From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shmita (Hebrew: שמיטה, literally "release"), also called the Sabbatical Year, is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel.

During Shmita, the land is left to lay fallow and all agricultural activity—including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting—is forbidden by Torah law. Other cultivation techniques—such as watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying, trimming and mowing—may be performed as a preventative measure only, not to improve the growth of trees or plants. Additionally, any fruits which grow of their own accord are deemed hefker (ownerless) and may be picked by anyone. A variety of laws also apply to the sale, consumption and disposal of Shmita produce.

A second aspect of Shmita concerns debts and loans. When the Shmita year starts, personal debts are considered nullified and forgiven.

The rabbis of the Talmud and later times interpreted the Shmita laws in various ways to ease the burden they created for farmers and the agricultural industry. The Heter Mechirah (leniency of sale), developed for the Shmita year of 1888-1889, permitted Jewish farmers to sell their land to non-Jews so that they could continue to work the land as usual during Shmita. This temporary solution to the impoverishment of the Jewish settlement in those days was later adopted by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel as a permanent edict, generating ongoing controversy between Zionist and Hareidi leaders to this day.^[1]

The current Shmita year began on Rosh Hashanah of the Hebrew year 5768, and extends until 29 Elul 5768 (September 13, 2007-September 29, 2008). (However, fruits which are harvested in the spring and summer of 2008 must be treated as Shmita produce well into the first year of the new agricultural cycle.)

Contents 1 In the Bible 2 Rules of observance 2.1 Hakhel 3 In the Talmud 4 Modern observance 5 Shmita wine 6 When occurring 7 Current status of the Shmita 7.1 Shmita 2000-2001 7.2 Shmita 2007-2008 8 See also 9 References

Shmita is mentioned several times in the Bible:

• Book of Exodus: "You may plant your land for six years and gather its crops. But during the seventh year, you must leave it alone and withdraw from it. The needy among you will then be able to eat just as you do, and whatever is left over can be eaten by wild animals. This also applies to your vineyard and your olive grove." (Exodus 23:10-11) [1]
• Book of Leviticus: "God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, telling him to speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land must be given a rest period, a sabbath to God. For six years you may plant your fields, prune your vineyards, and harvest your crops, but the seventh year is a sabbath of sabbaths for the land. It is God's sabbath during which you may not plant your fields, nor prune your vineyards. Do not harvest crops that grow on their own and do not gather the grapes on your unpruned vines, since it is a year of rest for the land. [What grows while] the land is resting may be eaten by you, by your male and female slaves, and by the employees and resident hands who live with you. All the crops shall be eaten by the domestic and wild animals that are in your land." (Leviticus 25:1-7) [2]
• Book of Deuteronomy: "At the end of every seven years, you shall celebrate the remission year. The idea of the remission year is that every creditor shall remit any debt owed by his neighbor and brother when God's remission year comes around. You may collect from the alien, but if you have any claim against your brother for a debt, you must relinquish it..." (Deuteronomy 15:1-6) [3] and "Moses then gave them the following commandment: 'At the end of each seven years, at a fixed time on the festival of Sukkoth, after the year of release, when all Israel comes to present themselves before God your Lord, in the place that He will choose, you must read this Torah before all Israel, so that they will be able to hear it. 'You must gather together the people, the men, women, children and proselytes from your settlements, and let them hear it. They will thus learn to be in awe of God your Lord, carefully keeping all the words of this Torah. Their children, who do not know, will listen and learn to be in awe of God your Lord, as long as you live in the land which you are crossing the Jordan to occupy'." (Deuteronomy 31:10-13)[4]
• Book of Jeremiah: Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying: "At the end of seven years ye shall let go every man his brother that is a Hebrew, that hath been sold unto thee, and hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee"; but your fathers hearkened not unto Me, neither inclined their ear." {Jeremiah 34:13-14) [5]
• Book of Nehemiah: "and if the peoples of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy of them on the sabbath, or on a holy day; and that we would forego the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt." (Nehemiah 10:32) [6]
• Books of Chronicles: "...And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia; to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had been paid her sabbaths; for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. (2 Chronicles 36:20-21)[7]

According to the laws of shmita, land owned by Jews in the Land of Israel is left unfarmed. The law does not apply to land in the Diaspora. In Biblical times any naturally growing produce was left to be taken by poor people, passing strangers, and beasts of the field. While naturally growing produce such as grapes growing on existing vines can be harvested, it cannot be sold or used for commercial purposes; it must be given away or consumed.

