Planting a Soul in the Land
On Parshas Behar and the transcendent laws of shemitta
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
Parshas Behar begins with the mitzvah of shemitta, the commandment that in the 7th year the Jewish people must not work the land of Israel. The opening of the parsha makes special mention that these laws were transmitted to Moshe from God at Sinai.
Famously, Rashi cites the midrash, which asks: Why does the Torah specify that these laws came from Sinai—מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני? What is the connection between Sinai and the laws of shemitta?
The midrash answers, just as the details of shemitta, were all discussed at Sinai, so too all commandments from Sinai were transmitted along with their detailed interpretation.
It has now become a catchphrase of its own, “מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני” is used to point out a non-sequitur. One of my rabbeim in high school, Rabbi Elly Storch, would often say, “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that was a common phrase either in high school and would often be left even more confused when my own non-sequiturs prompted Rabbi Storch to ask about the economics of Chinese tea. The question, “What does shemitta have to do with Sinai?” serves a similar function.
Still, the answer cited by Rashi does not really clarify much. Why here and why now does the Torah find it necessary to remind us that even the details of the commandments were transmitted on Sinai? Couldn’t this lesson have been taught in connection to any number of mitzvos? So, why is it specifically within the context of the commandment of shemitta that we learn the details of what was taught at Sinai?
To understand this, let’s explore some of the modern history and struggle for shemitta observance in the land of Israel.
1881 was not a good year for Russian Jewry. Following the assassination of Czar Alexander II, a familiar culprit was deemed responsible: the Jewish People. Pogroms were rampant. Millions of Jews fled to America in the hope of a better future. One rabbi, Shmuel Mohilever, had a different dream—he wanted to organize emigration to the land of Israel. Rav Mohilever, a graduate of Yeshivas Volozhin, had been nurturing this dream for well over a decade. “Don’t you see the hand of God in all that has occurred to us,” he wrote in 1871. “A voice calls out and proclaims, ‘Children, return to your homeland,” Rav Mohilever wrote, “come and take shelter in My shade, in the land of your forefathers.’” In 1882, as the situation for Jews deteriorated, Rabbi Mohliver began organizing a formal society, later known as Chovevei Tzion, to bring Jews to Israel.
Emigration to Israel was far from easy. In what is now called the First Aliyah, Jews faced incredible hardships, lacking land, infrastructure, and economic opportunity. But Rav Mohilever was undeterred. He not only wanted to bring Jews to Israel, he wanted to create a religious settlement in the land of Israel. But how?
Through his fellow dreamer, Yechiel Brill, Rav Mohilever was connected to Rabbi Zadok Kahn, chief rabbi of Paris, and advisor to Baron Edmond de Rothchild. Rabbi Kahn agreed to set up a meeting between Rav Mohilever and Rothchild with the hope that Rothchild would help fund a religious farming community in the land of Israel. Acknowledging that he was not a gifted speaker or political leader, Rav Mohilever implored Rothchild for his support. “The spirit of our nation depends on it,” Rav Mohilever explained. Rothchild, moved by his sincerity, agreed to the proposal—he would purchase land and help set up a religious farming community in Israel.
Ten professional farmers and one Jewish educator were sent to begin the community, later named Mazkeret Batya, after Rothchild’s mother who passed away in 1887. They were very pious Jews, who took their Yiddishkeit seriously. There were daily prayer services, and a Mishnah study group, and every attempt was made to run their village according to traditional halacha. Rothchild’s administrator who oversaw the emerging farming community once complained that the farmers were spending too much time davening. “Serve the Lord, our God, with all your hearts’ desire, and take as much time with your prayers as you wish,” Rothchild responded.
The story of this religious farming community in the First Aliyah may have been lost to history were it not for the incredible research of Sam Finkel, whose book on this community, Rebels in the Holy Land: Mazkeret Batya—An Early Battleground for the Soul of Israel, is one of the most fascinating works on Jewish history I have ever read. Finkel’s book, which includes incredible photographs, biographical information, and original documents, is a must-read. He also highlights how the early secular Zionist movement tried to distance itself from a story that cast deeply religious Jews as the first farming pioneers in Israel. Still, the history of Israel cannot be told without this chapter.
Their farming project would face a serious challenge, however, in 1889, which was a shemmitah year, and all land in Israel was prohibited from farming. The farmers, who were committed to upholding halacha were faced with a serious dilemma. It would be nearly impossible to survive without farming produce. Additionally, Rothchild, who had visited Mazkeret Batya the year prior, was not so keen on his nascent community spending an entire year idle. Instead, Rothchild tasked Rabbi Zadok Kahn to find a halachic solution. Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spector, the Kovno Rav, was the leading halachic authority at the time and hesitantly offered a halachic solution known as a hetter mechira, where land is sold to non-Jews thereby removing the prohibitions of shemmitah.
