THESE YOU MAY EAT OF ALL THAT

ARE IN THE WATERS; ALL THAT HAVE FINS AND SCALES, YOU MAY EAT. BUT WHATEVER

DOES NOT HAVE FINS AND SCALES, YOU SHALL NOT EAT; IT IS UNCLEAN FOR YOU.

(Devarim 14:9-10)

ANY [CREATURE] THAT DOES NOT HAVE FINS AND SCALES IN THE WATER IS AN

ABOMINATION FOR YOU.

(Vayikra 11:12)

Is an abomination for you.

A hated and disgusting thing, not that

they are abominable in themselves, for they are creatures created by God, and

God would not create something abominable. However, it adds the word for you

such as you they shall be considered abominations and not to be eaten.

(YaShaR

Reggio Vayikra 11:1)

The philosophers said

that even though the continent man performs virtuous actions, he does good

things while craving and strongly desiring to perform bad actions. He struggles

against his craving and opposes by his action what his [appetitive] power, his

desire, and the state of his soul arouse him to do; he does good things while

being troubled at doing them. The virtuous man, however, follows in his action

what his desire and the state of his soul arouse him to do, and he does good

things while craving and strongly desiring them. There is agreement among the

philosophers that the virtuous man is better and more perfect than the

continent man…

When we investigated

the speech of the Sages about this matter, we found that according to them,

someone who craves and strongly desires transgressions is more virtuous and

perfect than someone who does not crave them and suffers no pain in abstaining

from them. They even said that…" Whoever is greater than his friend has

a greater [evil] impulse than he." As if this were not enough, they said

that the reward of the continent man is proportionate to his pain in

restraining himself. They said: "The reward is according to the pain."…This

is what they say: "Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: Let a man not

say, 'I do not want to eat meat with milk, I do not want to wear mixed fabric,

I do not want to have illicit sexual relations,' but [let him say] 'I want to,

but what shall I do – my Father in heaven has forbidden me.'"

If the external meaning

of these two accounts [i.e., by the philosophers and the Jewish Sages] is

understood superficially, the two views contradict one another. However, that

is not the case; rather, both of them are true, and there is no conflict

between them at all. For the bad things to which the philosophers referred…these

are the things that are generally accepted by people as bad, such as murder,

theft, robbery, fraud, harming an innocent man, repaying a benefactor with

evil, degrading parents, and things like these. They are the laws about which

the Sages, peace be upon them, said: "If they were not written down, they

would deserve to be written down."…There is no doubt that the soul which

craves and strongly desires any of them is defective and that the virtuous soul

neither longs for any of these bad things at all nor suffers pain from the prohibition

against them.

When the Sages said that the

continent man is more virtuous and his reward is greater, they had in mind the

traditional laws. This is correct because if it were not for the Law, they

would not be bad at all. Therefore they said that a man needs to let his soul

remain attracted to them and not place any obstacle before them other than the

Law.

(RaMBaM:

Eight Chapters, chapter 6 – Butterworth/Weiss translation)

Shemitah of Land and Shemitah of

Money

Sarita Zimbalista

Parashat Re'eh, with its mixture

of curses and blessings, makes much of the commandment of the Shemitah of money [release from debts], which, as far as we

know, unlike the commandment of the Shemitah of

lands, was never actively practiced in Israel, not since the days of Hillel the Elder and not in our generations of renaissance in

the Land. This commandment is one of the most demanding and difficult to

observe, both in understanding its laws and in the obligations they entail.

And

this is the manner of the Shemitah; to release the

hand of every creditor from what he lent his friend; he shall not exact from

his friend or his brother, because time of the release for the Lord has arrived

(Devarim 15:2).

The

first part of the commandment, which concerns the deed, is easier than that

which follows it:

If there will be among you a needy person… you shall not close your

hand from your needy brother… Beware, lest there be in your heart an unfaithful thought, saying,

"The seventh year, the year of Shemitah has

approached," and you will begrudge your needy brother and not give him,

and he will cry out to the Lord against you, and it will be a sin to you (verses 7,9).

Part

of this commandment concerns the heart and thought, and as in the

difference between You shall not steal

and You shall not covet, here too the commandment to the heart is the more

difficult by tenfold.

