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. 

According to justice

Choq respects the boundaries, and is thus the legal embodiment of temperance; mishpat weighs the values, and is this the legal embodiment of justice. 

When scripture says to shamor the mishpat it is because there is no entitlement on one side of the relationship. The bounty of the tithe is a mishpat because the ministers expressly do not have a stake in the patrimony of the land. They have no choq in the adamah. Their choq is in the ritual offerings. 

So with the tithe there is no respecting a boundary, there is only acting according to justice. Ministers have to eat and it is only right for the people to subsidize them. 

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. 

Time & space

In re: a new paradigm for philanthropy and creativity, do we need to build some sort of think tank-like institutions to help people get a firmer grip on the novel strategic principles they would likely not be able to comprehend on their own without some explicit instruction in the details of the new paradigm. How do we not end up building academic institutions where people who don't know what they're talking about find themselves teaching practical skills to people who don't know how to use them?

 The scriptural injunction of 've-et shabbtotei tishmoru', 'and you shall guard my Sabbaths', was probably directed at precisely this concern. The Torah says, for starters, you don't build a parallel institution to teach the lessons of creativity, you build the teaching function into the very way you manage the institutions of creative enterprise in the first place. How? Through the sabbaticals, the 'shabbtotei'.

 One day every seven days, and one year every seven years, and then one more year every 50 years, creative workers pause in their work to re-calibrate and to reflect on what is merit and what is grace, on where the covenantal line is drawn that defines justice as deservedness, on how to be clear and humble about one's own place in one's work. When one understands one's relationship to one's work, the work becomes 'melakha', the expression of one's own identity rather than mere labor or toil.

 You begin by building the institutions of instruction and evaluation into the dimension of institutional time rather than the dimension of institutional space. Then, when the 've-et shabbtotei tishmoru' has been accomplished, you can move on to 've-et miqdashei tira-u', 'and my sactuaries you shall recognize/fear'. Then you can also build (in institutional space) a temple of the teachings of creativity. This think tank/temple would be administered by 'priests' who service the members of the creative sector but remind them of the source of Man's creativity, priests who in their very lives embody and defend the covenantal line between merit and grace. Such a think tank/temple, however, needs to supplement the basic, temporal institutions of instruction and evaluation that ought to be built into the very way in which we organize creative work in the real world, in the first place; and that has to happen seriatim in the temporal domain.

 ChZL, very possibly, had it backward. We do not learn the meaning of melakha on shabbos from the example of the melakha of the building of the miqdash. Rather, it's the other way around. We learn the meaning of melakha in the miqdash from the lessons we learn from the self-reflection that happens on shabbos and sheviit and yovel regarding our work experiences in the real world. That way the miqdash can remain fresh and relevant to the experiences of the people.

Defining deservedness

The episode of shabbos at the Sin desert is not about melakha, it is about choq. 

No mention of melakha is made in the episode's text. Quite the opposite, the manna was about the gift of grace from God. The manna was an exercise in defining deservedness, as the paschal lamb was an exercise of defining deservedness. Both measured the needs of the household. 

The practice of collecting manna according the needs of the household accustomed each individual member of the Children of Israel to acquaint themselves with their various needs, more than which would have consituted excess. The manna allowed God to define the measure of sufficiency for each household. To attempt to collect an excess of what was sufficient was to no avail. Each household ended up only with what they deserved by right. 

Nor could they store any excess. It would putrify overnight. (This putrefaction, hivish, recalls what happened to the fish and the frogs in the first two plagues of Egypt.) 

Only the extra measure on shabbos would keep. 

A mishmeret is a storage of surplus. A mishmeret does not hivish. The mishmeret extends to all the generations of Israelites, which is why Aharon kept a sample of manna as a standard against which future generations would measure how much was enough. 

An omer is approximately half a gallon. 

Appointed times

The cycle of the festivals, the “appointed times” (in biblical parlance), denotes the movement of the Children of Israel from scarcity to abundance and from divinity to partnership to mortality. The covenantal meeting in a sacred time and place is intimately bound up with the abundance being distributed. 

