Enfranchisement and empowerment

It might be that historically one of the main reasons for the weakness of the shemitta laws was because the leaders of those ancient societies instinctively felt how it weakened their own prerogatives in the public sphere, and so they were disinclined to engineer the necessary institutions to make shemitta work. 

The leaders of ancient societies were disinclined to think through the demands of a proper implementation of the shemitta institution – be they political leaders, economic leaders or spiritual leaders – because the entire shemitta project threatened their own purchases on power in society. 

If that be so, if shemitta were a threat to the regular, institutional leadership of society, then shemitta should be understood as a deeply radical social institution. What that means is that shemitta is quintessentially a grass roots institution designed for the lower classes, and shemitta needs a vigorous grass roots to keep it fresh and wholesome. 

Shemitta and yovel are the grass roots hiatuses during which time the ordinary citizen, the am haaretz, the lower class person, has as much say in the conduct of civic society as does the leadership. It therefore falls to the grass roots to recognize in shemitta the potential for this enfranchisement and empowerment, and to work throughout the six ordinary intervening years to foster a vigorous experience of shemitta and of yovel. 

Shemitta needs to be administered from the ground up. 

Controlled business cycle

Just as firefighters manage forestry through controlled burns shemitta would perform a similar function for the economy by applying what would amount to a controlled business cycle. 

To say an economy cannot survive a shemitta is to deny that economies do it all the time, only they call them recessions and depressions. The problem with uncontrolled business cycles is: first, they are seen as unwelcome, so that now we are in an era when we are trying to manage the business cycle out of existence, to the detriment of a healthy economic system, not unlike the unhealthy forests that grew out of the wrong-headed notion that forest fires were bad. 

Second, uncontrolled business cycles affect mostly the economic but not the political and spiritual sectors, where they are at least as, if not more important. 

Third, uncontrolled business cycles are uncontrolled and unanticipated so they tend to be more harmful than controlled shemitta would be. 

Fourth, uncontrolled business cycles do not alter the fundamental social relations between elites and subject populations the way a prescribed shemitta would, and so they do not threaten the status quo of power in the society. 

Shemitta functions as a sort of built-in term limits to the entire public social order. Not such a bad idea, on the face of it. 

Society's ideological base

Shemitta affects not only society's social, political and economic structure, it also affects society's ideological base. 

The same impulse that forces the society to create enough surplus to feed the nation during the sabbatical year also serves to induce the society to build the institutional infra-structure to create that surplus. Along with the abundance of that surplus comes the self-respect for having built the institutional infra-structure, and along with the building of the infra-structure comes the orientation toward the future and the habit of stewardship that makes for a proper creative ideological ground. That ideological ground is what the society needs in order to take care of the land not only during the fallow years but also during the six productive years. 

It's not for nothing the instructions of the Bible focus on environmental stewardship. The spiritual teachings of the Bible incline the people into a comprehensive concordance with the natural order, where the spiritual integrates with the material. 

To implement those teachings requires the people to achieve a proper measure of abundance. When abundance and a concern for the environment work hand in hand they form the basis for a right-minded ideological ground for people to cultivate a good society. 

Scarcity's counter-weight

Loaning is in the first place about abundance. 

The ability to loan is a measure of abundance. 

It seems the purpose of shemittat kesafim is to stop loan activity as we approach the year of shemitta, to stop the investment in new ventures so that the society can invest in managing the transition across the years of shemitta. 

Hillel needed to institute the prozbul to deal with the problem of shemittat kesafim because neither he nor the entire people understood the meaning of shnat shemitta. The people of Israel did not properly understand the meaning of sabbatical, of the nation taking off for a whole year from the tasks of economic endeavor. 

The people of Israel did not understand that the mandate of shnat shemitta was to welcome scarcity as a counter-weight to the build-up of abundance which can beset a nation.

Shemitta & chazaq

Shemitta might well be the opposite of chazaq. 

Shemitta means to release one's grasp as opposed to chazaq, which means to hold one's grasp. Shabbat signifies a turning away from the material and focusing onto the spiritual, onto that about which God is the focus. 