On

the other hand, the very formulation of the commandment in the Torah reveals, from

the first moment of its discussion, an appreciation for the human difficulty of

its observance. This is the same difficulty that led Hillel

to introduce the law of prozbul, which

deactivates the Shemitah. In the past few

generations, this difficulty still leads those who take the Shemitah

of land very seriously to completely ignore the Shemitah

of money. Scripture's warning and the history of the commandment's observance

suggest a view of humanity as not being sufficiently noble to part with money

and debts owed. That is why the Torah juxtaposes the Shemitah

of money with the laws of the Hebrew slave; he is also a kind of property given

over to his owners in a limited and pre-defined fashion.

However,

land? Are their rationales and essences so different that their discussions

should be kept entirely separate from each other? I will attempt to investigate

this matter in connection with the parallel Scriptural commandment of Shemitah and its functioning in the Jubilee year.

The Jubilee is the fiftieth year, which

follows the seventh Shemitah year. It is itself a Shemitah, and in addition to the agricultural produce and

debts, it cancels long-term debts involving real estate. And proclaim freedom throughout the land for

all who live on it… and you shall return, each man to his family estate (Vayikra 25:10). Here too the Torah requires that creditors

must return the lands to their original owners, even though the latter are

destitute and completely incapable of making any payment.

As

in our parasha, the passage dealing with the Jubilee

year also relates to the thoughts of the believer who is asked to perform the

commandment, but who is worried about the practical consequences of its

observance: And if you should say, "What will we eat in the seventh

year, and it will yield produce for three years. According to most commentators,

these verses do not refer to worries concerning the Shemitah

of the seventh year, but rather those concerning the Jubilee year that follows.

If it were concerned with the regular Shemitah, one

can assume that the harvests of the sixth year would still remain in reserve;

but what will happen in the Jubilee year, which follows upon the Shemitah year in which nothing is harvested?

The

explicit engagement with the believer's worried thoughts in these two parallel

passages does not come to relieve him of the duty to perform the commandment,

but rather to actually strengthen the commandment's practice. Despite

existential fears the commandment must be observed; one must have faith in God

and in His blessings that are promised to those who walk in His paths in

complete faithfulness.

In

my humble opinion, the idea of Shemitah involves the commandment

as a whole, including Jubilees, land, and money. Shemitah

is the Sabbath of the Land. Just as the commandment of the Sabbath is

not only intended to benefit humans in need of rest, but also, and principally,

it is a Sabbath to the Lord Who blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified

it, so too the Land of Israel belongs to the Lord, and its blessings and

sanctity are directly tied to the cessation of work. Just as the commandment of

the Sabbath tells humans to abstain from their dealings in trade, agriculture,

and every other profitable work, so too the original Shemitah

commands us to abstain from the entire natural system of profit-making thought

for the span of one year.

The

frightened human cries out from Scripture – what will we eat?! What will we

live from?! How will I support my immediate family during a year-long break

from work for my livelihood? Parashat Re'eh responds with the promise: There shall be no needy

among you, for the Lord shall surely bless the land… (Devarim

15: 4).

Really? There

shall be no needy? The business media predict that the coming Shemitah year will cost the Israeli economy a loss of about

a hundred million shekels. Farmers in the Negev know that letting agricultural

lands go fallow will result in non-Jewish squatters encroaching upon state

lands. To tell the truth, ever since the creation of an otzar

bet din [a legal entity created in order to implement an halakhic solution allowing for agricultural production

during the Shemitah year] in the early years of

Zionism, every Shemitah year has been newly attended

by the same worries, i.e., that full observance of the Shemitah

may do harm to the very existence of the Zionist idea. Midrashim

and aggadot attest to the genuine difficulties

surrounding observance of the Shemitah in the days of

the Mishnah and the Talmud. Attempts to observe the Shemitah led to Jews having to survive on thorns, brambles,

and horse feed (See Eikha

Rabba, 18. Among the stories that describe

gentile deprecation of Israel, we read: "…these Jews observe the Seventh

year, and they have no vegetables, so they eat its [the camel's] thistles…").

If

so, should we assume that the divine promise of blessings in the Shemitah year is just so much talk; or have we perhaps

misunderstood the meaning of the blessings and the promise? We assume that the "needy"

is poor in terms of today's economics, but is that what the Torah meant?

