The Sabbatical year

TEL AVIV — When Rosh Hashanah comes later this month, Israel’s Jewish farmers won’t just be celebrating the start of a new year. They’ll be marking a year in which they are prohibited from doing their jobs.

Called Shmita, the Torah-mandated, yearlong farming hiatus is felt across Israel, affecting its fields, supermarkets and, of course, its politics.

The genesis of Shmita is Exodus, which commands the Israelites, “Plant your land and gather its produce for six years. But on the seventh let it lie fallow and it will rest…”

Other biblical mandates prohibit planting, trimming or harvesting crops during Shmita, amounting to a total prohibition on farming.

In advance of Shmita, which takes place every seventh year, here are seven things you should know about Israel’s sabbatical year.

What is Shmita?

According to the Torah mandates, the Shmita year is something like an agricultural Shabbat. Just like everyone is commanded to rest for a day at the end of every week, Shmita is a chance to let the land rest for a year after six years of work.

It’s easy to calculate when Shmita comes around: Start from year zero in the Jewish calendar — that would be 5,775 years ago — and count off every seven years; this is Israel’s 466th Shmita.

The concept of the sabbatical year has spread to academics and clergy, many of whom receive sabbaticals to travel and study. And the root of the word “shmita” has found contemporary usage in Hebrew. Israelis use the word mishtamet to refer to someone who dodged mandatory military conscription.

How was Shmita observed ?in the past?

Because the commandment applies only in the biblical land of Israel, it became largely theoretical once the Jews were exiled by the Roman Empire after the Bar Kochba revolt in 136 CE. Generations of Jewish farmers in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere had no religious imperative to let the land rest.

But once Jews started returning to Palestine in the 1880s and founding kibbutzim, Shmita again became relevant — and problematic. At a time when Jewish farmers were struggling just to keep their farms viable, a year of no production could have been a deathblow.

In a controversial move, some rabbis created a “heter mechirah,” or sale permit — similar to the sale of leavened food before Passover.

The permit allowed Jewish farmers to sell their land to local non-Jews for a token amount, then hire non-Jews to do the forbidden labor. That way, because it wasn’t their land, Jews could keep their farms going without violating the letter of the law of Shmita.

The controversy over the sale permit continues to this day, with these major changes:

The viability of farms in Israel that observe Shmita by the letter of the law has increased dramatically, and the number of farms that do not resort to the sale permit has grown accordingly.

The reason for the changes is twofold: first, the vast improvement in agricultural technology and of the Israeli economy generally; and, second, the vast increase in the charitable campaigns on behalf of farmers who observe Shmita fully.

How is Shmita observed in contemporary Israel?

The sale permit: Israel’s Chief Rabbinate allows every farm to register for a sale permit like those allowed in the 1880s, and the Rabbinate sells all the land to a non-Jew for about $5,000 total, according to Rabbi Haggai Bar Giora, who oversaw Shmita for Israel’s Chief Rabbinate seven years ago.

At the end of the year, the Rabbinate buys back the land on the farmers’ behalf for a similar amount. Bar Giora chose a non-Jewish buyer who observes the seven Noahide laws — the Torah’s commandments for non-Jews.

The percentage of farms availing themselves of the sale permit has dropped significantly.

Greenhouses: Shmita only applies if the crops are grown in the land itself. Therefore, growing vegetables on tables disconnected from the land steers clear of violating the commandment.

Religious courts: Farmers aren’t allowed to sell their crops, but if crops began growing before Shmita started, people are allowed to take them for free. So through another legal mechanism, a Jewish religious court will hire farmers to harvest the produce and the religious court itself will sell it.

But a buyer does not pay for the produce itself; only paying for the farmer’s labor.

Not observing Shmita: A few nonreligious farmers who sell their produce independently ignore the sabbatical year completely and do not receive kosher certification.

What happens to fruits, vegetables and other plants that grow on their own during Shmita?

Just like Jewish environmentalists can connect to the idea of letting the land rest, social justice-minded Jews can appreciate that whatever grows on the land during Shmita is, in theory, supposed to be free for anyone, especially the poor.

When Shmita is first mentioned in Exodus, the Torah says the crops should be for “the poor of your nation, and the rest for wild animals.” With more farmers observing the Shmita without recourse to the sale permit, this aspect of Shmita is also beginning to come back.

How does Shmita affect you if you’re not a farmer?

Because all kosher-certified produce cannot violate Shmita, Israelis shopping in major grocery stores and outdoor markets don’t have to take special care in their purchase  of fruits and vegetables.

Religious Jews — and businesses — that don’t rely on the sale permit buy their produce from non-Jewish farmers in Israel.

An organization called Otzar Haaretz, or Fruit of the Land, seeks to support Jewish farmers specifically and is organizing farmers who use religious courts and the greenhouse method to sell to supermarkets in Israel.

Customers who wish to buy from Otzar Haaretz can pay a monthly fee to get a discount on its produce.

Shmita has an impact beyond the produce stands, too. As public property, public parks cannot be sold to a non-Jew. And because they remain under Jewish ownership, many public community gardens and private gardens do not receive care during Shmita.

What does this mean for Jews outside of Israel?

Although they’re not obligated to observe Shmita, Jews outside of Israel have found ways of commemorating the year.

At Hazon, a Jewish sustainability organization, the Shmita Project aims to engage in a study of the textual sources of Shmita and develop programs to mark the year without.

Another group, the Shmitta Association, has purchased a grid of four-square-foot plots of land in Israel that Jews abroad can purchase for $180 and then let lie idle, enabling them to observe Shmita without being an Israeli or a farmer.

What does this have to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Because they don’t want to buy from Jewish farmers during Shmita, some Orthodox Jews buy from Palestinian West Bank farms. But during the past couple of Shmita cycles, there has been backlash against buying Palestinian-grown produce.

Jerusalem Post columnist David Weinberg urged Israelis last week to avoid supporting Palestinian farms.

“Primary reliance on Arab produce is neither realistic nor acceptable for health, nationalistic and religious reasons,” he wrote.

During the Shmita year that began in 2007, Israel’s health and agriculture ministries said there was no elevated risk to eating produce grown in the Palestinian territories.

The IJN edited and added to this story.