of Food

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An Agricultural Perspective: Unhealthy Food Choices

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Slow Food Movement: Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization with more than 2,000 food communities in over 150 countries. Founded in Italy in 1986, this intentional network works to link people with the rich food cultures of the specific lands they live in, shaped by human history and natural ecology. Through locally organized harvest festivals, shared meals and tastings, cooking workshops, and artisanal food processing, their programs celebrate heritage foods, culinary styles, flavors, and recipes otherwise overlooked in industrial food systems. Regional groups meet together to prepare and experiment with these foods, in an effort to spread such awareness to their own kitchens, schools, markets, and restaurants. Social gatherings are focused on enjoying and savoring the rich, complex flavors and tastes we can only really enjoy when we slow down enough to fully appreciate them.

Learn more: slowfoodusa.org ediblecommunities.com/content

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Community Supported Agriculture is a direct-marketing technique used by small scale farmers to create a consumer-base rooted in local community, as well as to secure seasonal funds before the growing period actually begins. There are many variations, but the core principle is that farmers offer the consumer a seasonal membership to the farm, which includes an overview of the crop plan and a percentage of the harvest. Each week, the harvest is divided among the membership base, usually with full-size and half-sizes available depending on the needs of the member-families. Members receive shares of the harvest as long as the harvest season continues, along with newsletters from the farm including recipes, photos, and stories, as well as membership in a community that is invited to the farm for work parties, gleaning, CSA dinners, and more.

Find a CSA near you: localharvest.org/csa Founded in 2004, the Hazon CSA program now includes over 65 sites in the US, Canada and Israel, and over 2,300 households involved. The Hazon CSA program is a customer-organized CSA, where individuals form a core group to collectively commit to purchase a share of the harvest of one or multiple farms. These CSA usually use a synagogue or Jewish community center as a drop off point for the weekly deliveries of harvest shares.

Learn more: hazon.org/csa

QUESTIONS • How can we support healthy, nutritious food consumption today, with diets that are designed to match the foods and seasons of a particular bioregion? • How can we begin experimenting with supplementing our diets with highly nutritious wild edibles, found locally?

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Shmita Principle #7: Creating Commons All private agricultural lands are declared public and become community commons.

Shmita Principle #8: Shared Harvest All harvested and stored produce are declared ‘ownerless’ and shared equally.

Shmita Principle #9: Fair Distribution When harvesting, only collect specific to your immediate needs and not beyond.

A main hope and challenge for the Shmita year was that everyone would have enough to eat. During the Shmita year, all agricultural lands were opened as commons. Everyone had equal access to farmland and to its harvests.

For this opportunity to be fully utilized and enjoyed, there must have been a close relationship between a community and it's food productuion, so that the open access to farmland could be fully taken advantage of. The intention for harvesting was that individuals gathering on their own would only take as much as they needed, and that community-organized harvests would then be distributed fairly through a collective pantry.

THE ISSUE: FOOD INSECURITY The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 calories per person per day. The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

– World Hunger Education Service, 2012 World Hunger & Poverty Facts Perhaps the starkest symptoms of a food system that is broken are hunger, malnutrition, and starvation. Each year, 3.5 million adults and children die of malnutrition…And by many measures, things are getting worse: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the number of undernourished people worldwide has increased from just under 842 million in the early ‘90s to an estimated 1.02 billion in 2009. While the vast majority of chronically undernourished people live in the developing world, as recently as 2007, more than 36 million individuals in the United States could be classifies as ‘food insecure.’ Food insecurity occurs whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food—or the ability to acquire these foods without relying on food pantries or soup kitchens—is limited or uncertain. While food security is as dependent on affordability as access, most communities in which the prevalence of food insecurity is high are also communities in which food access is limited.

According to the USDA Economic Research Service, in 2007, 13.5 percent of all urban U.S. households experienced food insecurity…The term “food desert” is typically used to describe geographical areas of food imbalance, defined as a place in which the average distance to a full-service grocery store or supermarket is greater (sometimes by as much as a factor of 3) than the average distance to a “fringe” location, such as a gas station, liquor store, pharmacy, convenience store, or fast food restaurant. In Detroit, [Mari Gallagher, one of the leading researchers in this area], found more than 500,000 residents living in areas so out of balance in terms of healthy food options that “they are statistically more likely to suffer or die prematurely from diet related diseases.” In Chicago’s particularly out-of-balance communities, she found a diabetes death rate greater than twice that of more in-balance communities.

– Oran Hesterman, Fair Food

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An Agricultural Perspective: Food Insecurity

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Community Gardens & Farm Centers: Many urban vacant and underutilized lots can be turned into food producing community gardens. Community gardens vary in size and scale, as well as ownership and management model. However, the purpose is generally the same: to utilize community land in the production and distribution of affordable, fresh, healthy, local produce for the public, in an effort to revitalize urban food security. Some community gardens are collectively managed by a group of volunteers with a shared budget and vision; others are divided into individual lots where each member has an equal space for growing their own veggies. Gardens managed by non-profit community organizations are not just food producing commons, but are also spaces for activating community empowerment through educational programs, youth-based activities, afterschool programs, work parties, cooking classes, skill shares, mentorship programs, and more. Many of these gardens also donate shares of their harvests to low-income community members, through ‘free’ farm stands, or partnerships with local food-aid groups.

Learn more: netiya.org urbanadamah.org ekarfarm.org

Farm-To-Food-Bank Programs: Much of the food products most widely available to those in need from SNAP (food stamp) programs or food banks usually come in the form of canned and processed foods. Through government and community financial support, regional programs have been created to specifically increase the availability of fresh produce to those in need. Many food banks are now working directly with local farmers to grow food directly for food banks. Additionally, many CSA farms reserve a certain amount of their harvest for low-income shares. These members receive the same weekly distribution as other members, but pay a reduced fee. In Michigan, the Double Up Food Bucks program allows for SNAP dollars to be doubled in value when used to purchase locally grown fruits and vegetables at partnering retailers, which now includes the local farmers markets.

Learn more: fairfoodnetwork.org/what-we-do/projects/double-food-bucks nofavt.org/programs/farm-share If you are a backyard gardener and would like to donate surplus produce to local food banks, visit ampleharvest.org To learn about Jewish advocay and organizing in response to hunger, visit: mazon.org ajws.org/reversehunger

QUESTIONS • How can we support food security today, so access to healthy produce is possible for everyone, regardless of their income?

• How can we create methods of food distribution that directly support fresh food availability in urban areas, for low-income populations?

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Shmita Principle #10: Waste Reduction Harvests have a special sanctity. They cannot be wasted or thrown away.

The foods harvested during the Shmita year had a unique, sacred nature attributed to them. There was an understanding that food should be treated as it is naturally intended: for consumption. Not only did this mean that foods could not be sold as commodities, but also that foods could not be wasted. Today, enormous amounts of food waste come along with our industrial food production and distribution systems, with wasteful practices starting on the fields and continuing into the general home kitchen.

THE ISSUE: FOOD WASTE Since 1974, U.S. per capita food waste has progressively increased to more than 1400 calories per person per day, or 150 trillion calories per year. During this same period, food waste has increased from about 30% of the available food supply to almost 40%. Food waste now accounts for more than one quarter of total freshwater consumption and about 300 million barrels of oil use per year. – The Progressive Increase in Food Waste in America, 2009 Study What's driving all this food waste? Every hand that touches food, from farmer to shopper, is partly responsible. For instance, low commodity prices on certain foods can mean that it's cheaper for a farmer to leave a field unharvested than to pay for labor, packaging, and shipping to a distributor. Grocery stores follow the "pile it high, watch it fly" philosophy, which means they stock shelves to overflowing in an effort to get people to buy more food. Restaurants serve enormous portions, and 55 percent of diners' leftovers are left behind. However, we the people waste the most food waste. The average family of four wastes 25 percent of its purchased food. That's $1,365 to $2,275 we spend every year on food that winds up in the garbage. The USDA offers a more conservative estimate that each consumer spends $390 on wasted food.

Whichever figure you believe, it's good money being funneled straight to landfills. – Emily Main, Food Waste Statistics, Rodale News, June 2013

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An Agricultural Perspective: Food Waste

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Farm-Based Gleaning & Food Rescue Programs: Gleaning has ancient, biblical roots, and there are plenty of opportunities to keep this practice alive today. On production-scale farms, where there is always the need to keep up with the freshest, prettiest harvest, it is not uncommon for older crops to get left behind. What is otherwise perfectly edible produce is ignored to rot in the fields, or gets tilled in when the soils are prepared for the next planting cycle. Farm-based gleaning programs are volunteer led initiatives, where groups connect with willing farmers to arrange for the harvesting and delivery of such produce from the fields to those in need. Groups arrange with the farmers when to come, and how many harvesters are needed.

Beyond the fields, there is plenty of urban gleaning to do from grocery stores, farmers markets, and restaurants. Edible foods that are day-olds, or just recently past their expiration date cannot be sold, and would otherwise end up in the dumpster. Both farm and urban gleaning groups provide their own transportation, and directly redistribute these foods to soup kitchens, food pantries, homeless shelters, senior centers, and children's daycare centers. Larger gleaning groups have fleets of their own trucks, and warehouses where they sort these foods, and are diverting millions of pounds of food from waste every year.

Learn more: leket.org.il/english/text/305.aspx nationalgleaningday.org cityharvest.org/programs/emergency-food-rescue boulderfoodrescue.org

Food Preservation: When it comes to personal waste reduction from our own kitchens, there is not much we can do for processed foods.

However, as for the abundance from our backyard/community gardens or CSA boxes, there is a whole new life potential for these foods, as they can be preserved in so many ways, by being dried, pickled, fermented, juiced, frozen, canned, etc.

Food preservation offers a low-cost method of eating local foods through extended seasons, which is particularly helpful if you are trying to keep a local diet in the winter months of temperate climates. Food preservation, when done large scale at a farm or community garden, offers an opportunity to celebrate community, seasonality, and the harvest.

Learn more: strongertogether.coop/food-lifestyle/cooking/preserving-your-organic-harvest

QUESTIONS • What are your own practices for food conservation and best-use practices?

• How can you support food traveling from farm-to-fork in a more efficient and effective manner?

• How would you treat food differently if the harvests were considered ‘sacred’?

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Shmita Principle #1: Let Rest & Lie Fallow Take the time to form a new relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your body, your workers, your economy of production and consumption, to rest.

Shmita Principle #2: Land Stewardship There is no seeding or plowing of agricultural land.

Our economic systems are based upon the demands and expectations for continual levels of growth. A higher level of production leads to higher levels of spending, which leads to higher profits and job creation. When such expectations are not met, it is seen as alarming and a course of action is set to correct this deviation.

Shmita essentially initiates a period of economic fallow once every seven years. On this year, economic growth is put to rest and the idea of de-growth is explored.

THE ISSUE: UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC GROWTH Can the Earth support endless growth? Traditionally, economists have argued that the answer is "yes." A steady rise in gross domestic product (GDP)—the combined value of our paid work and the things we produce—was seen as crucial for raising living standards and keeping the masses out of poverty. We grow or we languish: This assumption has become so central to our economic identity that it underpins almost every financial move our leaders make. It is to economics what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to physics.

– Clive Thompson, Nothing Grows Forever, Why Do We Think The Economy Will? Mother Jones, June 2010 The conflict between economic growth and environmental protection is becoming more apparent as the oversized economy bumps up against limits. From depletion of ocean fisheries to loss of pollinators, from groundwater drawdown to deforestation, from climate change to increasing concentrations of toxic pollution, from massive urban slums to degraded rural lands, the consequences of too much economic growth are observable all around us…We find ourselves in a global state of overshoot, accumulating ecological debt by depleting natural capital to keep the economy growing.

Continuing to grow the economy when the costs are higher than the benefits is actually uneconomic growth.

– Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy We can't live with growth, and we can't live without it. This contradiction is humankind's biggest challenge this century, but as long as conventional wisdom holds that growth can continue forever, it's a challenge we can't possibly address.

– Thomas Homer-Dixon, Economies Can't Just Keep On Growing, Foreign Policy, Feb 2011

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An Economic Perspective: Demands for Economic Growth

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Slow Money: If our money is moving too fast, our companies are too big, and finance is becoming too complex, we need to simplify the systems and slow it down. In an effort to do so, Slow Money is a movement that advocates for investing our economic growth back into local community and ecological health. The mission of Slow Money is to reconnect our finances to people and place, particularly by focusing on our systems of food production. Regional Slow Money chapters support investment of capital back into the earth and sustainable businesses so that the economic ‘growth’ we experience is in terms of natural capital: healthy food, healthy nutrition, healthy soils, and healthy farmers. This way, economic fertility is parallel to our local soil and social fertility. There are seventeen regional Slow Money chapters in the United States, and more than $30 million has been invested in 221 small food enterprises around the country since 2010.

Learn more: slowmoney.org

Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI): The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the total market value of goods and services produced in a given year. This is the main tool we use to indicate and measure national economic growth. The GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) provides an alternate measurement tool, and is guided by the question: What if we defined success not by the money we spent and the goods we consumed but by the quality of life we create for ourselves and all life? The GPI comes with 26 indicators, consolidating critical economic, environmental and social factors into a single framework to measure genuine progress, not just growth. The GPI puts value on factors that would otherwise be overlooked by the GDP since they come with no ‘market’ value measurement, such as parenting, civic engagement, quality of education, and more. The GPI also takes into account the hidden costs that the GDP does not differentiate, such as pollution, crime, loss of wild lands, product quality, etc. In the United States, the legislatures of Vermont and Maryland have adopted the Genuine Progress Indicator.

Learn more: genuineprogress.net

QUESTIONS • How can we create an economy that is more comfortable with natural rhythms of growth and rest, rather than continual patterns of unsustainable, linear growth?

• What might be the benefit and challenges of an economy built upon such pulses of economic contraction? How do you think this would affect the market economy in all other years of the Shmita cycle?

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Shmita Principle #1: Let Rest & Lie Fallow Take the time to form a new relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your body, your workers, your economy of production and consumption, to rest.

The modern idea of the Sabbatical is to take time off from work for one full year, just as the farmers would in ancient times. Landowners, hired workers, and family members equally shared in this period of rest. Shmita initially emerged from a primitive agrarian society, where everyone was involved in some aspects of the food production system. In this way, the Shmita rest directly affected the majority of society. Now that much of Western, industrial populations are not working as farmers, how might the Sabbatical rest take effect today?

THE ISSUE: PATTERNS OF WORK The 50- or 60-hour workweek has begun to raise ethical questions: Are employers respecting the contractual arrangements they make with their employees? Are employees placing too much value on work and the material things work makes possible? What impact do such long workweeks have on families and, through them, on the common good?

– Miriam Shulman, Time To Go Home, Center For Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University According to the Center for American Progress, 86 percent of U.S. men and 67 percent of women work more than 40 hours a week, and American families worked an average of 11 hours more per week in 2006 than they did in 1979.

Though the shift has helped companies cut expenses and increased U.S. productivity, a growing number of studies show that the extra work is negatively affecting our health, family lives, and effectiveness at work.

For one, workers and their bosses often are not being paid for their extra time. Twenty-four percent of employees and forty-seven percent of employers work six or more hours a week without pay, concluded a 2007 study by corporate staffing firm Randstad. And research in 2008 by the Pew Research Center showed that 22 percent of Americans are expected to respond to work email when they’re not at work, half check job email on weekends, and a third do so while on vacation.

That is, of course, if they ever get to take a vacation. According to a 2009 report by the human resources firm Mercer, after 10 years of service U.S. worker bees normally get 15 days of paid leave, while the Germans get 20, the British 28, and the Fins 30. But now come several new surveys last November announcing that we’re not even taking the vacation we do have.

One, by travel company Expedia, found workers left 2 of their 13 days on the table—that’s $34.3 billion in free labor.

– Steve Yoder, Is America Overworked? The Fiscal Times, February 16, 2012

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An Economic Perspective: Patterns of Work

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Unplug: For at least one day a week, the Sabbath offers us the opportunity to step out of our weekday rhythm and consciousness.

Building upon this tradition, the Sabbath Manifesto is a project to take the possibilities of the Shabbat and make it universal, as a vision for everyone to take dedicated personal time to unplug from commerce, the computer, and technology. For each of us, this will look different. The common theme is that this time is sacred for you to be separate from your work deadlines, pressures, and commitments, so it can be invested instead into your own health, creativity, and time with loved ones. Ideally this momentum can overflow into the week, as well, with times of each day dedicated beyond work routines. Once a year, they organize a national day of unplugging, as well, in the vision of a broad network of individuals and communities unplugging at once, together, for a full day.

Learn more: sabbathmanifesto.org

Company Sabbatical Programs: In a modern context, the Sabbatical is most popularly known as a year of paid-leave that many universities extend to their professors. In the business sector, the concept of the Sabbatical is being widely adapted, as well. Many companies are finding the value of giving their employees extended personal time to simply explore their curiosity, devote themselves to what they are most excited about, and take time for self-rejuvenation. Sabbaticals generally range from 2 months up to a full year. This is not just a personal holiday; rather it is a genuine opportunity to explore new learning, to take risks, to walk into creative possibilities. The hope is that employees come back to their work projects with renewed creativity and motivation.

Beyond such traditional Sabbaticals, companies are also experimenting with incorporating micro-Sabbaticals into their work policies, in the form of extended parental leave, flexible vacation policies and personal time off, as well as time dedicated to work from home or on the road. Inspired by the creative possibilities of the Sabbatical, some companies are also attempting to infuse such energy into their own work cultures by creating ‘creativity rooms’ for games, playful thinking, and crafting, or dedicating percentages of time (15% at 3M, 20% at Google) for employees to work on personal projects.

Learn more: yoursabbatical.com meetplango.com/sabbatical

QUESTIONS • How might you infuse this “Sabbatical intention” into your workweek and work year on a regular basis? Or would you prefer to work hard and then, when the time is right, play hard?

• What would our society, family lives and personal lives look like if we had a more balanced relationship with the work we do?

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Shmita Principle #1: Let Rest & Lie Fallow Take the time to form a new relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your body, your workers, your economy of production and consumption, to rest.

Shmita Principle #2: Land Stewardship There is no seeding or plowing of agricultural land.

During the Shmita year, the luxuries of the over-grown marketplace would not have been available. On a year of economic and agricultural fallows, reduced levels of production would result in reduced levels of consumption. Yet, even with such limits on the possibilities of economic consumption, the hope was still to feel a sense of ‘enoughness’ and local abundance, rather than scarcity and loss. The Shmita year creates an opportunity to collectively and personally explore new patterns of consumption.

THE ISSUE: OVERCONSUMPTION Affluenza: ‘A painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.’

– Thomas Naylor, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic In 2008, people around the world used 68 billion tons of materials, including metals and minerals, fossil fuels, and biomass. That is an average of 10 tons per person—or 27 kilograms each and every day. That same year, humanity used the biocapacity of 1.5 planets, consuming far beyond what the Earth can sustainably provide. Of course, not every human consumes at the same level. While the average Southeast Asian used 3.3 tons of materials in 2008, the average North American used 27.5 tons—eight times as much. And the spread of consumerism has driven many regions to dramatically accelerate material consumption. Asia used 21.1 billion tons of materials in 2008, up 450 percent from the 4.7 billion tons that the region used in 1980.

– Erik Assadourian, Is Sustainability Still Possible? The Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013 Regarding the view that “consumer sovereignty” is the fundamental mechanism that guides economies, we need to recall that consumers—as members of complex larger organizations including families, communities, corporations, and nations—are subject to many influences from social institutions. The idea of a “sovereign consumer” implies someone who independently makes decisions. But what if those decisions are—instead of being independent—heavily influenced by community norms and aggressive marketing by businesses? Who “rules” then? When we look at an economy from this perspective, we can see that consumer behavior is often cultivated as a means to the ends of producers, rather than the other way around…

Advertising in the United States is big business. Advertising Age, a company that analyzes the advertising industry, estimates that spending on TV, radio, and print advertisements in 2004 was around $134 billion, or about $460 per American. When spending on other forms, including direct mail, phone marketing, and Internet ads, was included, total spending on all forms of advertising was estimated to be over $263 billion in 2004. This amount exceeds the entire annual GDP of many countries, including Denmark and Saudi Arabia. By the mid-1990s, the average American adult was exposed to about 3,000 ads every day.

– Consumption and the Consumer Society, Neva Goodwin, Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Voluntary Simplicity: We can choose to have prosperity with less. For those willing to downsize, it begins with checking needs versus wants, and being conscious of consumption habits. Ideally, with less stuff, there are fewer expenses to worry about, and with fewer expenses, we can create more free space and time in our lives. Voluntary simplicity can include living with less space, living with less stuff, and living with less money. As a general foundation, there is the mantra of ‘reduce, reuse (or creative use), and refuse.’ First, try to reduce the amount of stuff and space you need to feel happy and comfortable.

Second, do your best to re-use what you (or others) already own. This can include shopping at thrift stores and going to swap meets; repairing your goods before throwing them away; and making the most creative use of the items and space you do have. Lastly, refuse the consumer culture that tells you to buy big and buy more. This is not about choosing less as a sacrifice. It is about entering into relationship with ‘enoughness,’ and adapting how much we each need to feel successful and at ease.

Learn more: theminimalists.com/21days becomingminimalist.com Go Local Campaigns: Besides reducing how much we consume, we can also have a large impact on the environment and economy by shifting what we consume. In most instances, consuming mass-produced items that have been produced in other economies tends to create waste where we live, while the profits are enjoyed elsewhere. Instead, when we use our spending dollars to support local production and independently owned businesses, we keep profits circulating locally, which can then be re-invested into our own community. Go Local Campaigns are alliances of locally-owned independent businesses and community organizations, which support awareness about local spending and local industry, while creating buyer incentive through membership programs, buyer clubs, and discounts. Community currencies have also been created where dollars can only be spent within local regions and for local purchases. These initiatives create stronger connections and feedback loops between producer and consumer, which further strengthen local and resilient consumption patterns.

Learn more: shiftyourshopping.org sonomacounty.golocal.coop

QUESTIONS • How aware are you of your own patterns of consumption? Are we consuming based on our needs or based on our wants? How much of these ‘wants’ are genuine, and how much of these ‘wants’ are coming from the surrounding consumer culture?

• Have you thought about ways to limit what you consume, while still feeling that you have plenty?

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Shmita Principle #9: Fair Distribution When harvesting, only collect specific to your immediate needs and not beyond.

During the Shmita Year, there was an ethic for each family or individual to only harvest as much as was needed. Personal, long-term accumulation would not be possible in such a system, and the resources that were available would meant to be stored in a collective ‘pantry’ to be distributed evenly and fairly within community. Such distribution systems created an opportunity to directly explore patterns of wealth and fairness, as well as systems of mutual support and care, within community culture.

THE ISSUE: ECONOMIC INEQUALITY Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country….Perhaps a hundred years ago, America might have rightly claimed to have been the land of opportunity, or at least a land where there was more opportunity than elsewhere. But not for at least a quarter of a century. It’s not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top. Economic mobility in the United States is lower than in most of Europe and lower than in all of Scandinavia.

– Joseph Stiglitz, Equal Opportunity: Our National Myth, The New York Times, February 16, 2013 Between 1980 and 2000, top-paid American CEOs increased their pay from 42 times the average worker’s pay to 531 times the average worker pay.

– CEOs: Why They’re So Unloved, Business Week, April 22, 2002 In 2007, the top 50 hedge fund and private equity fund managers averaged 588% million in compensation each, 19,000 times the typical U.S. worker.

