Topic: Shmita

Then shall the land make up for its Sabbatical years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its Sabbatical years. (Leviticus 26:34) Today, research on the benefit of keeping fields fallow shows an increase of around 15 percent in crop yields.¹ An additional benefit of conventional agriculture ceasing work for a period is reduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and not compacting the earth with heavy combines (large farming machines).  As this verse states, the punishment for not adhering to Sabbatical laws was banishment from the land. This exile occurred for about 70 years, which is 16 percent, or about one seventh of the time the Israelites farmed the land. (The period of Israelite habitation during the First Temple period spanned 430 years, and ended in 586 B.C.E.) As I mention in Eco Bible: An Ecological Commentary on the Torah, history seems to affirm that the land of Israel made up the Sabbatical years by being desolate for a similar amount of years that the Israelites may not have sufficiently observed the Sabbatical year.  Rabbi Dr. David Seidenberg notes, “The Torah portrays the […]

Parashat Emor includes one of the Torah’s major accounts of the festival calendar. In Leviticus chapter 23, after the description of the Temple rites of Shavuot, the text repeats the commandments of peah and leket, to leave the corners of the fields and the unharvested gleanings of the crops for the poor. Given the ritual focus of the chapter, this ethical addition is even more remarkable. Is this just a simple mental association with the harvest season of Shavuot, or is there a deeper reason? In the context of the pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, with its unleavened bread and arduous dietary restrictions is clearly in some profound way about food. Sukkot, second only to Pesach in strenuous preparations, focuses on where, in what, and how you live — its theme is shelter. Both mandate a form of enforced poverty – eating matzah, the bread of affliction; living in a shack, the most modest of dwellings. These holidays are great social equalizers: fulfilling their two central obligations make the wealthy more like the poor, and no one, rich or poor, is excluded by the celebrations. The Biblical Shavuot is different. The celebration focuses on the first fruits and newly harvested grain, and the main celebrants are […]

This week’s parsha, Acharei-Kedoshim, focuses on a number of ordinances about sanctification and holiness. Buried among laws of purification is a central tenet of Judaism: “ואהבת לרעך כמוך,” or “Love your fellow as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18) In a Talmudic story I learned in school, a man asks both the great sages Shamai and Hillel to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one leg. Shamai grows angry and refuses, insulted. But Hillel accepts the challenge and tells the man, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others. The rest is commentary— [now] go study.” (Shabbat 31a) The idea of treating our fellow as ourselves is ingrained in Jewish thought. Yet what’s always seemed particularly daunting to me is the specifics: How do we love our fellow as ourselves? How do we love ourselves in the first place? While the notion of treating our neighbor with kindness and empathy is heartwarming, the commandment lacks specific guidelines. Clues about how to interpret the phrase “Love your fellow as yourself” lie in its context. In the same pasuk, G-d commands, “Do not take revenge on or bear a grudge against the members of your people.” This idea connects to one […]

Let’s locate ourselves in space and time to enter this poetic, symbolic story for personally reconnecting with the divine and repairing breaches to the god-field. Tazria-Metzora is the instruction manual for holy personal, communal, and sacred repair — for restoring wholeness and balance. It’s no surprise that we read this in week three of Counting the Omer. “Omer” is a measurement, the size of a sheaf of wheat.  It is also Emmer, ancient farmed wheat that is bread, food, and culture itself.  Its harvest — abundant or scant — is what we’re counting our way to. Omer is also Amar — speaking — the creative act that calls all into be-ing. The sephirah is Tiferet, beautiful balance. Tazria-Metzora offers the cure for when we’ve become out of balance, broken the container, and the holy has ‘broken out’ all over us, as ‘leprosy’ — an outbreak of unbalanced holy power. So what IS Tazria-Metzora?  When looking for a key to open a constellation of meaning, Reb Zalman z”l used to suggest going to the shoresh, the two- or three-letter root. The three letter root for Tazria and Metzora is Zayin-Resh-Ayin (ז-ר-ע), which means ‘seed,’ and is related to terms like seed-time, a strong outstretched […]

Back in my teen years, at our pre-Prom gathering at my friend’s house, I didn’t eat any of the shrimp cocktail that she had put out for us to eat. She praised my self-discipline. To me, though, this seemed natural as it was an essential part of our religious tradition.  One thing that defines us as Jews is the requirement to give thought to what we put in our mouths. This act of restricting our eating can help us work towards creating a world where we show respect for the sanctity of life helping create an ideal expressed in the Torah.  Originally, the Torah’s ideal was for us to be vegetarians. In the creation story, humans are only allowed to eat fruits and vegetables: “God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food.” (Genesis 1:29) The Torah later compromises by allowing us to eat meat. As imperfect beings who also need protein, God permits us to have meat. Yet, since eating requires the act of taking another’s life, restrictions are put upon what animals we are allowed to eat.  Our parsha, […]