ReDaK in his

commentary on the verse I was young, I also aged, and I have not seen a

righteous man forsaken and his seed seeking bread (Psalms 37:25) explains the term forsaken [ne'ezav]: "The blessed Lord will not forsake

them… ne'ezav is one lacking bread and

clothing. Thus our father Jacob asked, "and give

me bread to eat and clothing to wear" (Bereishit 28:2). That is to say: just enough to sustain me.

Blessed God told him: I shall not forsake you (verse 15), so it appears that one who lacks these is

called ne'ezav."

I

think that we can understand the term needy [evyon]

that appears in our parasha along the same lines as ReDaK explains the term ne'ezav.

It refers to someone lacking the most minimal requirements for life, i.e., food

and clothing. As for the land, it is indeed blessed. The question is what

someone living in the land is to do in order to enjoy that blessing.

It

seems to me that the Shemitah year tries to teach

Jews to do without more than just work or loans. The deeper rationale of the

commandment requires one to really place oneself in the hands of God, the Lord

of the land. To give up home, the usual lands, and the demand for comfortable

living in exchange for the adoption of the symbols of nomadic wilderness life,

of one who must wander after his food, to stop in the place where one's needs

are fulfilled, in the place where one hopes that those needs will arrive

miraculously at one's doorstep.

According

to this conception, the commandment of Shemitah serves

as a permanent commemoration of the Generation of the Wilderness, in

which Israel wandered lacking a set parcel of land, a time of needfulness and

simplicity in which the people were truly dependent on their God for their very

lives. In this aspect the commandment is similar in spirit to the commandment

of Sukkot and to the aspect of the Sabbath that

involves God's rest.

This

aspect of remembrance and intention finds no difference between the Shemitah of land and the Shemitah

of money. Both are intended to remind the believer of the true source of his

material wealth.

Now,

on the eve of the Shemitah of 5768, an ideological

and practical debate is taking place in Israel regarding agricultural

production and the Shemitah of land. However, it

seems that since the institution of the prozbul

in the days of Hillel the Elder, the entire Jewish

public has relied on that practical solution and never again took up the

question of the Shemitah of money.

The halakhic

solution called otzar bet din already

appears in the Tosefta to the mishnah

(8:1,2) and its

purposes and time of invention are not different from those of the prozbul (See RaMBaN on Vaikra

25:7, which, following the Tosefta, describes the process

in which the law court was called upon to come to the aid of society's elderly

and weak, who had been oppressed by the strong who had taken more of the fruits

of the Shemitah than they needed.). The leading rabbis of religious Zionism

who reformulated it as practical law in order to solve the problems of the

Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel did not simply make it up on their

own; rather they returned to the sources that parallel Hillel's

decision.

Are not both parts of the

Sarita Zimbalista is a member of

Kibbutz Saad. She is a teacher and educator in the

cooperative high school of Kibbutz HaDati in Kevutzat Yavneh

Will Not Be or Will Be – Promise or Challenge?

However, there

will not be among you any needy person – And further on it

states (verse 11) For

the needy will never be gone from amid the land!? – but [this contradiction can thus be reconciled] when you do

the will of the Omnipresent, there will be needy amid others, but not amid you;

when you fail to do the will of the Omnipresent, there will be needy among you.

A "needy" person (evyon)

has less than a "poor" person (ani);

the evyon is so called because he

craves for everything.

(Rashi

15:4)

However, there

will not be among you any needy person – If you release [forgo a

debt], The Holy One, Blessed Be He, will repay you.

For the needy

will never be gone from amid the land – For there is no person in the

land so righteous that he does only good and never sins.

(RaShBaM, ibid.)

However…

This provides the rationale: Know you, that that which I commanded you

– not to oppress your brother [by forgoing debts] – will not be necessary if

all – or most – of Israel will heed God's voice, then there will not

be among you any needy person to whom you will have to lend.

(Ibn Ezra,

ibid.)

… Those who willingly

accept the yoke of Torah and commandments do not have the right to

exempt themselves, to remove from themselves these obligations and pass them on

to He who opens His hands and satisfies the desire of every living thing. We

are charged with a great mission, to make great efforts to strive always

towards a reality in which there will be no needy and poor in the Land and in

the world.

(Y. Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat

ha'Shavu'a, p. 836)

The Holy One, Blessed Be He,

Wants Life, and Is Not Interested In Human Sacrifice

Neither add to it – because you are liable to add something which He abominates. Such would

be the case were you to desire to adopt additional forms of worship of the

Blessed God, for sometimes the additional forms of worship may be abominable to

him, such as the burning of children.