– Institute for Policy Studies, Washington D.C. 15th Annual Compensation Survey, August 2008 The average annual income of the top 1 percent of the population is $717,000, compared to the average income of the rest of the population, which is around $51,000. The real disparity between the classes isn’t in income, however, but in net value: The 1 percent are worth about $8.4 million, or 70 times the worth of the lower classes…Altogether, the top 1 percent control 43 percent of the wealth in the nation; the next 4 percent control an additional 29 percent. It’s historically common for a powerful minority to control a majority of finances, but Americans haven’t seen a disparity this wide since before the Great Depression—and it keeps growing.

It’s a common belief in America that all people have the same opportunity for success as the top 1 percent. Most people consider success to be a by-product of hard work, and hard work is something that Americans are extremely familiar with.

In fact, Americans have increased productivity by 80 percent since 1979; unfortunately, their income hasn’t risen accordingly, if at all. The average worker in an American company makes substantially less than supervisors and executives. In fact, corporate executives make 62 times more money than an average worker in bonuses alone, not counting the executive’s actual salary. For every corporate bonus, the company could have paid 62 employees. In fact, incentive pay actually rose 30 percent from years before the recession.

– Alan Dunn, Average America vs. The One Percent, Forbes Magazine, March 21, 2012

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Time Banking: Time Banking is a local community-based system of equal exchange. Its currency is time and its unit of value is the hour.

In these networks, services are traded based on peer-to-peer exchange, outside of market structures and channels.

Through web-based platforms, members post services they are in need of, as well as skills they can offer. Regardless of what skill/service is bring posted, all services are of equal value, so that an hour of carpentry, for example, would be worth the same as an hour of babysitting. Timebanks work especially well to recognize the importance of services that are typically undervalued in market-based economies. Unlike one-on-one transfers within a traditional barter exchange, the time bank system works within the context of community. Time exchanges will most likely be indirect between members of the community, in which case you can respond to one member’s need without the expectation of being paid back in hours by that same individual. With the hour you have earned, you can search within the wider community for an offering that meets your particular need.

Learn more: timebanks.org

Community Currencies: A community-based currency is similar to national currency, however, unlike the standard, homogenous national dollar, community currencies are designed to support the resources and needs of a specific location, and are traded only within that local region. Community currencies create feedback loops of empowerment. Local businesses and individuals collectively decide to accept these dollars (which can be printed or accounted for in a digital system), as the medium for purchases and sales, as well as salary payments. In many instances, community currencies are used side by side with national dollars (a certain percentage of a value includes community currency dollars). These currencies circulate locally and stay local, spreading through the web for everyone’s enjoyment. Each dollar spent is an investment in empowering and strengthening the local economy and community.

These currencies shift the value of the dollar. Local money is dependent upon collective trading, rather than hoarding or concentrated investments. It must be spent, it must circulate or else it is worthless. The more the dollars are spent and traded, the more value they have. Community currencies are strongest when it is shared widely in the hands of the many, rather than concentrated in the hands of a select few.

Learn more: berkshares.org baybucks.com For more ideas about creating possibilities for community-supported economic equality, see Appendix B: Shmita Economics.

QUESTIONS • How do you think we might be able to equalize or balance some of the resource allocations in today’s economic systems?

• How should the values of equality enter into the ideals of a ‘free’ market? How might systems of local community support and mutuality interact with larger non-local and impersonal financial systems?

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Shmita Principle #7: Creating Commons All agricultural lands are declared public and become community commons.

Shmita Principle #8: Shared Harvest All harvested and stored produce are declared ‘ownerless’ and shared communally.

Shmita Principle #13: Generous Giving The value of exchange is based on generous giving and lending practices, without the need for profit or monetary gain..

The practice of Shmita emerged out of an agrarian economy, where food and land were the primary economic resources. During the Shmita year, food was not treated as a commodity on the marketplace.

As no one could own the harvest, it could not be commoditized and sold for a profit. On this year, food simply returned to its natural potential: nourishment, freely available to all. This would have shifted the entire economic marketplace, creating a transition from private ownership to collective commons, and from personal gain to communal access.

THE ISSUE: CORPORATE PRIVATIZATION & COMMODIFICATION These days you can buy almost anything. Sperm and eggs are advertised on the web. Speed dating services will provide you with several minutes-long dates in one night for the right price. Human organs are being bought and sold around the world. Universities are increasingly thinking of the education that they offer as a “product” and their students as “consumers.” There are fewer and fewer realms of life in which the language of money does not speak powerfully.

We now live not only in a market economy, but also in a market society, where the market and its categories of thought have come to dominate ever more areas of our lives. Many see the political revolutions of the last decade as offering a complete vindication of American-style free and self-regulating markets. Free markets promise the most efficient allocation of resources, unmatched production of wealth, and greater liberty. But what does the spread of the paradigm of the market mean for the things that we hold most dear, for our most intimate relationships, for our understanding of what it means to be human?

– The Commodification of Everything, The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Summer 2003 In another time, some people thought it was all right to own other people as slaves. In our times some corporations think it is all right to own life on earth through patents and intellectual property rights (IPR). Patents are granted for inventions, and life is not an invention. These IPR monopolies on seeds are also creating a new bondage and dependency for farmers who are getting trapped in debt to pay royalties…Seed slavery is ethically important to address because it transforms the Earth family into corporate property. It is ecologically important because with seeds in the hands of five corporations, biodiversity disappears, and is replaced by monocultures of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). It is socially important because without seed sovereignty, there is no food sovereignty. After all, seeds are the first link in the food chain.

– Vandana Shiva, Corporate Monopoly of Seeds Must End, The Guardian, October 8, 2012

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Open Source/Creative Commons: Popular in the software industry yet widely applicable, open-source systems provide free access to a product’s sourcematerial or blueprint, with the intention that the design will be used, adapted, and improved by a wide communitybase of users, and shared publicly under free licensing agreements. Open Source systems promote peer-to-peer creativity and collaborative efforts in producing product designs that are available to the public, free of charge, for use and modification.

Creative Commons is a similar alternative licensing system, seeking to build a richer public domain of intellectual commons. This license allows for product designers to waive their ‘all right reserved’ copyright, in place for a unique copyright that provides the flexibility to grant certain permissions to end-users, in regards to attribution, commercial use, and adaptation. Creators can choose which particular level of allowance they want to give their product and craft their own Creative Commons license to meet their own particular needs.

Learn more: opensourceecology.org creativecommons.org en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Judaism

Pay It Forward/Gift Economy: The value of ‘paying it forward’ is what drives the peer-to-peer collaborative economy, where exchange is based upon the value of shared use, rather than monetary gain. In the market economy, dollars are the currency that facilitates exchange, and without dollars, the exchanges come to a halt. In these alternative economic systems, however, social capital is the momentum for exchange, which builds interpersonal relationships that connect one person’s ‘have’ to another person’s ‘need.’ Such exchanges of products, services, and skills are genuinely based on practices of generous giving and participatory collaboration, without being facilitated by marketplace structures. In the Free Cycle network, groups of individuals form groups that freely exchange items. In the Skill Share networks, members freely share skills and information, based on curiosity. In the Couchsurfing network, members freely host travelers and tourists at their homes.

In these systems, a web of social support is built without any dollar changing hands.

Learn more: freecycle.org couchsurfing.org brooklynskillshare.org/about

QUESTIONS • What resources have you grown accustomed to seeing as ‘commodities’? How does this commodification of resources affect your relationship with it?

• What would our economic system feel like if those resources were not privatized and instead were available to the collective, freely?

• How can you model such ‘shared access’ and support of the commons with your own property, skills, and time?

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Shmita Principle #1: Let Rest & Lie Fallow Take the time to form a new relationship with work and rest. Allow your land, your body, your workers, your economy of production and consumption, to rest.

Shmita Principle #16: Release of Slaves Every Jubilee Year, slaves would be released and would be able to return home.

During the Shmita year, all workers and slaves were invited to rest, side by side with the landowners.

Similarly, all foods harvested were to be shared fairly with the workers. The Shmita year blurred the distinction between landowner, worker, and slave, and, on the Jubilee year, all slaves would be automatically released. These practices were a part of a set of values that governed the relationship between landowner, hired worker, and slave, within the Torah.

THE ISSUE: SLAVERY & WORKERS' RIGHTS At its heart, slavery is an inhuman perversion of a simple economic principle: the best way to maximize profits is by minimizing the cost of labor. In today’s global economy, the seemingly inexhaustible demand for cheap goods and services has created a vast, largely invisible market for easily replenished supplies of men, women and children who are forced to work against their will, for little or no pay, and under constant threat of violence or intimidation.

An estimated 12-27 million people are caught in one or another form of slavery. Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States.

Forced labor is present throughout the world and takes many forms. The enslaved work as field hands harvesting crops, as seamstresses in back-alley sweatshops, as kidnapped fisherman or child soldiers, and as common laborers so deeply in debt that their obligation can never be repaid. Increasingly, the enslaved are women and children—mostly teenage girls and younger—caught up in the global sex industry of prostitution, pornography and pedophilia.

– National Underground Railroad Freedom Center The food chain provides employment for millions of workers in other sectors, some unseen to the eye of the consumer, such as processing and distribution. A movement based on holistic understanding of food justice needs to encompass the chain of food production that connects seeds to mouth…Often workers in the food chain suffer low wages and exploitative conditions. Farm labor, for example, has a higher rate of toxic chemical injuries than workers in any other sector of the U.S. economy, with an estimated 300,000 farmworkers suffering from pesticide poisoning annually. Service workers in the restaurant industry, which serves food to consumers at the end of the food chain, face unfair labor practices ranging from employees withholding wages to not getting paid for overtime. Also, many sectors of the food chain are excluded from the protection of federal labor laws. This includes farmworkers, tipped minimum wage workers, such as those working in restaurants, and the formerly incarcerated. These workers fall under the rubric of excluded workers, who lack the right to organize without retaliation, because they are excluded from labor law protection.

– The Color of Food, Applied Research Center: Racial Justice Through Media, Research, and Activism, February 2011

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Worker-Owed Co-Op: Worker cooperatives are alternative for-profit businesses that are owned and democratically managed by their employees. Worker co-ops simultaneously aim to create job satisfaction and improve quality of life for their workers, while becoming a financially successful company. Profits are invested back into the company, and shared among employees, rather than being diverted to external shareholders. Top-level managers and entry-level employees alike own an identical share and receive an equal percentage of any profits or losses. Many work co-ops aim to hire locally, and offer on-site training and professional development services to their employees, to create an informed and empowered workplace. As a worker-owner, each employee has one equal vote in decision-making processes within the company, and can have a direct say in terms of the hours they work, the salaries that are paid, and how financial resources are managed within the company. With their vote, they also elect managerial staff and Board of Directors.

Learn more: nobawc.org equalexchange.coop/worker-owned

Fair Trade: Fair Trade is a both a product certification system, and a set of business practices agreed upon by producer and buyer of agricultural commodities grown in developing nations, for sale in a developed nation. The Fair Trade certification serves to inform and educate consumers about trade practices and standards associated with the products they are buying. The mission of Fair Trade is to support small-scale farmers and local farm-cooperatives that would otherwise be misrepresented in the trade contracts of multi-national corporations or agri-businesses. Fair Trade certification is applicable to a product when the buyer sources directly from farmers, on a long-term contact, for fair market prices, and premiums on certain harvests. The financial relationships allows for further investment in the local community, as well as the improved wages of workers. Another critical factor taken into account is the guarantee of safe and healthy working conditions for all employees, and the strict prohibition of child or slave labor.

Learn more: fairtradeusa.org/what-is-fair-trade/faq fairtradejudaica.org To learn about a Jewish response to ending slavery and supporting worker’s rights, visit: utzedek.org/tavhayosher.html truah.org/issuescampaigns/slavery-a-human-trafficking.html

QUESTIONS • Who are the modern slaves in the current global economy? Visit slaveryfootprint.org to track modern slavery today.

