Almost all of Parashat Behar deals with the Shmitta Year and the Yovel (Jubilee) Year.
The Shmitta year is the Remission Year: the word שְׁמִטָּה is from the root שמט, meaning approximately “release” or “remove” or “erase”; The Radak (Sefer ha-Shorashim, entry שמט) explains the root to connote “abandon”.
The Torah commands us that every seventh year in the Land of Israel is the Shmitta Year, and that the year following every seventh Shmitta Year is the Yovel.
Parashat Behar opens with the words, “Hashem spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the Children of Israel, saying to them: When you come to the Land which I give you, the Land shall keep Hashem’s Shabbat…” (Leviticus 25:1-2).
Rabbi Dr Joseph Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1913-1946) opens his commentary to this Parashah:
“The cycle of sacred seasons begun in Leviticus Chapter 23 is here continued, and the system of sabbaths – the Sabbath at the end of the week; Pentecost at the end of seven weeks; the Seventh month, as the sacred month studded with Festivals – is here completed by the Sabbatical year and by the Jubilee, which came after a ‘week’ of Sabbatical years”.
So in these two consecutive Parashot – Emor and Behar – the Torah commands us two different Shabbatot: the one at the end of the seven-day cycle, the other at the end of the seven-year cycle.
Just as the weekly Shabbat testifies that the world belongs to G-d, He decides what we may do with it and when, so too the seven-yearly Shabbat of Shmitta, and the 50-year Yovel, testify that the Land of Israel belongs to G-d, that our money belongs to G-d, and that our servitude is to G-d.
There is, however, a fundamental difference between these.
Which day of the week is the weekly Shabbat was determined by G-d Himself, calibrated as the weekly commemoration as the seventh day of Creation. We cannot alter that.
Which year is the Shmitta Year, however, is for us to determine.
Our Parashah opens: “When you come to the Land which I give you, then the Land will rest a Shabbat-rest to Hashem...” (Leviticus 25:1-2).
That is to say, the seven-year cycle began when we came into the Land of Israel. The Rambam, concatenating several Talmudic sources, specifies:
“From when did they start to count [the 7-year cycle]? – From 14 years after they entered the Land [of Israel], as it says ‘for six years you will sow your field, and for six years you will tend your vineyard’ (Leviticus 25:3), meaning until each person knows his piece of land. It took them seven years to conquer the Land and another seven to apportion it [among the Tribes]; consequently in the year 2503 from Creation [1257 B.C.E.] on Rosh Hashanah…they began to count [the 7-year cycle], and they made the year 2510 from Creation [1250 B.C.E.], which was the 21st year since they entered the Land of Israel, the Shmitta” (Laws of Shmitta and Yovel 10:2).
From then on, the Shmitta-years continued in unbroken 7-year cycles, until the exile to Babylon. When the Land of Israel was bereft of its sons and daughters the Shmitta was suspended, and when exiles returned, they began the cycle anew:
“In the seventh year of the Building [of the Second Temple] Ezra ascended [to Israel with his multitudes], and this was the second entry [into the Land of Israel]; it was from that year that they began to count [the 7-year cycle], so they made the 13th year of the Building of the Second Temple the Shmitta” (ibid. 3).
It was this second calibration of the Shmitta Year cycle which remains in force until today.
Now there is an incredibly powerful motif here: G-d has given us a mitzvah, a commandment to sanctify every seventh year – and the timing of this seventh year depends upon us! Unlike the weekly Shabbat, which G-d fixed from Creation itself and which can never be altered or shifted, the “Shabbat of the Land”, the Shmitta, depends upon us!
We, by our actions, determine when the Shmitta Year falls! That is to say, G-d has given us the power to decide which is to be the sacred year, when the Shabbat of the Land occurs.
Our first introduction to the weekly Shabbat is the culmination of the Creation narrative – a paragraph instantly familiar to every Jew, because it has been incorporated into the Shabbat Evening prayers and the Shabbat Evening Kiddush:
“The Heavens and the earth were completed, with all their legions; by the seventh day G-d had completed His work which He had done, so He ceased on the seventh day from all His labour which He had done. And G-d blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He ceased from all His labour which G-d had created to do” (Genesis 2:1-3).
These last words are puzzling: אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים לַעֲשׂוֹת, “which G-d had created to do”. What does this mean?
– It means that G-d created the world, and left us “to do”, meaning to continue and complete and perfect it:
He created the fields, the earth, the water, the seeds – and left us to continue with His Creation by sowing the seeds in the earth, watering them, producing food. He created childbirth – and left us to perfect baby boys by circumcising them.
So part of the identity of the weekly Shabbat is to make us G-d’s partners in Creation. He created the world – and charged us to continue with His creation, to perfect and complete it.
What about the seven-yearly Shabbat, the Shmitta Year?
– The Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 2b and Gittin 36a-b) records a dispute among the Sages: According to Rabbi Yehudah the Nasi, the Torah only commands the Shmitta Year when the majority of Jews live in Israel; it was a Rabbinic decree which extended the Shmitta Year even to times when the majority of Jews are in exile.
The Rabbis, however, held that Shmitta is a Torah-obligation at all times.
The Rambam agrees with Rabbi Yehudah:
“The Shmitta-remission of debts applies by Torah-injunction only at a time when the Yovel applies, when the Shmitta-obligation to leave the Land to lie fallow applies… But the Soferim [the Torah-authorities of the Talmudic generations] decreed that the Shmitta-remission of debts still applies in this time, in all places [not only in Israel, as the obligation to leave the Land fallow does]” (Laws of Shmitta and Yovel 9:2-3).
The Yovel Year does not apply when the majority of Jews are in exile, even by Rabbinic decree; which is why the Yovel did not apply in the days of the Second Temple (Laws of Shmitta and Yovel 10:3).
Today, only little less than half of all the world’s Jews live in the Land of Israel, more than at any time since the First Temple – both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of all the Jews in the world.
If the demographic trends of the last three or four generations continue, then at some time in the next decade or two the majority of all the world’s Jews will be living in Israel.
And when that day comes, Shmitta and Yovel will once again apply, as a Torah-obligation, for the first time since the First Temple.
And when that day comes also depends upon us, all Jews world-wide. G-d has given us, His people, the power to restore a Torah-commandment.
The Shabbat every seventh day, the Shmitta every seventh year, and the Yovel every seventh Shmitta, are almost tangible demonstrations of how we mortals become G-d’s partners in Creation, in sanctifying both time and the Land of Israel.