We named our daughter Hadar.  She was born on Shabbat of parashat Tzav which contains a small and precious passage detailing the garments with which Moshe adorns Aharon for his service at the Temple.  The name Hadar shares a root with the word hiddur – beautification. In naming her Hadar we were invoking a blessing that she, like the women who spun, dyed and wove those sacred vestments, be forever engaged in the work of bringing beauty into the world. Furthermore, we were invoking the sensibility within Hadar, and within our family, of hiddur mitzvah – the beautification of a mitzvah (commandment). This concept of beautifying a mitzvah traditionally refers to the objects of ritual practice, to the sacred objects through which we choreograph our Judaism—a sukkah, a lulav, a tallit, parchment, ink, quill, a mezzuzah, a chuppah etc. In my practice as both a studio and socially engaged conceptual artist, I am consistently examining and redefining the meaning of hiddur mitzvah. Over 25 years ago when my return to an engaged Jewish life was taking shape through artmaking and my studies at the intersection of Judaism and ecology, I was introduced to the song, Are My Hands Clean? by […]

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃ “And He called to Moshe and Adonai spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying….” (Lev. 1:1) Why first call and then speak? Why not go right to speaking? Talmud suggests that in this, the Torah was trying to teach us etiquette, that a person should not say anything to another person before calling him first (Talmud Bavli, Yoma 4b). But why is this good etiquette and what can we learn here as we work to promote a Shmita conscious and Earth focused culture? Moshe is called to speak within the Tent of Meeting, a place built by the community in a bid to create a sacred center for themselves. Incidentally, that place is also representative of Creation itself, and by taking care of their sacred Center, Am-Israel is also taking care of the world. But that’s for another time. For now, it is important to notice that when Adonai wants to speak to Moshe, God first calls to him and by doing so is teaching us an important lesson in bringing people into the causes and places we deem important. We can’t assume people hear us. And even when they hear us, […]

Rest requires work. Without putting in the prep time, we may find that a day off is spent thinking about what has yet to be done. Without planning, vacation may not be much more exciting than staying home. Extended conversation with friends about where to go for dinner cuts into dinner time if plans aren’t made ahead of time. When hosting a guest, we make sure their stay is easy, but that ease is the result of extra work. Vayakhel and Pekudei are accounts of work done by the Israelites to ensure that God would have a resting place in their midst. Moses gives many instructions, and Betzalel the architect orchestrates production with his assistant Ohaliab. The population is galvanized to contribute either their materials or time. In the final chapter of Exodus, the monumental work is finished. The nation watches with baited breath, and their hard work is rewarded. The Shechina descends upon the newly built Mishkan (Exodus 40:35), and divine respite in the physical realm is achieved. All that planning and work seems like so little when the payoff arrives. An immanent God! The Most Holy, right in the middle of the camp! And all that had to […]

The story beats of Parshat Ki Tisa teach us two Shmita-esque concepts. The Parsha begins with the democratized call to cooperatively erect the Mishkan, where each individual was commanded to evenly contribute a half-shekel to the project. The purpose of this census, says the commentator Chizkuni, is to atone for the sin of the golden calf, found only a chapter away in this very Parsha. Examining these nation-wide aggregations of funds to build something to worship — seen in both the establishment of the Mishkan and the sin of the golden calf — will reveal their shared relationships to Shmita. Shmita conjures up the importance of rethinking ownership. It is easy to get swept away and lose sight of our humanity when each individual places the expansion of their grasp on material culture above all else. Capitalist forces have rooted the “worship of possession” so vigorously in our collective psyche that it is almost unfathomable to institutionalize a national Tzimtzum (constriction). The lesson found in the Machazit Hashekel, the half-shekel collection, is that it undermines of the value of possession. By forbidding anyone from contributing more than anybody else, the holiness of the Mishkan gets spread evenly throughout the camp. […]