• Have you considered the conditions and rights of the workers involved in the production of your own clothing, food, building materials, etc? Are we treating our workers with respect and dignity?

• How would you support the release of modern slaves and the improvement of rights for hired, yet disadvantaged, workers?

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Shmita Principle #13: Generous Giving The value of exchange is based on generous giving and lending practices, without the need for profit or monetary gain.

Shmita Principle #14: Debt Release All debts from previous years are canceled at the conclusion of the Shmita year.

During the Shmita year, debts would be released. Whatever was not paid back to a lender by the end of the seventh year would be forgiven. Today, the level of debt experienced by families, students, even entire countries, is becoming an unbearable burden. The Shmita Year created an opportunity to ease such burdens, and in the process, shift the way we are in relationship with lending and borrowing.

THE ISSUE: RISING DEBT Everyone seems to owe something, and most of us (including our cities) are in so deep it’ll be years before we have any chance of getting out—if we have any chance at all. At least one in seven of us are already being pursued by debt collectors.

We are told all of this is our own fault, that we got ourselves into this and that we should feel guilty or ashamed. But think about the numbers: 76% of Americans are debtors. How is it possible that three-quarters of us could all have just somehow failed to figure out how to properly manage our money, all at the same time?

– Debt Resistor’s Manual, Strike Debt 1. The total amount of consumer debt in the US is nearly $2.4 trillion in 2010. That’s $7,800 debt per person.

2. Thirty-three percent of that debt is revolving debt (such as credit card debt), the other 67 percent comes from loans (such as car loans, student loans, mortgages and the like).

3. The average credit card debt per cardholder is $5,100, and expected to increase to $6,500 by the end of the year.

4. The average consumer carries 4 credit cards, while the average household carries $6,500 of debt.

5. 1 in 50 households carry more than $20,000 in credit card debt. That amounts to more than 2 million households.

6. 4.5 percent of cardholders are 60 or more days late in their payments.

7. Roughly 2 – 2.5 million Americans seek the help of a credit counselor each year to avoid bankruptcy.

– Alarming US Consumer Debt Statistics, Businessinsider.com, 2011 Higher education is an integral part of the American Dream. But today more and more young people increasingly have to finance their education through student loans. In the past three decades, the cost of attaining a college degree has increased more than 1,000 percent. Two-thirds of students who earn four-year bachelor’s degrees are graduating with an average student loan debt of more than $25,000, and 1 in 10 borrowers now owe more than $54,000 in loans…With $864 billion in federal loans and $150 billion in private loans, student debt in America now exceeds $1 trillion.

– Center for American Progress

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CREATIVE RESPONSE Financial Literacy & Empowerment: We can begin to reclaim our own economic power by first making sure we are educated in terms of how to avoid entering into credit relationships that are not in our best interests; what our legal rights are if we do fall into debt; how to best manage levels of compound interest; and how to practice caution while using credit cards. Without this knowledge, we become dependent upon our banks and creditors, who are more concerned with their own profit margin than our own personal needs. Financial literacy has traditionally been left up to personal initiative and self-study, as the process of how to manage personal finances, the importance of savings, investing and avoiding debt is not a priority at schools, and once this is grasped, many young adults are already struggling with paying back loans. The 2013 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey revealed that 40% of adults gave themselves a grade of C, D, or F on their knowledge of personal finance.

Learn more: strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf financialliteracymonth.com

Rolling Jubilee: The Rolling Jubilee is a project that emerged after the financial crisis of 2008, when banks of the United States were being bailed out in a package worth trillions of dollars, while individuals struggling with debt were not being given direct support. In response, Rolling Jubilee began actively buying debt for pennies on the dollar and then abolishing it.

This was a bailout of the people, by the people, entirely supported through individual donations. Usually, when financial institutions are unable to collect on their loans, they sell the rights of the debt to third parties, such as debt-collectors, at a huge discount (and receive a tax write-off in the process). These debt collectors then pursue repayment at enormous profit rates. The Rolling Jubilee project has so far spent almost $700,000 to reclaim almost $15 million of debt on the market. Once the debt is purchased, it is entirely forgiven and the individuals connected to these debts are informed.

According to the project, a $10 donation wipes out $200 of debt, while a $100 donation wipes out $2,000 of debt.

Learn more: rollingjubilee.org strikedebt.org For more ideas about creating possibilities for economic exchange systems that help prevent and ease debt, see Appendix B: Shmita Economics.

To learn about Jewish organizing and advocay in response to debt relief, visit: jewishcommunityaction.org/our-work/foreclosure-prevention ajws.org/emergencies/debt_campaign.html

QUESTIONS • Are you in debt? If so, how does this affect your life?

• Would you advocate for a national debt release policy today? What would need to happen for governments and banks to release some of this burden?

• On a local scale, how can we use community networks to help alleviate debt burdens through generous giving and resource sharing?

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Appendices APPENDIX A Shmita Foods: Perennial & Wild Harvests.................................................122 APPENDIX B Shmita Economics: G’machs & Interest Free Loans..............................126 APPENDIX C Applied Shmita: For Communities & Organizations.............................132 APPENDIX D Shmita & Yovel Today: A Halachic Perspective.......................................136

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Shmita Foods APPENDIX A SHMITA FOODS: PERENNIAL & WILD HARVESTS OK, we know what you’re really wondering after all this is: What can I eat? The following is a list of what we would like to offer as plant-based Shmita foods, to help keep you fed and nourished during the seventh year. Beyond stored foods (dried, preserved, fermented, etc), the options for harvesting fresh produce during the Shmita Year are specific to wild (uncultivated) crops, and perennial plants (which requires no seeding or tilling).

There are some real tangible differences between annual and perennial plants, as it comes to cultivation practices. For one, perennials are planted once, unlike annuals, which are replanted each season. With a single planting, there is less need for soil disruption. Perennial planting systems work to create healthier and more stable soil ecologies, whereas continual cultivation and tillage for annuals, if not done properly, can lead to soil erosion and loss of topsoil. Also, perennials invest more into their own plant body (since they are long living), while annuals invest more in producing seed (since they live only through their seed reproduction). Because of this, perennials tend to have longer roots, which, in turn, make them more drought tolerant and more able to access nutrients in the soil. Their stronger plant bodies allow for stronger disease and insect resistance. Furthermore, over seasons, decaying organic matter from dead leaves and roots leads to building organic matter in its own soils. Annuals, on the other hand, usually require more water, more fertilizers and more pesticides. Taking all this into consideration, a more perennial based food system leads to a healthier and more resilient food ecology.

As you look through this list (which covers a wide variety of climate zones), consider:

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Is this a diet that would keep you happy and well fed?

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How familiar are you already with the process of harvesting, cooking, and consuming these foods? Where can you begin experimenting with these foods in your own diet today?

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If you have a garden or farm, how many perennials and herbs have you planted? Would you consider dedicating a significant portion of your planting space for growing perennials and herbs? How about dedicating a certain portion of land in your garden to wild plants?

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How many fruit trees are growing on your block? In your local park? On your school/synagogue/community center land? How might the local landscape shift if we had fruit trees growing all around us, especially on communal lands?

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PERENNIAL VINES Grapes

Passion Fruit

Kiwi

PERENNIAL FRUITS Apple Apricot Avocado Carob Cherry Cherimoya Clementine Date Fig Feijoa Guava Grapefruit Jujube Lemon Lime Loquat Lychee Mango Mulberry Nectarine Orange Olive Papaya Peach Pear Persimmon Pomegranate Pomelo Plum Quince

PERENNIAL BERRIES Blackberry Blueberry Raspberry Elderberry Cranberry Gooseberry Currants Huckleberry Strawberry Thimbleberry Goji Berries

PERENNIAL NUTS Chestnut Cashew Hazelnut Pistachio Almond Pecan Coconut Walnut Macadamia Butternut Hickory Pine Nuts

PERENNIAL HERBS Garlic Chives Lavender Oregano Parsley Thyme Savory

Lemon Balm Mint Rosemary Sage Taragon Anise Hyssop

PERENNIAL VEGETABLES Artichoke New Zealand Spinach

Jerusalem Artichoke French Sorrel

Asparagus Tree Collards

Rhubarb Water Cress

Sweet Potato

Ginger

PERENNIAL ROOTS Horseradish Yams Oca Yacon

PERENNIAL GRAINS The main grains in our common diet, such as wheat, barley, rye, etc are all annual plants. The Land Institute, based in Salina, Kansas, is one of a few organizations actively doing research and breeding trials to develop a perennial grain.

For further information on this inspiring and valuable work, visit landinstitute.org

COMMON WILD EDIBLES Dandelion Nettle Purslane Mallow Rosehips Shepherd’s Purse

Chickweed Plantain Lam’s Quarters Clovers Mushrooms Berries

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Shmita Foods Cultivating More Permanence in Our Food Systems While ‘Jewish farming’ may have sounded like an strange activity to North American Jews just a short while ago, the values of local and organic foods are rooting strongly in Jewish communities today, and we are doing more and more to bring healthy, community-oriented food production to our own backyards and community landscapes. There are productive Jewish farms in rural and urban centers across the country; there are gardens at Jewish summer camps, community centers, schools, and synagogues; there are numerous food educational programs for all ages, providing the possibilities for children and adults to learn the crafts of farming and cooking; and there are close to 100 Jewishoriented CSA groups across the country. So how can we deepen into the evolution of this movement, continuing to build upon our commitment towards ‘local’ and ‘sustainable,’ while simultaneously adding the Shmita vision of introducing more perennial and wild foods to our communities, diets, farms, and education programs? Here are some short suggestions: •

Plant Trees & Perennial Herbs: Every synagogue, JCC, and Jewish school with a garden should allocate a part of their garden towards the planting of fruit/nut trees, vines, and herbs. If your space does not have enough land for a large garden, plant some trees along your sidewalk or along the side of your building, or plant into large containers on your balconies or roof tops. For larger Jewish farms/community gardens, plant diverse perennials on the edges of your annual crop rows or interplant within your vegetable fields/gardens. For homeowners, transform part or all of your yard and lawn into a perennial, edible landscape!

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Preserve and Enhance Wild Growth: In each garden or farm, it should be a practice to steward a patch of wild growth. If the wild ecology has already been removed, then native, wild plants should be re-introduced. Such ‘hedges’ not only will provide possible wild edibles, but they will also provide habitat for beneficial insects for the garden ecology, as well as nectar for our food-plant pollinators.

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Support Land Conservation: Through donations of time or finance, support local Community Land Trusts that work with wildland conservation and protection, by purchasing land and keeping it wild for future generations. Do what you can so you will have a wild food ecology surrounding you, or close by, when you need it. Similarly, supporting Agricultural Land Trusts preserves land for the use of long-term agriculture, by protecting local farms from future development.

•

Create the Market for Perennial/Wild Foods: If you are part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture farm), ask your farmer to start offering a selection of perennial foods in your weekly harvest boxes. Work with your farmer to create a diverse selection by partnering with other growers of herbs, fruit trees, and vine crops. Such a market diversifies the local food economy, while encouraging further investment in fruit tree production and healthy land management.

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Community Education & Organizing: Start a local foraging group to go on wild plant walks. Learn to identify wild edible plants, medicinal plants, and mushrooms. Learn their seasons and how to ethically and properly harvest such growth. Experiment with preparing and/or cooking such foods so they can be easily incorporated into your diet.

Begin to incorporate fruit tree classes into your local community garden educational programs and curriculums, covering subjects such as tree propogation, tree planting, seasonal pruning, and more. Map the fruit trees growing in your area, so you can realize the abundance around you. Join together as community work groups to tend local fruit trees and share in the harvest.