People seem not to appreciate the implications of shemitta on the very business practices of the nation. 

Personal credit cards

Shemittat kesafim might be about moving from debt to equity over the six year cycle. 

Shemittat kesafim would be about moving from a personal debt to a corporate relationship. As the shemitta year approaches, the volume of debt goes down and the volume of charitable grants goes up. The gemach funds should begin to kick in as the shemitta year approaches so that going into the year there would be no endebtedness among the people. The point isn't to stop the debt markets, the point is to stop the exercise of personal credit. 

• The choice of terms in Deuteronomy 15:2 – yesha yad and yigash – and the distinction in Deuteronomy 15:3 between the Israelite and the nakhri, the stranger, indicates an inclination to move obligations over to the object and the impersonal and away from the person and the relationship. 
• Either equity or corporate debt should move to replace personal debt. 
• It's about how much or how little personal credit cards would be able to be used. It's about personal credit vs business credit. 

ChZ"l didn't understand the law so they overdid it and then figured out a way to dismantle the law altogether. Prozbul is an admission of rabbinic failure rather than, as legend has it, an emergency measure instituted by Hillel to redeem an unworkable system. 

A collective obligation

By injecting shemittat kesafim into the core body of covenantal law the Biblical author is guaranteeing a basic level of security in the society. 

Unlike corporate debt, personal debt is always an indicator of insecurity. The Biblical admonition every seven years to release personal debt without loss of dignity, coupled with the requirement to help kinsmen to meet their mortgage payments and to redeem foreclosures on real estate combines to define the maintenance of a certain basic level of security as a collective obligation. 

The incentive system of the individual choosing decisions in a free market environment works well so long as the circumstances of the decision-makers are discretionary. Once the decisions pertain to the mandatory, to the inalienable aspects of existence – basic food, shelter, health care – the apparatus of the collective must kick in. 

As expected, the matter of shemittat kesafim is a matter of what is alienable vs what is inalienable, and upon whom falls the responsibility to secure what is inalienable. 

The Sheviit Project

Can shemitta be re-instated in modern day Israel without radically altering the rabbinic understanding of the institution? 

The Jewish people could do a Gorbachev on shemitta and just fiddle with it around the edges before the institution collapses under its own weight and its own contradictions or the Jews could admit that ChZl just had it wrong, that modern day science and politics understand the deeper structures of the sabbatical institution more clearly and more technically now than they could have back then. Jews would then proceed to repudiate as failed and defunct the methodology and the shape ChZl had originally designed for shemitta. 

Instead, Jews would take out a blank sheet of paper and start all over again with a practicable version of shemitta that doesn't take so many liberties with the text-as-written but which focuses on the deeper, though more mundane application of the system beginning with a voluntary collectivism that would limit membership to those who contributed to the storehouses of shemitta during the prior six years. 

The Jewish people wouldn't even necessarily call it shemitta. They would instead all engage in the heter machira but would proceed to build the storehouses and assemble as broad a membership as possible for what we would call The Sheviit Project. 

The Sheviit Project would be the next generation of the kibbutz movement. It would be a voluntary membership in a collective style of living. Those who chose to join would participate in the benefits of the collective. Those who elected not to join could not participate in this more essential kind of shemitta. 

It's not clear why the people of Israel couldn't live side by side with those who joined this mutual fund/mutual assurance society/mutual aid society entering into contractual obligation with each other that was governed by the rules of The Sheviit Project in much the same way as the Chumash devises mutual obligations to those it calls one's brothers and one's comrades. 

Shemitta & sexual chuqot to’eivah

The difference between violating the laws of shemitta and violating the laws in Leviticus 18 of sexual perversion (both of which could trigger national exile from the land) is that the laws of shemitta pertain only to when the people of Israel are sovereign whereas the sexual prohibitions pertain to the sovereignty of any inhabitants of the land. 

As such, the violation of the laws of sexual perversion are an abomination (and the performance of those rites are regarded as chuqot to’eivah) in a way that the violation of the laws of shemitta are not. 