The laws of Shmita do not apply to plants inside a house or greenhouse, which may be tended as usual. ^[2]

On a shmita year, personal debts are considered forgiven at sunset on the 29th of Elul. Since this aspect of shmita is not dependent on the land, it applies to Jews both in Israel and elsewhere.^[3]

In Halakha (Jewish religious law), produce of the seventh year that is subject to the laws of Shmita is called sheviit, (sheviis in Ashkenazic Hebrew).

Hakhel (Hebrew for "assemble") refers to the Biblically-mandated practice of having the head of the government read the entire Torah to the assembled people once every seven years.

And Moses commanded them, saying: 'At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; (Deuteronomy 31:10-12) [8])

According to the Talmud, observance of the Sabbatical year is of high accord, and one who does not do so may not be allowed to be a witness in an Orthodox religious court.

Nonetheless, Rabbinic Judaism has developed Halakhic (religious-law) devices to be able to maintain a modern agricultural and commercial system while giving heed to the Biblical injunctions. Such devices represent examples of flexibility within the Halakhic system

Hillel the Elder, in the first century BCE, used the rule that remittance of debts applies only to debts between Jews, to develop a device known as Prosbul in which the debt is transferred to a Beit Din (religious court). When owed to the court rather than to an individual, the debt survives the sabbatical year. This device, formulated early in the era of Rabbinic Judaism when the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, became a prototype of how Judaism was later to adapt to the destruction of the Second Temple and maintain a system based on Biblical law under very different conditions.

In the early days of Zionism, Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor^[4] came up with a halakhic means of allowing agriculture to continue during the shmita year. After establishing that the principle of the biblical prohibition was not cultivating the land owned by Jews ("your land", Exodus 23:10), Rabbi Spektor ruled that the land could be sold to a non-Jew for the duration of that year under a trust agreement in which the land would belong to a non-Jew temporarily, and revert back to Jewish ownership when the year was over. When the land was sold under such an arrangement, Jews could continue to farm it. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, adopted this principle, which became known as the heter mechirah (lit. "sale permit").

The heter mechirah was accepted by Modern Orthodox Judaism and is one of the classic examples of the Modern Orthodox approach toward adapting classical Jewish law to the modern world. However, this approach has not been universally accepted in the Orthodox community and has met with opposition, particularly from Haredi poskim (authorities of Jewish law). The Chazon Ish, a leading early twentieth-century authority, wrote an opinion that even produce grown on land owned by non-Jews is subject to the Shmita.

In contemporary religious circles these rabbinic leniencies are widely accepted. In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate obtains permission from all farmers who wish to have their land sold. The land is then symbolically sold to a non-Jew for a large sum of money. The payment is made by a cheque post-dated to after the end of the sabbatical year. When the cheque is returned or not honoured at the end of the year the land reverts to its original owners. Thus, the fields can be farmed with certain restrictions.

Some Haredi farmers do not avail themselves of this leniency and seek other pursuits during the shmita year. ^[5]

The Badatz, a Haredi organization, applies a somewhat stricter version of the leniency which regards produce from land owned by non-Jews in the Land of Israel as having certain additional sanctity, which can nonethelesss be addressed with additional procedures. Under this approach, in addition to requiring land to be sold to a non-Jew, further restrictions include a rule that Jews cannot by and sell sheviit produce to other Jews, they can only be paid for their labor. Accordingly, under this approach, Jews wishing to eat sheviit produce sign a document appointing their grocer as their agent to buy the produce and pay the grocer for services in this capacity. Under this approach, the grocer is not engaging in commerce (buying-and-selling) with other Jews regarding the produce, but is simply acting as the consumer's agent to purchase the produce directly from the non-Jew. The Badatz also considers the Arabah valley to be outside the traditional Land of Israel and permits the normal use of produce grown there. ^[6]

The Biblical practice of bonded servitude until the Shmita year e.g. as punishment for crime is not currently practiced in contemporary Judaism. Contemporary religious courts do not have jurisdiction over criminal matters or authority to administer such a procedure.

