And should you ask, “What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?” I will ordain My blessing for you in the sixth year and it will yield a crop sufficient for the three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will still be eating old grain of that crop; you will be eating the old until the ninth year, until its crops come in.”
Vayikra 25:19-23
After God commands the Israelites to leave the land barren in the seventh year and not work it, God immediately tells them that they should not worry about not having anything to eat in the seventh year and the following ones, because He will bless the sixth year with a crop sufficient for three years.
This would mean that the question “What will we eat?” could only be asked at the beginning of the sixth year or even earlier, when the overabundant harvest had not yet started. After that, the blessing would be evident to all, and everybody could see that the harvest had miraculously increased. There would no longer be any reason to worry.
The anxiety over lack of food in the seventh, eighth and ninth year was therefore of short duration. After all, the triple harvest took place at the beginning of this period, in the sixth year: “I will ordain My blessing for you in the sixth year and it will yield a crop sufficient for the three years.”
But this means that if the miraculous increase in the sixth year fails to happen, it can only mean that God does not want the law of Shemitah to apply! After all, the Shemitah observance by the Jews is dependent on the triple blessing in the sixth year. If the blessing took place, it was obvious that the Jews were obligated to observe the laws of Shemitah! And if not, they would not be so obligated. This means that there could not be any speculation whether or not the law would apply: No blessing means no obligation.
The tension between biblical and rabbinic law
The sages, to safeguard the spirit of the Law and its great message, decided to implement the Shemitah as rabbinical law, as an act of piety. With the establishment of the State of Israel, God has not yet re-introduced the blessing of the sixth year. The law is still a rabbinic one, and thus, it is possible to apply various leniencies to make it easier to observe the Shemitah law. Such leniencies include the sale of farm land to non-Jews, making use of hydroponics, and more. If the law still had the status of biblical law, these leniencies could not apply. These leniencies are therefore more symbolic than purely legal.
What this means, however, is that, contrary to the conventional opinion, the application of the biblical law did not depend on the Israelites’ observance of Shemitah. So clearly, it was not God who was waiting for the Israelites to observe the Shemitah laws. If He were waiting, then the blessing would only come once the Jews already started observing the Shemitah in the seventh year. Since the blessing would occur in the sixth year, it is clear that the Israelites were waiting for God to implement the blessing; after which they would start to observe the laws of Shemitah.
The question here is obvious: Why would God not implement the blessing a-priori? Why would He withhold this blessing when, by granting it, the Israelites would be obligated to observe the Shemitah laws as He required? And what was the purpose of this miracle?
It can only mean that in post-biblical years, when the Jewish people turned to idol worship, the blessing would be lost on them. It would become a blessing in disguise.
A root experience
The purpose of the Shemitah laws is to teach the Jews that the land is a loan to them and not a possession: “For the land is Mine, for you are sojourners and residents with Me.” (Vayikra 25:23) This is meant to reinforce the message that everything the Israelites own — and not only the land — belongs to God.
This is much more than just acknowledging that our possessions are a loan; this understanding must be accompanied by a spiritual mindset. Not only must the blessing enter the consciousness of the Jewish people, but it must transform this consciousness, becoming what the philosopher Emile Fackenheim calls a “root experience”.[1] This is an a-historical experience, which has its roots in historical reality.
This experience by far surpasses the actual blessing of bounty in the sixth year. It shatters everything and anything in the existential sense of the word. It becomes a spiritual revolution, such that, having experienced it, things can never be the same anymore.
The most famous example of this kind of experience is the splitting of the Reed Sea. It changed everything that the Jews felt, thought, and did. It became an ontological and archetypical experience, rooted in the deepest dimension of human existence. As such, the splitting of the Reed Sea is an ongoing experience in the minds of the Jews. It was not a one-time event, but a moment that was transformative. This is the source of its value.
The most important quality of a miracle is not that it is supernatural, but that it is a moment which, even if it is argued away in terms of science, and even it is brought within the nexus of nature and history, remains miraculous in the eyes of the person who encountered it, and which can be experienced by generations to come. It is not the opening of the heavens but rather the transformation of the earth that is decisive in effecting all future Jewish generations.
What is crucial is that the miracle becomes, as it were, transparent, permitting a glimpse of the sphere in which another, unrestricted, power is at work. The purpose of a miracle is to destroy the security of all knowledge, and to undo the normalcy of all that is ordinary.
