Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Vayikra
- Behar
Rashi asks why it is this Mitzva of leaving the
land untouched every 7th year said to have been
given on Har Sinai. He offers a cryptic answer:
Just as this Mitzva was said on Har Sinai, so all
the Mitzvot also emanate from there (as opposed
to being man-made). Huh? I still don’t see why
Shmita represents all the other Mitzvot. Why not
kashrut, Shabbat, love the convert? Why is Shmita special?
The usual answer: Shmita requires a lot of Emuna,
faith. After all, doing without one’s field in an
agricultural society & counting on Hashem to
provide for up to three years requires a whole
lot of faith. And so, by extension, performing
any Mitzva is, essentially, an act of faith.
A variation on this theme goes to the core of
Shmita’s significance. Shmita is illogical; it
is anti-social & goes against the norms of
economic activity. How can people just walk away
from their livelihood for a whole year? How can
they stop producing foodstuffs that the nation
needs? Can you imagine if the Torah asked us to
cease all hi-tech activity for 12 months? Or
ordered the police, hospitals or sanitation
workers to walk off the job for a year? When you
factor in many agronomists’ opinion that letting
the land go fallow every 7 years does nothing to
enrich its nutrients, it seems even more absurd!
So I suggest there are 2 objectives at work here:
First, treat the land (of Israel) as a living
thing! Respect it, nurture it, appreciate it.
Just as we have our Shabbat, it has & deserves
its own as well. The lesson, by extension, is
that all the Torah is Torat Chayim, a living Torah.
Moreover, accept the fact that if humans had
created the Torah, they never would have invented
Shmita! Only Hashem could command such an extreme
& seemingly absurd directive. But that is
precisely the point: Do not follow the Torah
because it makes perfect sense to you (like, for
example, the 7 Noachide mitzvot); follow it
purely because it is G-d’s will. Though it may
rub against our intellectual sensibilities &
require us to do things that confound us, that is
how every one of the Mitzvot must be approached &
why Shmita is the Mitzva par excellence.
The sublimation of our mortal wisdom to that of
G-d, our steadfast belief even in the face of
disbelief, is perhaps what causes Hashem, in
turn, to also do things that are beyond belief -
such as keeping the Jewish People alive forever &
allowing us to return & to reclaim our ancient
homeland. It's illogical, absurd, against every
norm of history, & it certainly confounds our enemies.
But guess what? It works! We are here - & we are staying here!