Start a local gleaning group, visiting farms to collect secondary harvests from fruit trees that the farmers might otherwise not take advantage of. If the farm is on a large piece of land, ask to forage for wild edibles, herbs, and medicinals that the farmer would not otherwise be harvesting for sale.

•

Shmita Foods & Shabbat: Shabbat tends to be one popular way Jews and food come together, in a community setting in people’s homes or at synagogues. Occasionally, introduce a dish from wild and/or perennial foods and introduce it as a Shmita dish. When folks as what that is all about, share what you know abut these foods and plants! Get creative with unique recipes for each season.

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Shmita Economics APPENDIX B SHMITA ECONOMICS: G’MACHS & INTEREST FREE LOANS As an overview of what we have learned through the Shmita sources, we know that debts were to be cancelled at the conclusion of every Shmita Year. We also know that this ideal was not met with such real-time success. By the time of the Second Temple, lenders were not giving generously, concerned that their loans would never be paid back. Hillel instituted the Pruzbul, a legal-Rabbinic decree that let debts carry on into the next Shmita Cycle, essentially ending the Sabbatical debt release.

Before we can consider the possibility of a successful debt release, let’s take a step back and consider debt itself. Debt, on its own, is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the end product of an exchange in which one person, the lender, has given another person, the borrower, a loan in the form of a specific item or amount of money. Giving and receiving is a natural part of any social ecosystem, and the flow of resources is a sign of healthy movement in a community, both in social and economic terms. Nevertheless, it is clear that debt has become a burden to many, and it is a problem that is seemingly growing endlessly, out of control. So we can see that there are forms of healthy debt and unhealthy debt, in which case, there follows that there are forms of healthy borrowing and unhealthy borrowing. What are the distinctions? Why might one type of debt feel natural while another might feel like a burden haunting you?

While we can focus entirely on the borrower and debt itself, a loan is a two way relationship between receiving and giving, and each are directly linked. So to explore debt without looking at the loan itself is to ignore half the picture. In fact, Jewish tradition puts much emphasis on economic lending. Taking a step back from the specifics of the Shmita Year, we also know from Jewish tradition that interest was not allowed to be charged on a loan (one was never allowed to profit from a loan), and that lending itself was highly regarded as the highest form of charity, especially when the loan was to help the borrower reach economic self-sufficiency. From this perspective, we can say the possibility of releasing debt first relies upon generating healthy and appropriate forms of giving.

As we explore the economics of Shmita, our focus should be upon the actual exchanges that happen throughout the Shmita Cycle: the intentions, values, and expectations that surround such economic forms of giving and receiving. Unless we can look closely and begin to shift some of these exchanges along the lines of Shmita values, the need of the Przobul will always be there as a way out, as an escape, so that ‘normal’ transactions can continue, uninhibited by Shmita.

The question we are most interested in exploring is this:

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What are forms of healthy borrowing and unhealthy borrowing? What are forms of healthy lending and unhealthy lending?”

•

How can we infuse the values and ethics of fairness, generosity, and community care in our personal practices of economic giving and receiving?

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The Evolution of the G’Mach & Free Loan Societies The G’mach (which stands for Gemilut Chasidim and literally means acts of kindness/generosity) is a model of Jewishbased lending grounded in Jewish values, which emerged in a time of recent necessity, similar to a Shmita Year. In this case, it was early immigration from Europe to North America and the financial aid was not in the form of debt release but through interest-free micro-lending.

According to Shana Novick, the director of the Hebrew Free Loan Society, “the G’mach was transplanted to America at the end of the 19th century, with the first great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. They provided interest-free loans to pay the rent or buy medicine at a time when there was no government-funded safety net, and provided capital to enable thousands of micro-entrepreneurs to stock a pushcart or buy a sewing machine in an era when their only alternative source of credit was loan sharks. These organizations often became founding or early members of their local Jewish federations.”

An article in the New York Times, “Society Makes No-Interest Loans to New York’s Immigrants” (May 1, 1983) shows how successful this system became: "On a December evening in 1892, 11 men met at the Wilner Synagogue on Henry Street in Manhattan and pooled their savings - $95 - to establish a free loan society similar to those they had known in their native eastern European countries… The first year the society lent $1,205 in amounts of $5 and $10. By 1905, some 15,000 families, mostly Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side, had borrowed $364,480."

Today, Hebrew Free Loan societies exist all over the world to help borrowers through interest-free giving and generous repayment schedules. The largest such free-loan society is in Israel, which began as a response to assist the large number of Ethiopian and Russian immigrants coming into the country in the late 1980’s. Today, the Israel Free Loan Association has lent out nearly $152 million to over 40,000 low income families and struggling small businesses. Its current estimate is a lending rate of $15 million each year, to Israelis of all backgrounds. Many interest-free loan societies have a hugely successful rate of repayment because when loans are given, they are backed by two credit-worthy guarantors.

Similar to the early free-loan societies, a modern version of the G’mach has emerged as well, on a more local, community level, serving as a re-use, recycling, and sharing closet, offering a collection of many common household or ritual items people may borrow and return as needed. These types of centers are most common in ultra-Orthodox communities where there are many large families of low income, supported by a culture of strongly connected community interactions. These G’machs stock items to meet short-term needs. These needs are widely shared, so everyone in the community could make use of the items. And the need is so temporary it would be a waste for everyone to own such items on their own. The most popular g’machs of this sort might be for bridal dresses (why own one when you’ll only use it once?) and baby clothing/ strollers (the classic hand-me-down items). Today, there are g’machs for a wide set of diverse needs and they are becoming common in all types of Jewish communities.

To read one woman’s account of accompanying her sister on a search for a bridal dress at a g’mach, visit: tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/1527/something-borrowed To see a directory of Wedding G’machs, visit: chossonandkallah.com/new-york/jewish-wedding/Gemachs.html To see a directory of Baby G’machs, visit: utzedek.org/takeaction/new-york/chesed-a-tzedek.html

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Shmita Economics

The model of the g’mach, both as a community sharing closet and as an interest free lending society, is a powerful model rooted deeply in Jewish values, and is one that can help inspire us to design for Shmita economics. Here are a few short suggestions of ways to further expand on the G’mach model: •

Community G’mach / Alternative Libraries: The traditional book library is a wonderful part of the neighborhood landscape, offering a space for free access to collective resource use. Can we expand upon this model, and have ‘libraries’ for tools, appliances, clothing, furniture, and more? Do you have perfectly usable items lying around your home that you have no desire or need for? Rather than watch these items gather dust in storage or add them to the waste stream, keep these resources circulating within community, so they can be put to good use. What if we could host such g’mach libraries at our Synagogues or schools? How would this influence and perhaps strengthen community bonds of mutual investment and care?

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Community Swap Meets: If a permanent space cannot be found to host a full g’mach, what about hosting a monthly or seasonal swap meet? Invite community members to come out and bring along items that they may no longer want or need, but are still in perfectly good use. Drop off what you’d like and find something else in return. Swap meets can work wonderful for the same items as would be donated to a g’mach, but since this is a short event, this can also work as a crop swap and food exchange, as well.

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Ethical Investing, Spending & Banking: Know how your savings are being re-invested by your banks, so you can make educated choices about where to keep your money. Explore the options of investing your money with local, socially responsible community credit unions and local, public banks. Keep your money circulating as close to home as possible, supporting local businesses and co-operatives. Explore creative forms of social banking networks, such as Time Banks, which allow community members to borrow and lend ‘time’ in the form of services, in which each person’s hour is valued equally.

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Financial Mentoring / Investment Circles: In these group circles, members come together to share best-practices concerning financial resource management and family/business budgeting. This is also a space to educate one another in strategies to best use and invest monetary assets while staying true to personal values. In these models, cooperation is the main incentive, and the competitive market model does not serve: the stronger each individual is financially, the stronger the community is. As the group establishes trust and experience, a next step would be to invest in one another: each participant offering a sum of money to the group fund, which can serve as microloans to other members.

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Community Crowdfunding / Tzedakah Funds: A community fund is similar to the group model introduced above, but on a much larger scale. Ideally such funds are organized within the community networks that already exist within Synagogue, JCC, or Hebrew Schools. In this case, we are no longer simply a group that prays together, or that learns together—we are community that looks after one another’s needs and wellbeing. Such a fund can be anonymous, based on donations received, and distributed as the needs arise; or they can be organized as community events, to offer grants/microloans in the form of seed-money to support a local community-based business, non-profit, artist, musician, or farmer with a creative vision.

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Shmita for Funders APPENDIX C Shmita as a Paradigm for Funding

This essay was written for a session at the 2014 Jewish Funders Network Conference and published by ejewishphilanthropy.com on March 20, 2014. The essay is written by Charlene Seidle, Executive Vice President of the Leichtag Foundation and a senior consultant to the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego. It applies the values and principles of Shmita to inform a new model of Jewish philanthropic giving, with applicable lessons to us all.

The Shmita sabbatical year kicks off in September 2014. One of the core tenets of halacha and traditionally only observed in the land of Israel, Shmita also offers a useful and meaningful model for our lives, our relationships with each other, our responsibilities to those less fortunate than we are, and our systems for community, justice and equality. The word Shmita, exactly translated, means release. More than just one year of release, Shmita is actually the pinnacle of a seven-year cycle that sustains healthy society, community and individuals. Shmita teaches us that our land – and our resources – do not truly belong to us, that our lives can be enriched and changed in powerful ways through releasing control. Opening ourselves to the Shmita experience inspires us to reinvest or recalibrate our relationships.

As funders, the onset of Shmita offers a good opportunity to test our assumptions and think about opportunities to support the organizations and issues we care about through a different, more holistic lens.

Here are seven ideas for Shmita-inspired funding (in no particular order): 1. Consider a seven-year cycle for granting: Often the way we fund encourages short-term, non-strategic decision making and also demands quick results that are sometimes unrealistic to achieve before we move on to the next compelling topic. A longer cycle gives us a chance to steep ourselves in knowledge, develop a balanced portfolio of grants and evaluate over time. We can pace ourselves and tackle big social challenges in phases, creating a platform for a deeper relationship between funder and grantee along the way. The cycle can apply for particular areas of interest as well as specific organizations.

2. Think about the value of renewal and rest to actually drive creative productivity. What would it look like if we regularly funded sabbatical leaves of varying lengths for CEOs and other organization professionals? Not only has this kind of practice stimulated innovative ideas and new ways of thinking, it is a great tool for succession planning as middle managers and second-tier executives step in while the CEO is out – a very important leadership pipeline opportunity.

Another component to consider is funding professional development and time for learning. In the documentation we have around how Shmita was actually observed thousands of years ago, we find that it was a year that reinvested in learning. As a best practice, we should determine from programs we fund what kinds of immersive continuing education they offer, how they invest in the continued growth of employees – and make sure this is a line item for our funding. We should look at our own organizations and do the same.

3. Support the gift economy. Sharing, reusing and recycling improves the environment and builds sustainable community. The g’mach, a hallmark of many Jewish communities, has traditionally served as a center to lend items which are generally temporarily needed, such as baby gear and now meet a wide variety of needs. Seek out g’machs and other exchange programs in your community. Learn more about them. Help create new ones. Besides support that might be needed for space or volunteer management (with huge bang for the buck), these programs’ constituents and volunteers can be important informants about community needs and ways to address them that don’t necessarily involve money. Also, consider looking for ways to facilitate peer to peer support among grantees. Are there opportunities to gather organizations working in the same field to exchange ideas and best practices according to areas of success and competency?

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4. Focus on networks and systems that encourage collaboration. The ultimate manifestation of Shmita is a community paradigm which is only possible if we all work together. What are the ways you encourage collaboration among grantees? What opportunities do we have to model collaboration with other funders by learning and granting together?

Or collaboration with nonprofit partners through thoughtful learning, conversation and exchange of ideas? Shmita helps us look at the world through a lens of abundance rather than scarcity. Shmita teaches that nothing belongs to me and everything belongs to us. Through building a culture of trust and collaboration we can achieve the “everything”.

