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 [lakhem], that is to say, for a holy nation 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, is the commandment of the Shemitah of money really so different from the commandment of the Shemitah of 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? We will not sow, and we will not gather in our produce!"[Know then, that] I will command My blessing for you in the sixth 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 commandment, and both parts of the solution, worthy of the same attention by the public which wants to observe the commandment of Shemitah?

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)

 

 

 

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