Sharing Shmita: The Shmita Project Northwest, with Deirdre Gabbay

Deirdre Gabbay, director of Shmita Project Northwest, takes us on a journey of shmita possibilities, exploring how shmita could inspire change in our communities. Deirdre is interviewed by guest editor, Yaira Robinson.

Click here to listen to the podcast:

"So what are you going to do? Are you going to continue along this course or are you going to reverse course?" 

The global pandemic and overlapping climate and weather-related catastrophes that we all have been going through I think has taught us some really, really important lessons that I think are related to Shmita. And one of them is: really large calamities, like we read about in the Bible, these plagues, they can happen. They can happen in our time. 

One of the strengths of a Faith-based point of view is that there’s a vocabulary for a sense of commanded-ness... 

Shmita has something to say about the need to prevent intergenerational poverty, the passing down of poor circumstances from one generation to the next. . . Inequality that's left to continue and roll-over from one generation to the next, particularly if it causes some people to be squeezed-out of full participation in society; this is addressed in Torah and a solution is put forward in Torah. We too should put forward a solution. 

For me, it's really important that we learn to take care of the actual place where we live. 

 The belief that we're all in this together is, I think, the most comforting and powerful message we have. 

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Deirdre Gabbay is director of The Shmita Project Northwest, an organization dedicated to bringing attention to the Hebrew calendar's seven-year Shmita cycle which centers the relationship between the earth and the wellbeing of the human and more-than-human world, through education, inspiration, community-building, and programmatic support. She founded Ahavat v'Avodat HaAdamah, "Love and Service of the Earth," in 2015 to establish an environmental presence for the Pacific Northwest rooted in Jewish text, tradition, and practice, specifically to support a response to climate change. Deirdre is a member of Congregation Beth Shalom, Seattle, and a member of the board of directors of Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light. Together with her husband she is raising a family on Queen Anne. She blogs at shmitainseattle.com, where all of her divrei Torah (sermons) can be found. You can also read Dierdre’s briliiant, AllCreation article on shmita here.

This article is part of our Winter 2021 collection, Shmita Now, guest-edited by Yaira Robinson.