By the time you are reading this, shmita, the sabbatical year in Israel, or the seventh year (Shvi’it), will have already commenced and will be in its first week.
When we think of shmita, we start thinking cucumbers and tomatoes, melons and oranges — and other produce.
Yet on an erev Rosh Hashanah of a shmita year, of a sabbatical year, the auspicious day is imbued with this added layer and it feels different.
The intervening days of repentance and return, bein kese le-asor, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, feel different in a shmita year.
Just as Shabbat, the seventh day of the week, is a day of rest, in the agricultural cycle, every seven years, is a year of rest for the land in Israel. It is required to lie fallow.
Like Shabbat, the concept of a Sabbath, of a taking pause, that has been so transformative to the world, the idea of letting the land rest is an original transformative concept too.
The concept of shmita is mentioned more than once in the Torah. At first, it ties the idea of the land resting with that of caring for the socioeconomically vulnerable in society.
“Six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce; but in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people let eat of it, and what is left of it, let the wild beasts eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive groves.”
The next mention of shmita, which is far more detailed, links this agricultural sabbath of the land to the Sabbath in time we all know.
This source intensifies the concept of shmita by telling us of a yovel, a jubilee, the heightened seventh shmita cycle, once every 50 years.
Ceasing control is one of the hardest things. We feel grounded in this world when we can feel we have a sense of control of a situation. Yet farmers know how much they are dependent on the elements and the mysterious conditions of weather, over which they not only have no control but are at its mercy.
Farmers and people who till and sow the land live with this constant uncertainty (or faith, depending how one looks at it), day in and day out. This mode of letting go of control, this sense of dependence on the elements, is intrinsic to their very being.
[dropcap]Most of us don’t live in the throes of an agricultural world, our living dependent on the weather.
I’ve only just started thinking about shmita now, once it has arrived at my doorstep, as the year begins. But the farmers, those who won’t be able to till their fields for a solid year, probably never stop thinking about shmita because they are probably constantly preparing for it. Shmita is an integral part of the farming cycle in Israel.
Understanding the limits of the land and her needs, and giving the land a chance to rest and recover, is part of an Israeli Jewish farmer’s DNA. Appreciating the gifts of the earth and understanding that there comes a time when the farmer lets the land produce its gifts wildly, and freely sharing them, is part of an Israeli Jewish farmer’s DNA.
So much wisdom is embedded in this shmita process — essential life lessons that can be carried over to our emotional intelligence and emotional health, as well as our sense of social justice and fairness. What the earth produced by itself is allowed to provide for others, regardless of of their socioeconomic station in life.
I can only imagine how hard a separation it must be for farmers to take leave of their land in the seventh shmita year.
As much as they must live with the awareness of shmita for the prior six years, by preparing and planning for this decisive year, actually walking away for an entire year must be so challenging.
Aside from the personal rhythms of change to their days that are inseparable from and one with Mother Nature, rising at the inception of daybreak in the east, and ending a day in the fields as the sun sets in the west, the other huge and obvious factor is the economic one.
How will the farmers manage?
One would expect a certain understandable level of anxiety to plague farmers as they take leave of their farms on erev Rosh Hashanah.
Yet, remarkably, a video of farmers from Sha’alvim shows them singing and dancing in an incredible display of joy at the opportunity to observe this shmita commandment.
Not only are these Jewish Israeli farmers letting their lands lie fallow and walking away, they are dancing away.
I wonder what thoughts are running through their minds as they take leave of their land. What precipitates such outer joy? Is it the awareness that ultimately there is no such thing as human ownership of G-d’s earth? That they see themselves as the earth’s guardians and protectors, to nurture it as long as it is in their care?
By shifting their farms to public status, is it knowing that they and their farms will be the vessels to provide dignified sustenance to the vulnerable?
Is it knowing the hard-worked land that determines their fate will receive a much needed rest for its own recovery and rejuvenation?
Or is it a simple yet profound joy of surrender, knowing they are embarking on a year’s journey in fulfillment of this Torah commandment?
In an era when we live with the illusion of control and invincibleness, in an era where career and money are demigods in and of themselves, there is something so powerful about witnessing farmers walk away from their fields, not only without anxiety, but steeped in an art of letting go with so much grace, humility and inner strength as expressed in dance and song.
The rarer an event is, the more precious it becomes. Seeing how this shmita commandment is observed so inspirationally, seeing the open plains of the golden wheat fields, as backdrop for the farmers dancing, was indeed uplifting.
These ideas that the concept of shmita teaches society fit organically with the inner individual work of the heart during the Ten Days of Repentance from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.
During this season we make an effort to sift through the past year, and leave so much behind. In a sense, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are as much about walking away from the past as much as it is about embracing the future and the possibility of the as of yet unknown.
When I see the farmers literally walking away from their fields, it’s like a tangible expression,of what so many of us focus on during this season — the transience of it all.
But those farmers from Sha’alvim, somehow found a way to navigate that departure into the unknown of their material fate for a year, with the peacefulness of song on their lips.
A wonder to behold.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
