Money shekels
Money shekelsNati Shohat/Flash 90

In a bizarre article which could be seen as having anti-Semitic undertones, the Times of India has propagated the idea that the Jewish Shemita year has a history of culminating with a global financial disaster. 

A Biblical concept maintained in Israel today, during the Shemita year - the last year of a seven-year agricultural cycle in the Jewish calendar - farmers refrain from tilling and harvesting the land. 

Times of India listed a number of financial crises which occurred during Shemita years from the Wall Street Crash in 1987 to the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001 and Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy in 2008. 

With the 2015 Shemita year coming to an end on Sunday, September 13, the Indian paper drew a parallel to its culmination with last week's major market crash, "Black Monday."

According to Times of India, as the year draws to a close and the global financial market teeters on the edge, people from all over the world are searching for "Shemita" on Google. 

"From US to India, from UK to Japan, Shemitah is now one of the top trending terms on Google," the paper asserts, noting that on August 24 and 25, 10% of all searches in that region were for that particular word. 

A YouTube video on the topic uploaded two months ago has also apparently received 1.1 million views. 

According to the chief of one leading brokerage in India, the "related" timing of the Biblical concept and financial market collapses is "scary" and cannot be ignored completely.