It is the abiding astonishment of this moment that is crucial. No knowledge or cognition can weaken the ongoing amazement. Any natural explanation should only deepen the wonder.
Neither owned nor owning
The law of Shemitah is meant to convey that we live in a state of “dispossession”. We do not even own ourselves. What we think is our self — in the form of our physical existence — is in fact not our essence, but only our appearance. It was Maurice Nicoll who eloquently addressed this reality.
We can all see another person’s body directly. We see the lips moving, the eyes opening and shutting, the lines of the mouth and face changing, and the body expressing itself as a whole in action. The person himself is however invisible.
If the invisible side of people were discerned as easily as the visible side, we would live in a new humanity. As we are, we live in visible humanity, a humanity of appearances …. All our thoughts, emotions, feeling, imaginations, reveries, dreams, fantasies are invisible. They constitute oneself …[2]
As such, we cannot physically own anything. What we have is only an appearance. In modern times, we no longer realize that we are in a world of invisible people. Life is the drama of the invisible hidden by the visible.
When a miracle becomes counter-productive
This is the goal of the Shemitah year, to make us to realize that we can own nothing except that part of us that is not visible. But this awareness is only possible when we are capable of breaking through the veil of appearances.
If, when the blessing of abundance in the sixth year takes place, we see only the external violation of the laws of nature, then we see only the appearance of the miracle but not “Das Ding an Sich”. We miss the essence, the message, of the miracle.
More than that: the miracle itself becomes counter-productive. It evaporates into thin air and its impact fades away. If a farmer observes the crop of the ninth year as similar to the one before the sixth year, he has not seen anything but appearances. Nothing has changed within him. Only when he sees the ninth year and the years after that as being the result of the blessing in the sixth year — as part of an ongoing ontological miracle — has he grasped the deeper truth.
Without this awareness, the blessing is meaningless, and in fact dangerous. A miracle runs the risk of being taken for granted and explained away when it is understood only in the world of appearances. In that way the blessing becomes a curse.
It is only possible to see the miracle for what it is through enormous effort and years of spiritual training. When the Jewish people became more and more non-observant, the miracle, had it remained, would have become counterproductive. It would have ceased to be accompanied by the ongoing awareness of “dispossession” as explained by Maurice Nicoll.
When the Jews prepare themselves to break with appearances, God will grant them the true miracle. But without this change in consciousness, a miracle can be a stumbling block. In the words of the Torah: “You shall not lay a stumbling block in front of a blind person and you shall fear the Lord your God”.[3]
It seems that for this reason God no longer grants us the blessing of a harvest enough for three years.
Questions to Ponder
- Is it true that, as Rabbi Cardozo claims, “With the establishment of the State of Israel, God has not reintroduced the blessing of the sixth year?” These days, modern agriculture can easily produce enough food for the entire population and even have some left for export. Perhaps this is proof that the blessing is in fact in full force, and that we should observe the Shemitah year in full. What are some arguments for and against this view?
- Rabbi Cardozo suggests that the failure of the miraculous harvest in the sixth year implies God’s will that Shemitah laws no longer apply. How does this align with the broader theological understanding of Divine intent and human responsibility? Can human actions or the lack of Divine intervention be interpreted as signals of Divine will, or does this risk oversimplifying complex theological concepts?
- The idea that Shemitah teaches the concept of dispossession, where nothing truly belongs to us, is central to the essay. How does this concept of dispossession reconcile with modern notions of property rights and individual ownership? Is it practical or beneficial to adopt a mindset of dispossession in contemporary society, or does it risk undermining personal responsibility and stewardship?
- The discussion of Maurice Nicoll’s idea that our physical existence is merely an appearance, not our essence, raises philosophical questions about identity and existence. How does this duality of appearance and essence impact our understanding of self and others? Can this perspective contribute to a more profound sense of empathy and connection, or does it risk alienating individuals from their tangible, lived experiences?
- The essay mentions Emile Fackenheim’s concept of “root experiences” that transcend historical events and shape collective consciousness. How do historical and a-historical experiences interact in shaping religious and cultural identity? Can focusing too much on a-historical experiences lead to a disconnect from the practical, historical realities that also shape a community’s beliefs and practices?
Notes
[1] God’s Presence in History, Harper Torch Books, NY, 1970, p 8-14.
[2] Maurice Nicoll, Living Time and the Integration of the Life, quoted in E F Schumacher, A Guide for The Perplexed, p 33.
[3] Vayikra,19:14.