Joseph's 'shemitta'

Let us define chuqim umishpatim as the supporting practices and regulations that go into promoting the shemira and the assiya of a mitzvah. 

• The choq defines the assiya and the mishpat defines the shemira. 
• Chuqim umishpatim can thus comprehend much of what the ChZ”l call Torah sh'baal peh. 
• The chuqim and mishpatim of shemitta are the surrounding assiya and shemira of the sabbatical year. 

The institutional centerpiece of those chuqim umishpatim is the retail outlet that manages the supply chain for agribusiness. The Josephite administration defined the character of that agribusiness supply chain management. The seven fat and seven lean years were a massive application of the principles of shemitta. Joseph’s brothers failed in not doing with their surplus what Joseph did with Egypt's. The two dreams of Joseph both spoke to the two aspects of the shemitta laws: the first spoke to the produce of the land; the second spoke to the power relations within the family. When Yaaqov hears the second dream he shamors the davar. 

The consequence of their not heeding Joseph's 'shemitta' forecasts was that the Children of Israel had to abandon their lands. 

• Rachel's children led Israel's children out of Mesopotamia and into Egypt. 
• Leah had einayim rakhim (Genesis 29:17) rather than a rakh lev (Deuteronomy 20:8). 

The impact of the laws of shemitta are exactly the reverse of the impact of the administration of Joseph. According to the laws of shemitta, the land must stay in the hands of the general public and the power cannot become concentrated in the hands of an elite few. Indeed, the food cannot be sold during the year of famine. 

The mandate of the supply chain administrator is: 

1. to arrange for agricultural sabbaticals; 
2. to distribute and sell yashan food during the sabbatical years; 
3. to feed the poor during the sabbatical years; and 
4. to administer the JNF for keeping the land within the widely distributed ownership control of the members of the agricultural collective. 

Thus administered, shemitta is about, once every seven years, moving the locus of power away from the agricultural. It would be a proper mandate for an ecologically configured JNF. The ecological impulse puts the JNF into the social welfare business in addition to the business of planting trees and acquiring land. 

Shemitta thus forces a whole-design approach onto the matter of providing necessities to the society. Shemitta is thus fundamental and sets the tone and offers a template for institutions that provide for the general population's material needs similar to the way the mishkan is fundamental and sets the tone and offers a template for institutions that provide for the general population's spiritual needs. 

Shabbos is thus temporal and thus intangible but focused on the material while mishkan is situational and thus tangible but focused on the spiritual. 

Masseikha can mean molten but it can also mean visible. Elohei masseikha could mean visible idols, material idols rather than purely spiritual beings, hence the prohibitions in Leviticus 26:1 on pessel and matzeivah and even maskhis. 

Deluxe package

Choq has the mirror spelling of qach. It might also have the mirror meaning. As qach means to take, so choq could mean to be granted. 

Choq is thus the manifestation of chanun, grace – that which is granted without it having to be requested, what comes with the deluxe package, so to speak. 

Self-restraint

To honor God's covenant with Man requires Man to work less than the maximum. It requires self-restraint. 

God draws Himself in to make room for Man, and Man must do likewise to make room for God. Man and God exchange self-restraints with each other. The relationship between the parties in covenant is diplomatic. 

Remove the self-restraint and you see revealed hubris. That same self-restraint is essential to the Constitutional balance of power. 

The three co-equal branches of government must exercise self-restraint and diplomatic decorum to honor the covenantal character of their relationship with each other, of their relationship with the several states, and of their relationship with the people. To arrogate power to one branch over the objections of the other branches, or to arrogate power to the Federal branch over the objection of the state branches risks arrogating power away from the populace. 

That trifecta of hubris is precisely what the Cheney/Bush administration was guilty of. 

Belong to everyone

Once the economic power is made to redound to the resources which are at the source of the production process the extractives lose their incentive to inflict the resource curse. 

By putting the resources in God's trust, and by having God, every seven years, command those resources to belong to everyone in the society, the society can go on to lift the resource curse. 