While obligatory to the Orthodox as a matter of religious observance, observance of the rules of Shmita is voluntary so far as the civil government is concerned in the contemporary State of Israel. Civil courts do not enforce the rules. A debt would be transferred to a religious court for a document of prosbul only if both parties voluntarily agreed to do so. Many non-religious Israeli Jews do not observe these rules, although some non-religious farmers participate in the symbolic sale of land to non-Jews to permit their produce to be considered kosher and sellable to Orthodox Jews who permit the leniency. Despite this, during Shmita, crop yields in Israel fall short of requirements so importation is amployed from abroad.^[7]

Because the Orthodox rules of Kashrut have strictures requiring certain products, such as wine, to be produced by Jews, the leniency of selling one's land to non-Jews is unavailable for these products, since these strictures would render the wine non-Kosher. Accordingly, wine made from grapes grown in the land of Israel during the Shmita year is subject to the full strictures of Shmita. New vines cannot be planted. Although grapes from existing vines can be harvested, they and their products cannot be sold. Israeli wineries address this issue by making separate batches of Shmita wine, labeled as such, and giving away bottles of Shmita wine as a free bonus to purchasers of non-Shmita wine.^{[citation needed]} Shmita produce must be consumed and cannot be thrown away or used for other purposes, so (for example) if strictly observant Orthodox Jews use Shmita wine for the Havdala ceremony, they drink the cup completely and do not perform the otherwise traditional custom of extinguishing the candle in the wine.^{[citation needed]}

The first Shmita year in the modern State of Israel was 1951 (5712 in the Hebrew calendar) Subsequent Shmita years have been 1958 (5719), 1965 (5726), 1972 (5733), 1979 (5740), 1986 (5747), 1993 (5754), and 2000 (5761). The current Shemittah year began on the Jewish New Year in September 2007, corresponding to the Hebrew calendar year 5768.

The 50th year of the land, which is also a Shabbat of the land, is called "Yovel" in Hebrew, which is the origin of the Latin term "Jubilee", also meaning 50th. The Jubilee Year is not observed in modern times because its correct date is unknown.^{[citation needed]}

There is a major debate among halakhic authorities as to what is the nature of the obligation of the Sabbatical year nowadays. Some say it is still biblically binding, as it has always been. Others hold that it is rabbinically binding, since the Shmita only biblically applies when the Jubilee year is in effect, but the Sages of the Talmud legislated the observance of the Shmita anyway as a reminder of the biblical statute. And yet others hold that the Shmita has become purely voluntary. An analysis by respected Posek and former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in his responsa Yabi'a Omer (Vol. 10), accorded with the middle option, that the Shmita nowadays is a rabbinic obligation in nature. This approach potentially admits for some leniencies which would not be possible if the Shemitah were biblical in origin, including the aforementioned sale of the land of Israel.

In 2000, Sefardic Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron withdrew religious certification of the validity of permits for the sale of land to non-Jews during the Shmita year following protests against his endorsement of the leniency by members of the Haredi community.

The Hakhel ceremony of reading the entire Torah to the people was performed at the Western Wall on October 4, 2001, during Chol HaMoed of Sukkot following the close of the Shmita year. The President of Israel, Moshe Katzav, presided over the ceremony.^[8]

During the 2007-2008 Shmita, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel attempted to avoid taking a potentially divisive position on the dispute between Haredi and Modern Orthodox views about the correctness of the heter mechirah leniency by ruling that local rabbis could make their own decisions about whether or not to accept this device as valid. The Israel Supreme Court, however, ordered the Chief Rabbinate to rescind its ruling and to devise a single national ruling. The Israel Supreme Court opined that divergent local rulings would be harmful to farmers and trade and could implicate competition. The issue of secular courts ordering the rabbinate to rule in particular ways on religious matters aroused a debate within the Knesset. ^{[9] [10][11]}

• Jubilee (Biblical)
• Jewish holidays

• The New York Times, "As Farmers and Fields Rest, a Land Grows Restless", October 8, 2007
• Yeshivat Ohr Yerushalayim Jewish Law Website: Shmita
• Shmita : Info and News
• "Shmita: 5712", Time Magazine, October 20, 1952
• Dayan Dr. I. Grunfeld. Shemittah and Yobel. Soncino Press, 1972. ISBN 0-900689-91-9
• Shemittah: the Sabbatical Year (Orthodox Union article on Shmita)
• Seattle Vaad, Shmita 5768 (explanation of Shmita rules)