5. Support organizations and efforts that connect with a local food system and ensure equal access to fresh and healthy food. When commenting about Shmita, the Rambam says that the produce of the Shmita year may not be transported anywhere beyond the Land of Israel. This focus resonates today as we see large-scale farming moving farther away from the end consumer. Fresh, healthy food is often priced beyond the means of families struggling to get by, and “fresh food deserts” in our communities rob many from even the ability to access these resources. Our Torah teaches that all shall have equal rights to the produce of the Shmita year, and that fresh food should not be reserved for only those with significant resources. In honor of Shmita, let’s find out which organizations work to address food security and access issues in our communities and advocate for a more, just equitable food system.

6. Explore opportunities to help alleviate and reduce debt for individuals in need and organizations. Interest-free loan funds provide a bridge to self-sufficiency and are the highest form of giving according to the Rambam’s ladder of priorities. Hebrew Free Loan Societies provide funds for transportation to get to work, buy medicine and help people get back on their feet while maintaining their dignity. On the organizational front, some community foundations now offer options where donors can actually invest in a pool that provides loans for capital purposes credit worthy nonprofit organizations while earning a below or at market interest rate in order to help these organizations bridge cash flow needs.

7. Support initiatives that provide financial and credit education and give people the tools they need to get and stay out of debt. By commanding us to release our neighbors and brothers from debt during the Shmita year, the Torah acknowledges the heavy, lasting and debilitating burden debt can wield. And in our society this burden starts earlier than ever. The average undergraduate college student graduates with about $2,500 in credit card debt that often takes years to pay off, especially when compounded by interest and late fees. Basic financial education can be critical to helping individuals of all ages make better money-related decisions.

With thanks to Rabbi Andy Kastner, Director of the Leichtag Foundation’s Jewish Food Justice Fellowship and Yigal Deutscher, founder of 7Seeds and manager of the Shmita Project for their help with this article.

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Applied Shmita APPENDIX D APPLIED SHMITA: FOR ORGANIZATIONS This sourcebook is designed for people to learn from these texts—as individuals, or in a group. But one of the things we most want to engender is a conversation within a community. Our organizational and institutional structures are microcosms of community dynamics and relationships. How could or should we mark the Shmita Year? And how could or should we use the Shmita Year to prepare for an entire Shmita Cycle—in this case, the cycle that begins at Rosh Hashanah in September 2015 and runs until the day before Rosh Hashanah in 2022?

In short: How could or should your synagogue, JCC, camp, school, Hillel, or place of work register the Shmita Year? How could or might you be different during the Shmita Year—or in the next Shmita Cycle?

Here are some ideas, suggestions, questions, and processes. We offer them not as things that you have to do but rather as ideas to prompt ways in which Shmita could become a powerful organizational frame: 1. Think about the full seven-year Shmita Cycle from 2015 to 2022 as an opportunity for change and renewal in your organization.

The seven year framing of the Shmita Cycle offers a wonderful opportunity for long-term, expansive planning.

Working with such cycles, we can approach our work with a new perspective, marking a specific beginning stage and an end stage, which then will naturally evolve into another new beginning. For some organizations the time frame of the next Shmita Cycle may not work, for various reasons. But in general, this period can be seen as an invitation for reflection, visioning, and design.

For many organizations, it may be helpful to imagine the upcoming Shmita Year (from Rosh Hashana 2014 until Rosh Hashana 2015), and the months leading up to it, as a time dedicated to brainstorming, planning, and imagining. What went very well in the previous six years? What did not go so well, and need adjusting? What are our goals for the years ahead? What do we need to make happen in order to reach such goals? What sort of timeframe can we envision for this process?

Such goal-articulation and design can easily fill the Shmita Year, giving way to a transition. Early in the years of the next Shmita Cycle starts a period of execution and growth, activation and adaptation. The reflections and designs from the Shmita Year can now begin to take shape as the process becomes defined. As the growth continues, it is always good to keep track of the larger cycle, recognizing if your work progress and flow is in alignment with what you envisioned during the previous Shmita Year. Obviously, periods of elongated observation and reflection do not need to wait until the Seventh year, as the values of Shmita are meant to guide us through the entire process of the cycle.

2. Learning – widely construed.

Shmita is a great opportunity to learn – not just about Shmita itself but more generally about a wide range of ideas that connect to it. Shmita touches upon all the challenges and exciting opportunities that are arising today with food, economy, governance, community, religion, and more, especially through the lens of sustainability.

There is so many ways in which we can use Shmita as a jumping-off point to keep ourselves active and aware as students of life.

Shmita offers us a societal model that will only be possible if we all work together, and in this way, we are all invited to be teachers and students. No one individual person has ‘the answer.’ The process of working towards embracing Shmita must also include investing in community education, in which we are all learning and sharing from one another.

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As a community, start a 7-year conversation – perhaps a series of book clubs. Or take seven topics to be learned, in different ways, as themes, each for one year. For synagogues, there is an interesting opportunity to reach out to people who might come to shul on Shabbat morning – but don’t like to daven. Think of starting a cycle of Shabbat-morning discussion groups or study circles – running alongside services, or joining together for Kiddush. For organizations, perhaps host a weekly or monthly learning circle during lunch hours, where all staff join together to explore one area of focus. And take the Shmita Year to review your professional development policies. Are there periods of learning set aside for all years?

3. Greening and organizational sustainability.

The issues involved in greening an institution and taking on issues of sustainability are understandably overwhelming. We may feel that we lack the knowledge, the time, the resources—or all three—in order to engage topics that seem too large, too complicated, and too expensive. The seven-year Shmita Cycle lends itself to a longterm process of slowing this design down into bite-sized organizational chunks, and offering a frame in which to move towards organizational sustainability step-by-step. This work can be guided by these questions: What do you want your facility to look like in seven years? What work will you start with, now, to reach such goals? Designing for sustainability is actually best done in the context of multi-year planning, without the need to rush and force change, which would likely result in many mistakes. Multi-year planning gives us the opportunity to set realistic goals, observe the work, reflect upon it, and re-design for the next set of implementations.

4. Develop an institutional food policy by the start—or end—of the next Shmita Year.

Most Jewish institutions have a kashrut policy. But a food policy is something broader. What food do we serve?

Where is it grown? How are the workers treated? How are the animals treated? How is the land treated? What waste do we produce? Where does it go? How healthy and nutritious are the foods we serve? How much sugar or soda do we serve—and how much do we think we should serve? How deeply is Jewish food education integrated into what we do educationally? How does the food we serve manifest our connection to Israel? What do we mean by kashrut, and how do we deepen knowledge of, and respect for, kashrut in our community? What about supporting food justice and strengthening local food security? What about interfaith collaborations?

What about advocacy?

And if you have land available: Are you growing any of your own food? What are the smartest plant choices to cultivate? How many perennial plants (fruit and nut trees, berries, herbs) would you be able to grow? Would you open your gardens and share the harvest on the Shmita year?

You don’t have to tackle all these questions at once. Nor are they all necessarily directly connected to Shmita.

However, a core value of the Shmita tradition was in celebrating healthy, just and abundant local food systems.

The lead-up to the Shmita Year, and/or the Shmita Year itself, offers a tremendous time-frame to begin a conversation about these issues, as well as a ripe opportunity to really begin experimenting with different ways to create local and healthy food systems for your own community.

Our recommendation would be to bring together a mixed group – clergy, professional leaders, educators, lay leaders, one or two teenagers – and map out a multi-month conversation of enquiry, learning, and ultimately a community-wide conversation leading to a new food policy – and a healthier and more sustainable community overall. Hazon has a 60-page guide to food policy and food audits available free on our website: hazon.org/resource/hazon-food-guide-2

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5. Strengthen community relationships.

As much as Shmita affects the individual, it really takes shape on a communal level. There is so much about Shmita that is focusing on replacing a sense of isolation and individualization with the intentions of collective participation and mutual responsibility. Our organizations are microcosms of communities. How can we use the Shmita year to strengthen relationships—building trust, collaboration, connection—between our own staff? Our participants? Our funders? Can we take time on the Shmita year to learn better practices of inter-personal communication and group facilitation? How can we deepen into team building capacities during this time? Within our wider networks— whatever that may be: staff and participants, synagogue members, school parents, etc.—where can we support one another, through sharing resources, time, and skills? Where can we enter into partnerships with other local organizations to widen our collective impacts and deepen our networks of connection?

6. Creatively approach and consider your relationship with money.

Affordability and access are always vital issues, especially when we are not in a strong economy. How can we apply the values of Shmita economics to our organizations and institutions? Would it be possible for some people to choose to pay 7/6ths of a synagogue membership in order to make membership free in the seventh year? Might we create revolving loan funds—with or without debt forgiveness? Might Shmita be a good time to assess where we keep our money, and possibly move it to banks that align more with our values? Might we consider making our budgets fully transparent, creating a level of accountability around fair distribution? And what about using the Shmita Year to shift our pricing systems? Could any of our products or programs be free or offered at sliding-scale donations on this year? How can we develop personalized relationships with our funders, so we are returning their generosity in the unique ways that we can?

7. Think about rest as a sacred practice.

The Shmita is an opportunity to think about rest and overwork. Do we have organizational yearlong sabbatical policies for employees? How would we develop them? What if a Jewish organization could simply offer its staff an extra seven personal 'release' days each Shmita Year, or at least create ‘flextime’ policies if these are not already in place? Or shorten the work week to four days each Shmita Year? Can we focus on supporting a healthier work/ life balance during this time, as an investment for all years to follow? At Hazon—an organization with a strong reputation for developing and launching new ideas—would it be possible for us to decide to launch nothing new in the Sabbatical year; simply to reflect on that which we’ve done thus far, and plan for the future? How would that affect our funding? Our programming? The years before and after?

In each of these seven examples—and of course many, many more are possible—what we most want to do is simply to spark ideas. These ideas might or might not be possible in practice. But each would be a powerful and rich way to bring awareness of Shmita, and of this time-frame for Jewish life, back into contemporary awareness.

One thing that is clear: We do not assume there is one correct or incorrect way to practice Shmita today, especially in regards to Shmita outside of Israel. Clearly, modern culture is far different than early biblical times. As this tradition comes to life again, for the Jewish people and the world, it will be different for each and every one of us. It will be different for a business than for a non-profit; different for a farm than a school, different for an urban neighborhood and a rural community. The possibilities are quite varied, and we will be learning much from one another as we creatively engage in this process.

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Join the Shmita Project!

We are excited to continue this conversation with you, and we would love to invite you to join us in the Shmita Project network. The network is a group of Jewish organizations committed to engaging in the questions of what the Shmita Cycle could mean for them.

We invite you to become a Shmita Project partner by considering one or more of these following actions leading up to and during the Shmita Year: •

Organize a chavruta (partner) or community study group to learn more about Shmita, both from traditional and contemporary perspectives.

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Facilitate teachings about Shmita in your home, synagogue, community center, or farm.

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Support continued research, outreach, and education about why and how Shmita is both relevant and important in our lives today.

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Embrace the values and ethics integral to the paradigm of the Shmita Cycle when developing plans and goals for your home, community, or organization.

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Encourage local, long-term resiliency in food production/distribution methods, local economic structures, and community empowerment.

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Determine one or more ways in which you or your community will celebrate the Shmita Year, in a way that is substantially different from practices during the other 6 years of the Shmita Cycle.

In advance, thank you! Re-imagining Shmita will only be possible if we do this together. It is an honor to have you join us in partnership in this powerful journey. It has been literally thousands of years since the collective Jewish community has had the opportunity to experiment with the Shmita tradition in such a practical way, and to step such into personal and direct relationship with this profound tradition. Please be in touch with any questions or ideas, and let us know how we can support you.