Pre-condition on distribution

Shemitta is an instantiation of gift exchange, sheviit is not. 

Sheviit is an instance of the gift giver asking for His gift back. In fact, sheviit is a suspension of the gift, namely, a suspension of the use of the land. 

The use of the land is given to the Children of Israel with a pre-condition: every seven years they desist from using it. It is actually a pre-condition on the distribution of the land among the tribes so that the process of distribution itself is contingent on those who did the distributing to accept the entailment on that distribution. 

Sheviit is thus an extension of the claim to the private property use of the land as it manifests between the national authority who dispersed the claims on the land and the recipients of those claims. 

Local sustenance

It could be that sheviit will require a re-structuring of land ownership to allow for a wider distribution of local food growth so that people could sustain themselves locally by harvesting their own food during the sabbatical year. 

It could be the sheviit system means for us to replicate the system of mannah. 

Sabbatical covers everyone

The logic of the heter makhira of chag hamatzot depends on the exclusion of the uncircumsized from the national festival. 

The heter makhira implies that uncircumsized residents could in fact own chometz during chag hamatzot. Let's say that were so. That logic of a heter makhira could nonetheless not apply to the laws of sheviit because the uncircumsized are not excluded from the mandate of sheviit. 

No-one can use the land on the sabbatical year because in the land of Israel no mortal owns the land and therefore during the sabbatical year no-one has title to lease it to another. 

Prerogatives of sovereignty

Perhaps in the early 20^th century before the time of national sovereignty when Rav Kook instituted the heter makhira in the yishuv it made sense to use such a legal fiction for sheviit because there was as yet only a vague notion of who was sovereign over the land of Israel. After the establishment of the State, however, the act of selling the lease to an uncircumsized resident ought not to have any effect. 

The issue of sheviit is the issue of sovereignty over the land, and that sovereignty does not transfer to ethnically excluded residents; nor could individuals transfer sovereignty, in any case. 

Sovereignty is a deeper property right than simple ownership, especially of land. When market transactions bump into the proscriptions of entailment and inalienability they are really bumping into the limit of ownership rights before the prerogatives of sovereignty.

A mockery

If heter makhira could work after the establishment of the State, it would require the Knesset to invoke it. That legalistic gesture would however be a catastrophe. 

Were the Knesset to invoke heter makhira, it would signify that the people of Israel were willing to release their sovereignty over their land and to put that sovereignty in the trust of another people. That would be both preposterous, and it would weaken in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of the world the claim the people of Israel had to the land. 

Furthermore, it would make a mockery of the relation between the people of Israel and God. 

Internal lines of privilege

The one and seemingly only element the Rabbis address in the matter of sheviit is whether or not and how Jews are prohibitted from planting and harvesting the land during the sabbatical year.  

• There is another side of the choq: to suspend for the duration of the sabbatical year the laws of private property as regards the land. 
• Such suspension undoes the initial distribution of the land leases that constituted the initial settlement of the land.
• That distribution defined the claims to the land both between the tribes as well as within the tribes to the families of Israel. 

Even should exigencies of the moment foreclose the option of suspending agricultural activity so that, because of the pressures of scarcity, say, farmers would need to plant and harvest their fields during the sabbatical year, it is not clear why the people couldn't honor the other side of the sabbatical proscriptions, the side that suspended private property rights over the land.

Sheviit is really not only about leaving the land fallow. Sheviit is also about distributing the nation’s stored wealth to the general population and about breaking down within the society the internal lines of privilege that invariably grow up.

Wither & revive

The central teaching of the laws of sheviit is that people can't create institutions for the distribution of unearned wealth; people need, rather, to dismantle institutions in order to allow the wealth to return to its source. 

It's as though every seven years the institutional life of the community needs to wither and then to be revived; while during that interim sabbatical year things need to return to the wild for a spell. 

In short, people need more institutions so they can generate the surplus during the six years and then they need to cut back to fewer institutions so that they will have to consume the surplus and return to a paradisical state where everyone can just pluck the fruit from the tree.