That the appointed times are sacred merely signifies that these are the moments when the covenantal partners get to meet to demark the meaning of the day. The sanctity is necessary because the covenantal partner had removed Himself from the ordinary life of the people. Prior to the sequestration of God's substance into the Tent of Appointment (Ohel Mo’ed) His presence was everywhere in the camp and the entire people were sacred because the entire people were in direct and immediate contact with their covenantal partner. After the sequestration, the sanctity is reserved only for appointed times and at the appointed tent when and where the encounter between the covenantal partners takes place. 

The annual cycle begins with the paschal offering. Pesach offerings set apart the people from the divine by having them eat meat without offering it on an altar and without sharing it as an appeasing fragrance for God . Chag haMatzot has the people eating mortal food in the same (unleavened) form as God partakes of it. The last day of the chag stops the condition of independent divinity for the people, which is why Scripture calls the seventh day of chag haMatzot “atzeret”, the stop. These two festivals – chag pesach and chag haMatzot – situate the people outside of the Land of Israel. 

Chag haShavuot brings the people into the land by displaying the first fruits and wheat before God through His priests, and by repeating the original declaration that first Israelite generation made when they took possession of the land, saying this land is the promised land which fulfills God's sworn obligation to the people. It is not clear that the entire people celebrated the festival at the same time, nor is it clear the urban class participated in the ceremony of the first fruits at all. The heave offering displays both mortal and divine food, doubletons (the sign of abundance) waved together as a symbol of covenantal fulfillment. 

Chag haSuccot is about the divine food that begins in abundance and concludes in symbolic scarcity, with the Shemini Atzeret closing off the divine mimicking the mortal. 

Balance point

The balance point of the society is the institutional establishment of the satiation point. 

The respect of the sacred Sabbaths corresponds to the cultural formulation in the society of when enough is enough, whether it be in terms of consumption, production, or the preservation of one's dignity, honor and integrity. 

Knowing when enough is enough might be the basis for the society of the establishment of standards and practices in an institutional setting. 

Fund-mining conduct

Steroids and mind-enhancing drugs are part of the same fund-mining conduct that has been exhausting the entire planet. 

Opt out of the greed

When a substantial segment of the population (say 25%) chooses to opt out of the greed economy and instead opts into a more cautious, more decentralized economic order then the society can return to a more democratic and therefore a more healthy economy. 

Equipoise

Sova is a point of cultural equipoise. 

Sova plays a role in the cultural domain that is analogous to the role equilibrium plays in market economics. 

Unearned wealth & the pursuit of wealth and glory

The norms for managing excess need to be made more clear. 

• Unearned wealth is bad for the individual's soul. 
• Unearned wealth rots the character of its recipients. 
• The pursuit of wealth and glory is a prideful endeavor. 
• The pursuit of wealth and glory results in the distortion of the planet's ability to support the world’s human population. 
• The pursuit of wealth and glory is the basis in society of class distinctions. 

The curtailment of the pursuit of wealth and glory and the disempowerment of unearned wealth should be the foundation of society's every public policy. 

Around sova

To consume less as well as to produce more of what we consume is to approach the sova point. 

To waste less is likewise to re-order the society to pivot around the sova point. 

Quotidian material life

National sovereignty gives a people the opportunity to define their relation with a sacred, divine Other in terms of a property relation rather than in terms of a civic or a political or a spiritual relationship. 

The rendering of covenantal partnership as property rights (chuqim umishpatim) rather than as spiritual ephemera brings into play the quotidian, material life of the people so that the sova point becomes integrated into the self-understanding of the members of society. 

Sova first

After the Middle Ages mankind learned to conquer the natural world and to harness it with advances in technology which overwhelmed the natural order. That conquest of Nature gave man a sense of power and control that was unprecedented. It led to the present day quotient of hubris the world is having to suffer. 

Now people need to learn a new skill – self-restraint; not piety so much as satiety. For that people need a variation on the teachings of Gandhi. Gandhi taught non-violence more than he saught sova. The Western world, with its uparalleled abundance could better learn sova first and then learn non-violence. 

Sova standard

The sovereign's monopoly on power almost automatically and irresistibly extends into his monopoly on the extraction of the fertile core, be it in the land, under the land, in the oceans, in the air, or in the reproductive capacity of man or beast. Furthermore, the sovereign has a monopoly on money and on credit and leverage. 

The ability of the society to discriminate between subsistence and super-abundance, which is to say, the ability of a society to establish a sova point, along with society's ability to discriminate between productive versus speculative risk is the key, and most fundamental, standard for the society to establish for itself. 

On the basis of that standard the society will be able to establish norms of sustainability that will have the effect of enriching and deepening the quality of life in that society and on this planet. The object is for the government and the culture to establish not just the poverty line or a basic living standard; the object is to establish a sova standard beyond which it is unbecoming to strive to accumulate wealth and hoard excess or surplus. 

God's role is to serve as counter-weight to the sovereign and to remind him of the severely limited sova point it is necessary to maintain while at the same time it is also God's role to remind the people of their cultural responsibility to protect their fertile cores and not to submit in servility to the temptations of a weak-willed ruling class. 

Read and apply Scripture

Neither the secular world nor the orthodox world has a grip on how Scripture can inform the contemporary ecological situation on the planet. Both sides are still battling over issues that were fashionable half a millennium, a whole millenium, even two or two and a half millennia ago. 

Neither the secular nor the orthodox know how to read and apply Scripture's teachings to the present day circumstances either of Israel or of the planet. Neither the Christians, the Muslims, nor the Jews nor, for that matter, the secularists know how to apply Scripture's teachings to the problem of income distribution or aid to the poor; none of them know how to manage the excess of consumption, power, influence and arrogance the leadership of the clergy as well as the monarchy or the oligarchy have established for themselves; none speaks to a dignity and an autonomy before God for which Scripture calls as a pre-condition of covenantal relationship; etc. 

The critique of contemporary leadership, be it religious or secular, must be not with respect to their own terms, which are tired and serve as mere distractions, but in terms of how they address the issues of the day, of leadership, of the abuse of power (on the right), of a loss of direction and an aimlessness (on both the right and the left), of the relation between the haves and the have-nots; of the mining by the industrial economic order of the renewable source of productivity on the planet. 

Plain and simple and direct

An economy engaged in production that was plain and simple and direct would likely be able to undersell all its competitors. 

China is such an economy, and it is beating the pants off of the over-fed, under-exercised economy in America . 

Savings glut

To say the world is experiencing a 'savings glut' is to say the rest of the world isn't over-consuming the way America is. 

That the over-production is enabled by the wholesale mining and wasting of the planet’s fertile core is the long-term, serious issue. 

That long-term issue the other side of the problem to the short-term issue of talking about the challenges of the present day economy as a 'savings glut'. 

Retreat from Eden

To know good and bad in Eden is to know excess in sumptuousness and in poverty. 

That strife between serpent and man comes out of the exercise; that women will give birth in pain and feel sub-ordinate to men; that man will work the soil and only with the sweat of his brow will he eat bread – these mark a retreat from the abundance of paradise into predation, hierarchy and starvation. 

The revealing of the non-material values of the pursuit of excellence results in a countervailing imposition of the material conditions that result in the pursuit of excess. 

Stewardship is ...

• Stewardship is not a matter of agency; it is, rather, a style of ownership. 
• Stewardship is owning, coupled with intermittent releases and with ultimate releases. 
• Stewardship is owning that is coupled to un-owning. 
• Stewardship is about knowing clearly what you don't own as well as what you do. 
• Stewardship is being impeccable about what is not yours, what you don't deserve. 
• Stewardship is about being clear as to the value something has to those other than you. 
• Stewardship is the expression of caring. 
• Stewardship is to own for the sake of nurturing rather than for the sake of consuming.