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October 8, 2007
The Year 5768 Problem
Today's NY Times has an article about a fascinating collision between ancient religious commandment and modern economic complications. This is the year 5768 on the Jewish calendar. I know what must have immediately occurred to you: 5768 is divisible by 7!
But why is that important? Well, it turns out that according to Jewish law, 5768 is, as a seventh year, a shmita. Shmita years are supposed to be kind of like agricultural sabbaticals: the land is to lie fallow and the people are to be inactive upon it, all can access whatever fruits such land produces and, at the end of the year, all debts are canceled. As Exodus 23:10-11 explains:
Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.
I am convinced that Jews have the institution of shmita to remind themselves every so often of what we could all expect from a Dennis Kucinich Presidency.
Anyway, this has, unsurprisingly, yielded some creative loopholes, and the article dwells on one calledheter mechira by which Jews can keep the wheels of production spinning by temporarily selling their land to non-Jews. Mix in a religious disagreement on the idea of heter mechira (and if I, as a wandering wayward Gentile, may put my own two cents on the thing: if you are willing to countenance such legal gimmickry, you might as well just go ahead and ignore the Bible), a blockade on Gaza (the traditional supply safety valve for shmita in Israel), etc. and you have a really fascinating mess.
Of course, none of this will really faze the Good Rabbi: you learn to prioritize when you live on the lam.
Posted by dag at October 8, 2007 7:39 PM