Learn more at hazon.org/shmitaproject or contact shmitaproject@hazon.org Join us at facebook.com/groups/shmitaproject

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E APPENDIX E SHMITA & YOVEL TODAY: A HALACHIC PERSPECTIVE

The values of Shmita are just as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. In fact, much of the resurgence of interest in Shmita today, on an international level, is inspired by the timeless wisdom within this tradition. This depth of wisdom offers us profound insights and inspiration in creatively applying Shmita values and principles to our own ecological, economic, and social sustainability.

Within this sourcebook, especially within the final sections, we have shared many contemporary voices exploring Shmita as a value system. This is a critical approach and one with great importance, as the entire world has much to learn and gain from Shmita. However, as we explore how to holistically learn from and use the Shmita values in diverse ways—in all years, and in all places—let us also simultaneously be sure to recognize and respect the origins of this mitzvah, from the Torah, with its own unique and specific details.

As a practical and detailed Jewish halacha (religious law), what is relevance of Shmita today, after so much has changed from ancient Temple times? And where does this relevance take root in the world, as halacha? Below are Rabbinic voices clarifying some of these questions.

PART 1: SHMITA/YOVEL OUTSIDE OF ISRAEL Any mitzvah that is not earth-dependent is practiced in the Land of Israel, as well as outside of it. Every mitzvah that is earth-dependent is practiced only in the Land of Israel with the exception of Orlah [not harvesting fruit from a tree until its fourth year] and Kilayim [not mixing different seed varieties in the same planting].

– Mishnah Kiddushin, 1.9

What is the meaning of ‘Dependent’ and ‘Not Dependent’? Rav Judah explained, “This is its meaning: every precept which is a personal obligation is practiced both within the Land and outside of it; but what is an obligation of the soil has force only within the Land.”

– Talmud Bavli Kiddushin 37a

The laws of the Sabbatical Year are observed only in the Land of Israel, as it says in Leviticus 25.5 “And when you will come into the land.”

– Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel, chp 4.25

On a level of halacha (religious law), here are some important points to consider: • Since Shmita directly affects our agricultural practices, it is considered a ‘land-dependent mitzvah.’ The necessity of observing a collective agricultural fallow during the Shmita Year is specific and unique to the land of Israel alone.

• Foods that are grown and harvested during the Shmita Year, and exported outside of Israel through Otzar Beit Din (p. 69), still retain their level of ‘Kedushat Shvi’it’ sanctity (p. 39). Regardless of where such foods are consumed, they cannot be wasted.

• Debt-release during the Shmita Year is not land-dependent, so this particular aspect of Shmita is a mitzvah that must be observed in all places beyond Israel, unless a Prozbul (p. 48) is signed.

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On a socio-spiritual level, there are some very important questions to consider: • How and why would the ‘force’ of a mitzvah be dependent upon a direct relationship with a particular place? On a spiritual level? On a physical level? What can we learn from this type of relationship?

• Do you think that Shmita, as halacha, has universal applications, and the boundaries of this mitzvah should extend to all lands equally?

• If Shmita is not a universal halacha, how does this mitzvah change when it is practiced as a symbolic set of values? How might the observance of Shmita outside of Israel (as a set of values) help support the empowerment of Shmita in Israel (as halacha)?

• On a personal level, if you are working to creatively apply Shmita outside of Israel, how can your efforts also serve to deepen your relationship with the land of Israel? Is this a priority for you? Why or why not?

As we ask these questions, it is also important to take into consideration the prophetic vision embedded within Judaism, of a future, utopian Messianic era. Here are two sources to consider for this visionary age:

If there had been no sin [in the Garden of Eden], everything would be holy, and there would be no such thing as holy place, holy time, and holy person. In the World to Come, there will be no distinctions, as there were none in the world before the sin. Everything will be equally holy. It is only in between, in this imperfect situation, where some things are holier than others.

– Rabbi Isaiah Horovitz, Shnei Luchot Habrit (17th Century)

When the Jubilee is observed again in the Land of Israel, it should also be observed in the Diaspora, as implied by the phrase used in the above verse: "It is the Jubilee" (Leviticus 25.10) i.e. in every place. This applies whether the Temple is standing or whether the Temple is not standing.

– Rambam, Mishne Tora, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 10.8

How might these teachings impact your own relationship with Shmita today, regardless of where you live?

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E PART 2: SHMITA/YOVEL TODAY From the time the tribes of Reuven and Gad and half the tribe of Menasheh were exiled, the observance of the Jubilee year ceased, as implied by Leviticus 25:10: "You shall proclaim freedom throughout the land to all of its inhabitants." One can infer that this commandment applies only when all of its inhabitants are dwelling within the land [i.e. they have returned from exile]. Moreover, they shall not be intermingled, one tribe with another, but rather each tribe is dwelling in its appropriate place.

– Rambam, Mishne Tora, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 10.8

Why do you think all the tribes of Israel would have to be in their specific ancestral lands for the Jubilee to be re-activated? How might we approach this today when Jewish tribal identities have been lost, and Jewish people live all over the world? How can this source be understood spiritually?

All of the Geonim [early Rabbis that gave legal rulings based on the Talmud] have said that they have received a tradition, transferred from teacher to student that in the seventy years between the destruction of the First Temple and the building of the Second Temple, they counted only Sabbatical years, not the Jubilee year. Similarly, after the destruction of the Second Temple, they did not count the fiftieth year at all. Instead, they counted only sets of seven from the beginning of the year of the destruction…This reckoning is a received tradition.

– Rambam, Mishne Tora, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 10.5

How does the cessation of counting the Jubilee year- the 50th year of the cycle- affect the rest of the Shmita cycle counting? As an analogy, how would Sefirat Ha’omer counting change if there was no celebration of the Shavuot holiday?

The Sabbatical year is now only of Rabbinic force: “This is the matter of the year of release, release...”

(Deuteronomy 15:2)—Rabbi says: There are two releases: the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee. When the Jubilee is operative, the Sabbatical year applies according to Biblical law. When the Jubilees are inoperative, the Sabbatical year applies only according to Rabbinic law.

– Talmud Yerushalmi, Shvi’it 10:2 84a

According to Rabbinic Law, the nullification of debts applies in the present age in all places, even though the Jubilee year is not observed. This is a decree, instituted so that the concept of the nullification of debts will not be forgotten by the Jewish people.

– Rambam, Mishne Tora, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 9.3

The mitzvah of Shmita has Biblical origins. However, since the Jubilee is no longer actively counted, the Shmita itself is considered only as a Rabbinic law today, which has a lesser potency and comes with certain leniency in observance. Many Rabbis believe that Shmita today is not even considered a Rabbinic law, and is only a Midat Chasidut, an Act of Piety. This lesser nature of the law is what has allowed the Rabbinic courts to create such measures as Prozbul and Heter Mechira.

Is your own personal observance and perspective of Shmita affected by its categorization (Biblical or Rabbinic commandment, or ‘Act of Piety’)?

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The performance of Shmita today is primarily as a remembrance…so that the Sabbatical laws will not be forgotten, in order for when the time comes for them to again be observed as a Biblical law, all the laws will be known to us. We thus have to say that even if the Shmita precept is currently set aside by means of some permissible legal fiction [the Heter Mechira], there is, even in this evasive act itself, remembrance of the ideal…And when we are lenient in times of urgency by utilizing a legal fiction, we remind the people that we do not currently have the ability to observe the commandment in its completeness, and all that we are able to do is remember it, in order to make its complete fulfillment dear to us.

– Rav Kook, Shabbat Ha’aretz

Do you see the value in practicing something as a ‘remembrance’? Where else in your life, if at all, do you preform something as a remembrance, and a preparation for a future time? What does this action feel like for you?

Perhaps no mitzvah [such as Shmita] requires such a leap of faith and for this reason the Jewish nation has still failed to fully observe it, yet the very act of learning about the seventh year is valuable, for it reminds us of what a just and caring society should look like. With the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, these laws can again be practiced as of old and the ancient dream of building a just society is within our grasp.

More than any other mitzvah the Sabbatical year serves as a bridge between the more individually-focused weekly Shabbat and the global macro-cycle of human development, represented by the seven thousand year cycle. Shmita teaches the fine balance between free choice and individual initiative, on the one hand, and God’s Providence on the other. The shofar of freedom blown in the Jubilee year is a sound all humanity needs to hear and experience. For Israel to be true to its calling we must hold on to the vision of a righteous and enlightened future. This vision may be the greatest contribution we have made to humanity. May learning about the Sabbatical year and its profound lessons, along with the revival of observing its laws in the Jewish homeland create a bridge between Israel and the Holy Land, between Israel and the nations, and ultimately between humanity and God. – Rabbi Avraham Aryeh Trugman, Parshat Behar, Orchard of Delights

Have you considered your personal learning about Shmita as a part of a larger movement of building a just and holy society?

How does your personal vision match the collective vision for building a ‘righteous and enlightened future’ based on the values and ideals of Shmita? How can your own learning be a seed for the journey towards this vision?

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SHMITA GLOSSARY SECTION 1 Shmita: Literally, release; the seventh year in the Hebrew calendar cycle, also known as Shvi’it (the Seventh), Shabbat Lado'nay (Shabbat of the Lord) and Shabbat Ha’aretz (Shabbat of the Land), which brought about an agricultural and economic release. The common term for agricultural rest is Shmitat Karka (Land Release). The common term for debt forgiveness is Shmitat Ksaffim (Monetary release).

(See p. 4, 5, 15) Hakhel: A commandment from the Torah for the entire community of Israel to gather together at the Temple to hear a public reading of the Torah. This special gathering takes place after Sukkot on the year following the Shmita Year.

(See p. 9) Yovel: After 7 complete cycles of Shmita (49 years), the 50th year is Yovel, often translated into English as the Jubilee.

This year is similar to the regular Shmita Year but includes some unique additional practices.

(See p. 10) Sefirat Ha'Omer: The 50 day counting period between the second night of Pesach and Shavuot. An Omer refers to a daily sheaf or measurement of barley that was brought to the Temple as an offering during this time. This counting was in preparation for the first wheat harvest on Shavuot.

(See p. 10) SECTION 2 Sanhedrin: Literally, 'Assembly.' Refers to the court of Israel that dealt specifically with religious law during the Second Temple era. There was a Sanhedrin located in each city of Israel, and the 'Great Sanhedrin', the Supreme Court, was located in Jerusalem. The head of the 'Great Sanhedrin' was known as the Nasi, or 'Prince.'

(See p. 21) SECTION 3 (Part 1) Hefker: Ownerless. In the Shmita Year, all private lands become commons and all harvests must be considered ‘ownerless.’

(See p. 33)

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Peah: The biblical commandment to plant and reserve a corner of your field to be harvested by local landless peasants.

(See p. 33) Leket: The biblical commandment to allow gleaners onto your field during harvest periods, to collect what has dropped or what remains in the field.

(See p. 33) Sfichim: Common garden annuals that may grow wild from seeds that dropped in the previous season and grew again, or from roots that continue to produce a stem/leaf body after an initial harvest.

(See p. 34) Shivat Minim: 7 species of plants growing in abundance in the land of Israel, mentioned by the Bible as indicator plants of the land’s fertility. The 7 species include grape, fig, olive, date, pomegranate, barley, and wheat.

(See p. 34) Annuals: Plants that complete their life cycle in one season: once they produce the next generation of seeds, the plant dies. They must begin their life cycle anew each season, which generally requires soil preparation (tilling) and sowing. Most vegetables are annuals.

(See p. 35) Perennials: Plants that live for many years: while they may produce seed each season, the plant bodies still live afterward. Trees, most vines, and many herbs are perennial plants. These plants do not need their seed to be sown each season,as their new annual growth comes from their long-living wood and root structure. Nor do they need the soil to be annually tilled: the soil is tilled once, for planting, and then that plant settles in for the years ahead.

(See p. 35) Wild Plants: Annual or perennial edible plants that grow naturally without human intervention. Some of these plants were adopted by agriculture and have been developed through domestication and breeding. Others are highly nutritious even though we don’t commonly eat them.