(S'forno, Devarim ibid., ibid.)

It is written Neither add to it nor

take away from it. Immediately preceding and adjacent to that we read they

even offer up their sons and daughters in fire to their gods. But regarding

commandments in general, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, did not warn against

adding such laws as serve to create barriers and restrictions for the

protection of the Torah.

(Hizkuni, Devarim 4:2)

It is not sufficient that you avoid worshipping their gods in these ways;

it will be a transgression if these forms of worship be directed to the one

God, your Lord. For the significance of worship of their gods

is the complete opposite of what is desirable to your God, just as the way of

your God is the total negation of their gods. Your God is the God of

Life; their gods are gods of death. Their gods of nonsense take pleasure in

destruction; the desire of your God is self-elevation and renewal of life.

(Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, ibid.,

ibid.)

A Holy People and a Treasured People: Fate, Destiny, or Challenge?

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: Sanctify

yourself with what is permitted you. If some things are permitted and others

treated them as prohibited, you are not allowed to treat them as permitted in

those others' presence.

(Sifri Re'eh 104)

The RaMBaM, of blessed memory,

wrote: All families are presumed to be of valid descent, and it is permitted to

intermarry with them in the first instance. Nevertheless, should you see two

families continually striving with one another, or a family which is constantly

engaged in quarrels and altercations, or an individual who is exceedingly

contentious with everyone, or is excessively impudent, apprehension should be

felt concerning them, and it is advisable to keep one's distance from them, for

these traits are indicative of invalid descent. Similarly, if a man always

casts aspersions upon other people's descent – for instance, if he alleges that

certain families and individuals are of blemished descent and refers to them as

being bastards – suspicion is justified that he himself may be a bastard. And

if he says that they are slaves, one may suspect that he himself is a slave,

since whosoever blemishes others projects upon them his own blemish. Similarly,

if a person exhibits impudence, cruelty, or misanthropy, and never performs an

act of kindness, one should strongly suspect that he is of Gibeonite

descent, since the distinctive traits of Israel, the holy nation, are modesty,

mercy, and loving-kindness.

(Tur, Even

ha'Ezer 2)

You shall be holy, for I am

holy… (Vayikra 19:2) You shall sanctify yourselves and be

holy, for I the Lord am your God (Vayikra 20:7). These are supremely exalted commands and goals,

yet at the same time no other verses, expressions, or formulations are as

dangerous from the standpoint of faith. They can be interpreted – and they have

been interpreted –sometimes

innocently and sometimes maliciously – as if they are saying that by its very

nature, there is something in the Jewish People which infuses it with holiness.

This conception frees Jews from responsibility, and grants them confidence in

things that a person must never be confident about, because they are matters of

goals, purposes, obligations, missions, and program, rather than givens. The

transformation of the concept of holiness from being thought of as the role and

mission imposed upon the Jewish People to being an intrinsic and inherit trait

of the Jewish People – this is a transformation of faith to idolatry…We are

commanded to be a holy people, but we not already a holy people.

(Prof.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, He'arot le'Parshiyot Ha'Shavua, pp. 77-78)

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards

its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel

  $700

• English edition distributed via email $

  100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to

appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.

In Israel, checks made out

to Oz VeShalom may be sent to Oz VeShalom-P.O.B.

4433, Jerusalem 91043. Unfortunately there is no Israeli tax-exemption for

local donations.

US and British tax-exempt contributions to Oz VeShalom may be made through:

New Israel Fund, POB 91588, Washington, DC 20090-1588, USA

New Israel Fund of Great Britain, 26 Enford

Street, London W1H 2DD, Great Britain

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE NEW ISRAEL FUND IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING DONATIONS

UNDER $100.

PEF will also channel donations and provide a tax-exemption. Donations

should be sent to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317 Madison Ave.,

Suite 607, New York, New York 10017 USA

All contributions should be marked as donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project.

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the

advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to promoting the ideals

of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts that have always been central to

Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment to the

land of Israel and it no less views peace as a central religious value. It believes

that Jews have both the religious and the national obligation to support the

pursuit of peace. It maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a

fair and just society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an

option but an imperative.

5,000

copies of a 4-page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah reading are

written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot Shalom

and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are sent overseas

via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il.