Breathlessly, the first third of the Torah runs through stories of creation, accounts of love and rupture in the pre-Israelite and Israelite family, reports of slavery experienced and slavery escaped, and rules governing all sorts of circumstances.  Over the course of this telling, the Torah builds theological, emotional, moral, and legal superstructures.  But then in parshat Terumah, the race to tell a human, and then national, story takes a pause.  The biblical focus turns to an infrastructure project, the building of a tabernacle as a location for divine rest. Notwithstanding the contrast between the frenetic energy of earlier biblical narratives and the calm epitomized by the idea of a holy sanctuary, two phrases appearing early in Terumah make clear that divine rest is hardly passive.  An opening passage in the parsha (Exodus 25:2) calls for donations for the construction project “מֵאֵ֤ת כָּל־אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ – me’eyt kol ish asher yidveynu libo – from every person whose heart so moves him.”  The Chatam Sofer reads this verse about a rest-evoking structure as linking heartfelt human gift-giving with God’s grant of the world to humankind, as if to suggest that God expends effort to provide us with a restful world and […]

“We all live downstream.” Those words, spoken by a member of a first nation community in the haunting film, The Condor and the Eagle, capture a simple truth we are too ready to forget. None of us will escape the consequences of the climate crisis. But some of us have already borne far more than their share of its tragic consequences, including severe illness and death. The film focuses on Indigenous peoples from Northern Alberta to the forests of Ecuador. Unforgettable activists bear witness to unequally borne and horrifying environmental injustice. The verses in Mishpatim strengthen a resolve to heed their call and stand in solidarity with our Indigenous neighbors. “And you shall not maltreat (תוֹנֶ֖ה – to’neh) nor oppress (תִלְחָצֶ֑נּוּ – til’chatzeh’nu) the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. All widows and orphans you shall not afflict. If you do afflict them so that they yell out to me I will surely hear their cries.” Exodus 22:20-22 (author’s translation) Meaning often emerges from a closer look at language. Two words in verse 20 are found elsewhere in the Torah, illustrating its persistent demand to protect and dignify others, a demand that extends to a commitment to […]

Parshat Yitro, in the book of Exodus, contains the beginning of the story of the Revelation at Sinai. The story of Revelation begins here, but the telling unfolds in a complex, layered piece of narrative origami. The halakhic midrash of one second century commentator adds an additional fold, and centers the promise of Shmita in the telling of the courtship between G-d and Israel. The Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael’s commentary on Parshat Yitro suggests that the wedding ceremony between G-d and Israel, if you will, took place the day before the Revelation; that it was on the Fifth Day of Sivan that Moses read from the book of the covenant to the children of Israel, and they responded in enthusiastic unison, “Kol asher diber Adonai na-aseh v’nishma!” as a form of “I Do!” This text suggests further that Moses read a specific section of the law to us, drawing forth this spirited assent. The midrash tells us that Moses starts his reading with Leviticus 25:1-3: “And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying … then the land shall rest a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years shall you sow your field, etc.”, sabbatical years, Jubilee years, blessings and curses. What is […]

It is Friday evening and the sun is just about the set. The synagogue is filled with a psalm and song-filled greeting for Her Majesty, the Shabbat Queen. After six long days of toiling, working, and serving,  we have finally come to Shabbat, the day of rest. People of all ages can be seen humming and moving to the beat, circling and dancing, eyes closed and wide open. They sing: “Az Yaranenu Kol Atzay Ya’ar – then all the trees of the forest will sing out (Psalm 96).” The 5th century rabbinic text Vayikra Rabbah (30:4) quotes Rabbi Acha who said: When King David sang the words “Then all the trees in the forest will sing,” he was talking about the days of redemption, when all barren trees that didn’t bear fruit will come to produce and receive what they need. This teaching not only speaks to the current month of Shvat, which celebrates the New Year of the (fruit) trees, but also to any generation longing to split seas, see the unmasked pharaohs of their time washed away, and address the many inequities facing our humanity.  The Israelite slave-uprising and rebellion reaches its climax, rising out of four-hundred years of […]

In parshat Bo, the destroying angel passes over the houses of the Israelites — in Hebrew “pasach al hapetach” — sparing their firstborn, and giving the Passover holiday its name in Hebrew and English. But the angel only “knows” who is in which house because it sees the sheep’s blood smeared on the doorposts and lintels of the entryway. In Exodus 12:22, Moses tells the Israelites that the way to apply the blood is by using an “agudat eizov” – a bunch of hyssop, which could be dipped into the blood like a paintbrush. Varieties of hyssop grow everywhere in the Middle East naturally, which is why hyssop is described in 1 Kings 5:13 as being rooted “in the wall.” The Psalms also describe hyssop as something that purifies (Psalms 51:9), and hyssop was used for that purpose in three rituals: sprinkling blood on a person or house cured from “tsara’at” (leprosy, Lev. 14:4-6, 14:49-51), preparing the ashes of the red heifer (Num. 19:6), and sprinkling those ashes mixed with “living water” on a person who had come in contact with a dead body (Num. 19:18). All these rituals helped a person transition from a state of impurity into a […]