(See p. 35)

Ma’aser: Literally, ‘a tenth’; a tithing of the harvest, dedicated towards the Levites (a landless tribe, whose members served in the Temple and in spiritual leadership for the larger society) and the poor.

(See p. 36) Biur: The period during the Shmita Year when a food is no longer naturally growing in season, in the fields or wilds.

The widely accepted opinion is all such foods remaining in storage should be made publicly available.

(See p. 37)

SECTION 5 Heter Mechira: Literally, ‘Permit of Sale.’ A ruling that allows for the symbolic selling of agricultural land to a nonJew, for the one-year Shmita period: once the ownership of land has been transferred to someone who is not Jewish, the laws of Shmita no longer apply to the land itself, and food can be grown on it and harvested from it.

(See p. 65)

Kedushavt Shvi'it: Literally, 'The Sanctity of the Seventh.'

Refers to special laws relating to the foods harvested on the Shmita Year. These harvests must be eaten locally; they cannot be sold; they cannot be wasted; and they cannot be used for purposes other than as food.

(See p. 39)

Otzar Beit Din: Literally, “Property of the Court.” The Rabbinic Court ‘hires’ a farmer to supply them with permissible foods during the Shmita Year. In buying this food, the court remains within the boundaries of religious law, as they are paying the farmer only for his time as a ‘worker’ of the court, and not for the actual food that he is providing.

(See p. 69)

SECTION 3 (Part 2)

SECTION 6

Pruzbol: A legal amendment to the law of debt release during the Shmita Year, created by Hillel the Elder in the 3rd century: private loans/debts transferred to public courts would not have to be legally forgiven in the Shmita Year.

(See p. 48)

Permaculture: A social and ecological design system modeled on relationships and patterns in nature and all her diverse ecosystems. Stand for 'Permanent Agriculture' or 'Permanent Culture.'

(See p. 79)

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We teach communities how to create healthy, resilient culture, inspired by Jewish wisdom traditions and Permaculture design strategies.

These are potent times of transition, from perceived scarcity to revealed abundance, from the age of the individual to the age of the communal.

The invitation is wide open for us all to reimagine the story of Self, the story of Community. In this momentum of growth, there is a stirring and rising of the ancient memories planted deep inside us from the wisdom and tales of our early ancestors. In this timeless story, there is a code which lays out the vision for a sacred community that is grounded in abundance, equality, generosity, love, and the ability to have trust in the unknown. This code is held within the Shmita cycle.

Shmita is more than a calendar year; it is primarily a way of being, a blueprint for a sacred, whole-systems culture, one grounded in vibrant, healthy and diverse relations between self, community, ecology, economy & spirit. 7Seeds embraces the Shmita cycle as a universal guiding principle & healing offering for all peoples. We are relearning the practice of Shmita for the modern age, offering practical applications, empowering the design of local, sustainable, and spiritually vibrant communities.

To learn more about 7Seeds educational offerings, visit 7seeds.org or contact info@7seeds.org

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7Seeds is excited to share with you our first publication, Envisioning Sabbatical Culture: A Shmita Manifesto

By Yigal Deutscher, co-author of the Hazon Shmita Sourcebook & director of 7Seeds This is 60 pages of poetic visioning and illustrations, weaving language and art into a canvas of Shmita creativity: What is the deeper mythic symbolism of Shmita?

What is the hidden invitation that Shmita offers us today?

What are the design tools we can use to renew and reimagine Shmita Culture in our own communities?

This booklet is a narrative of awakening, remembering, reclamation, and celebration; a blueprint for a more sacred, resilient, and holistic future. Included within is a collection of micro-essays and graphics inspired by the weaving together of Shmita, Jewish Mythology, Permaculture Design & the Transition Town Movement.

Read it online or order a print copy at 7seeds.org/manifesto

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Shabbat Ha’aretz Hazon presents a new edition of Rav Kook’s Introduction to Shabbat Ha’aretz, which explicates the concepts of Shmita through the lens of religious environmentalism and social justice activism.

What can shmita—the biblical sabbatical year and the agricultural cycle of which it is a key part—mean for the modern world? Abraham Isaac Kook, one of the giants of modern Jewish mystical thought, wrote this essay in 1909 to preface his book Shabbat Ha’aretz (Sabbath of the Land), in which he advocated new halakhic approaches to shmita in the context of the Zionist agricultural revival. His essay is a meditation on the relationship between ancient legal structures and the deep spiritual life that they embody.

This beautiful new setting of the Hebrew text, accompanied by Rabbi Julian Sinclair’s new translation and notes, makes the complexity of Rav Kook’s language and thought accessible to English readers for the first time. It is accompanied by Rabbi Sinclair’s own introductions to the traditional conception of the sabbatical cycle; to Rav Kook’s life, mystical thought, and relationship to the modern return to Jewish agriculture; and to the ways Jewish tradition can speak to issues of land use, social justice, and climatechange activism in the twenty-first century.

Rav Kook wrote a century ago that “the old will be made new, and the new made holy.” Introduction to Shabbat Ha’aretz offers a Jewish spiritual approach to the moral life of our physical world—and a lens to see our care for creation in terms deeply grounded in Torah and Jewish thought.

This edition is published by Hazon in connection with the start of the upcoming shmita year (5775) starting on Rosh Hashanah this September, 2014.

Published by Hazon, Inc. Trim Size: 5” x 7” Publication Date: September 4, 2014 ISBN: 978-0-9912708-0-4 Price: $18.00

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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR RAV KOOK'S INTRODUCTION TO SHABBAT HAARETZ In this brilliant translation of Rav Kook’s work and in his accompanying essays, Julian Sinclair succeeds in clarifying the paradoxes of shmita … a highly valuable and enlightening volume.

—Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, author of The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious There are few concepts as beautiful (and as radical) as the Jewish idea of a sabbath for the land every seven years. In this utterly fascinating translation, Rav Kook offers a gorgeous and profound hymn from across the decades to the concept, and the able translator provides historical context as well as powerful hope that this great rest and rejuvenation can have practical as well as spiritual meaning in the modern age.

—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future Rarely can a one-hundred-year-old pamphlet reach across history and shake a reader’s heart and inspire an activist’s hands. Shabbat Ha’aretz, which was revolutionary in the Land of Israel in its time and is revolutionary for American Jews today, does just that. Hazon and Sinclair have done us an enormous service by bringing Rav Kook’s Introduction to Shabbat Ha’aretz into the heart of 21st-century living.

—Rabbi Mishael Zion, author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices The concept of Shmita, or a sabbatical year, is not just about religion but resonates across the political spectrum. This timely book points at the necessity for periodic return to core questions of economic sustainability, social equity, citizenship, and debt-release.

—Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO2) This powerful new translation of and commentary on shmita comes at a moment when we are welladvised to look at how we use time, how we are consuming resources, who owns what and what we should be doing to ensure the survival of ourselves, our communities and our planet. It raises key questions, gives us timeless wisdom and forces us to come up with some new answers. …It has particular roots but universal application.

—Ruth Messinger, President and CEO of American Jewish World Service As a Christian working on issues of social justice and ecological restoration, one of the most exciting new fronts in contemporary Judaism is the recovery of the sabbatical year. I hope this book will continue to advance that vision of healing not just for Jews, but for all of us.

—Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food & Faith

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10 Ways to Get Involved With Hazon 1. Join the Shmita Project (see p. 135).

2. Ride for change. Join us – or bring a team from your community – to ride for sustainable food systems, to renew Jewish life and to have a great time: • Golden Gate Ride (hazon.org/programs/california-ride) • New York Ride and Retreat (hazon.org/programs/new-york-ride) • The Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride (hazon.org/Israel-ride) 3. See, touch, smell, and taste the Israeli sustainable food movement on the Israel Sustainable Food Tour (hazon.org/foodtour) 4. Come to our Food Conference or to the Teva Seminar, or to any of our other retreats at the beautiful Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center and Adamah Farm in Falls Village, CT. (hazon.org/isabella-freedman) 5. Come to one of our local Jewish Food Festivals (Berkshires, Denver, New York, Palo Alto, Philadelphia, San Francisco, North County, San Diego) or talk to us about bringing a Jewish Food Festival into your own community!

6. Read, blog, or comment on Hazon’s award-winning food blog, The Jew & the Carrot (jcarrot.org), or our general blog at hazon.org/blog. If you’re doing something exciting with food in your community, write about it and send it to us, and we’ll publish it.

7. Think about food in a new way. The Hazon CSA Program currently includes 65 communities in the US, Canada and Israel. Our program grows each year. Interested in starting a Hazon CSA in your home community? Email csa@hazon.org for more information.

8. Join the Jewish Food Educators Network (JFEN) to access educational resources, curriculum ideas, and more around bringing sustainable food awareness and practices to your local community.

9. Navigate food choices in your synagogue or institution with the Hazon Food Guide and the Hazon Food Audit.

These tools will provide practical suggestions for moving forward a conversation that will strengthen your community by integrating food in ways that are Jewishly-informed, pedagogically-open and ethically-focused. (hazon.org/foodguide) 10. Donate to Hazon to help create healthy and sustainable communities in the Jewish world and beyond! (hazon.org/donate)

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About the Authors Yigal Deutscher is an educator, farmer, and permaculture designer, as well as the founding manager of the Shmita Project. After participating in the Adamah fellowship, he continued his training with the University of California, Santa Cruz (Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems), as well as with the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia. From 2006–2010, he was the farm manager and permaculture educator at the Chava v’Adam farm in Israel. He is the founder of 7Seeds, an educational platform combining Jewish indigenous teachings and Permaculture Design strategies, and author of Envisioning Sabbatical Culture: A Shmita Manifesto. Learn more at 7Seeds.org.

Anna Hanau is the former Associate Director of Programs at Hazon. She is the co-author of Food for Thought, Hazon’s Sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life, written during her first period at Hazon (2004–2007), which also included serving as the NY Ride Coordinator for the 2005 and 2006 Rides. Between 2007–2010 Anna was the Farm Manager at Adamah, managing a 4-acre organic farm and supplying the White Plains Hazon CSA. She is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Barnard College, and is originally from Vancouver, B.C. Anna and her husband Naftali Hanau cofounded Grow and Behold Foods, a kosher pastured meat business, in 2010.

Nigel Savage, originally from Manchester, England, founded Hazon in 2000. He has an MA in History from Georgetown, and has studied at studied at Pardes, Yakar and Hebrew University. Hazon has been recognized by the Slingshot 50 every year since its inception. In 2007, Hazon was recognized by the Sierra Club as one of 50 leading faith-based organizations in the U.S. and Nigel has been listed in the Forward 50, the annual ranking of the most influential American Jews. Nigel is thought to be the first English Jew to have cycled across the state of South Dakota on a recumbent bike.

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The Hazon

‫ שמיטה‬SHMITA SOURCEBOOK

SHMITA, literally translated as the ‘Year of Release’ and more widely known as the Sabbatical Year, is a biblical Jewish tradition that simultaneously re-adjusted agriculture and commerce on a personal, communal, and national scale, to ensure an equitable, just and healthy society. Shmita, the final year of a shared seven year calendar cycle, marked a period when all debts would be forgiven, agricultural lands would lie fallow, private land holdings would become open to the commons, and staples such as food storage and perennial harvests would be redistributed and accessible to all. The Shmita Year had a depth that reached into every aspect of society and culture. The powerful values of this Shmita Cycle were integral to the vision of healthy society, as originally mapped out by the Torah.

This sourcebook is designed for individuals, small groups, or classes to learn more about the core principles of Shmita and how it has been applied throughout history, and to contemplate the possibilities of translating Shmita into a modern context, empowering community building, local food security, and economic resiliency today.

SHMITA PROJECT FOUNDING PARTNERS:

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WITH SUPPORT FROM: The Opaline Fund of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund