If We Do Allow the Earth to Rest --

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 1/2/2005

The Torah says (Lev 26: 33-35 and 43-44) that if we do not follow the pattern of seventh-year rest that is commanded in Leviticus 25, the earth will rest anyway — thru famine, drought, exile. And Second Chronicles (36: 20-21) claims that this is exactly what happened — that the people lived in the Babylonian Exile as many years as they had prevented the land from making Shabbat.

To me this sounds like an ecologist's warning: poison the earth, and it will poison you and create cancers etc; overwork it by pouring too much CO2 into the air, and it will overheat and create global scorching. Fits totally with the second paragraph of the Sh'ma, which far too many of our synagogues simply skip or mumble.

In the halachic tradition, the laws of Shmitah and Yovel only applied in the Land of Israel. It needed to, of course, because how could we have the power and responsibility to shape such an economic system where we did not rule and indeed were kept at arm's length from power and citizenship?

BUT THAT IS NOT OUR SITUATION ANY MORE. If we believe that there is deep wisdom in these teachings, then precisely because we are NOT Karaites we can reexamine how to apply their wisdom in our own societies and our own day.

We — we Jews, a minority outside Israel — cannot and do not have to impose these rules on anyone; AND we can work WITH those of other traditions, including some that have absorbed some aspects of this Torah, to see how to apply these teachings in a very different society from EITHER the one in which they were written OR the ones in which the Rabbis said they were irrelevant.

In **Godwrestling — Round 2** and in articles here and there I have explored precisely this question: how could we, in a very different society, join with other communities to apply the basic wisdom of these teachings, which I believe would help to heal both the terrible gaps and illnesses of our society, and to help heal our crisis with the planet. the Torah says (Lev 26: 33-35 and 43-44) that if we do not follow this pattern of seventh-year rest, the earth will rest anyway — thru famine, drought, exile. And Second Chronicles (36: 20-21) claims that this is exactly what happened — that the people lived in the Babylonian Exile as many years as they has prevented the land from making Shabbat.

To me this sounds like an ecologist's warning: poison the earth, and it will poison you and create cancers etc; overwork it by pouring too much CO2 into the air, and it will overheat and create global scorching. Fits totally with the second paragraph of the Sh'ma, which far too many of our synagogues simply skip or mumble.

In the halachic tradition, the laws of Shmitah and Yovel only applied in the Land of Israel. It needed to, of course, because how could we have the power and responsibility to shape such an economic system where we did not rule and indeed were kept at arm's length from power and citizenship?

BUT THAT IS NOT OUR SITUATION ANY MORE. If we believe that there is deep wisdom in these teachings, then precisely because we are NOT Karaites we can reexamine how to apply their wisdom in our own societies and our own day.

We — we Jews, a minority outside Israel — cannot and do not have to impose these rules on anyone; AND we can work WITH those of other traditions, including some that have absorbed some aspects of this Torah, to see how to apply these teachings in a very different society from EITHER the one in which they were written OR the ones in which the Rabbis said they were irrelevant.

In **Godwrestling — Round 2** and in articles here and there I have explored precisely this question: how could we, in a very different society, join with other communities to apply the basic wisdom of these teachings, which I believe would help to heal both the terrible gaps and illnesses of our society, and to help heal our crisis with the planet.