Rav Yitzchak Elchanan also enlisted Rav Mohilever, Rav Yehoshua Trunk of Kutno, and Rav Shmuel Zanvil of Waraw to sign on to this leniency. Even at the time, the halachic mechanism that would allow the land to be sold to non-Jews thereby allowing some form of farming was quite controversial. As Rabbi Daniel Feldman discusses in his article, “A Brief Overview of Some of the Issues Related to the Hetter Mekhira,” as well as his subsequent book, “Letter and Spirit: Evasion, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic System,” there are several issues with such a sale including whether or not such a sale is valid, whether such a sale is effective in actually allowing farming, and whether it is even permissible to sell Jewishly owned land in Israel to non-Jews. The halachic question of the farmers soon became a much larger controversy not only about halacha but about the very vision of the Zionist movement. As Finkel writes:
Shemittah was not merely a local matter affecting the farmers. The issues surrounding its observance in 1888-1889 developed into a controversy that engulfed the entire Jewish world and galvanized many Orthodox European Jews against the aliyah movement. They reasoned that since the source of the pressure brought to bear on Rabbi Spector and other rabbis ultimately derived from the non-Orthodox maskilim active in the Chovevei Zion movement, the spiritual harm that would inevitably result from that partnership would outweigh the spiritual benefits of living in the Holy Land. The poor farmers of Mazkeret Batya, whose simple dream was to live in the Land of Israel and observe the Torah laws pertaining to the land, were swept into the maelstrom of this struggle.
The relationship between Rothchild and the farmers never fully recovered following the shemitta controversy. The farmers, who did not want to rely on the hetter mechirah, were accused of just looking for an excuse not to work. And after Rothchild’s administrators insisted that their local cheder become more modern and secularized, the relationship was completely frayed. The dream of a religiously observant farming settlement in Israel would have to be deferred.
Rav Mohilever, the original visionary behind the idea, remained in Bialystock where he served as a rabbi. He finally visited Israel in 1890 but his health was already deteriorating. When Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Rav Mohilever was too sick to attend. He sent a note with his grandson that was read at the gathering:
תורתנו, שהיא מקור חיינו, צריכה להיות יסוד תחייתנו בארץ אבותינו
Our Torah, which is the source of our lives, must be the basis of our renewal in the land of our forefathers.
Rav Mohilever passed away in 1898 in Bialystock. Almost a century later, in 1991, his remains were reinterred in Mazkeret Batya, the town of his original dream.
And this brings us back to shemitta and its connection to Sinai.
The Midrash explains that the verse in Psalms describing the “mighty spirit who follow the word of God,” refers to those who keep shemitta.
What makes shemitta unique?
It is a sustained religious experience that is integrated into the very economics of society. Revelation at Sinai was a momentary experience of religious ecstasy, but the very purpose of Torah and mitzvos is their elevation of the Jewish People and society. This is represented by the commitment to shemitta—which upends the normal rhythm of society and highlights the very purpose of the Torah itself. This is why shemitta is paradigmatic of all the commandments of the Torah because it highlights the ultimate goals of Torah observance—the infusion of religious transcendence into the very fabric of society. As the very title of Finkel’s book suggests, dedication to shemitta is a rebellion against the secular trends of societal development and an insistence that divinity can be woven into the very fabric of the community itself. As Rav Kook writes in his work Sheves HaAretz on the laws and concept of shemitta, true divinity is found when it uplifts not just the individual but the entire society.
The conviction that shemitta requires, and the scope of its application in all of society make it the ultimate paradigm for religious observance. Not just a moment of faith, of an individual life of faith, but an entire society founded upon faith in God.
I’ll close with the words of Herman Wouk in This is My God, on the courage, גבורי כח, that religious life embodies:
Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and the fearful...Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple--though it is that too, much to its glory--it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first-class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way....speaking of crutches--Freud can be a crutch, Marx can be a crutch, rationalism can be a crutch, and atheism can be two canes and a pair of iron braces. We none of us have all the answers, nor are we likely to have. But in the country of the halt, the man who is surest he has no limp may be the worst-crippled.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Rebels in the Holy Land: Mazkeret Batya—An Early Battleground for the Soul of Israel, Sam Finkel
A Brief Overview of Some of the Issues Related to the Hetter Mekhira, Daniel Feldman
Letter and Spirit: Evasion, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic System, Daniel Feldman
Rebels in the Holy Land, Review for Jewish Action, Toby Klein Greenwald
This is My God, Herman Wouk
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Great post, fascinating history.
The Torah makes a particular claim about shmitta, that the year before you’ll get enough produce to last two or three years (in the case of yovel). My suspicion is that didn’t happen at the settlement and that’s why the controversy happened.