Dec 21

Dec 21 The Power of a Fallow Field (Rabbi Laura Bellows)

The Power of a Fallow Field:
What an Ancient Sabbatical Practice Can Teach Us Today

Rabbi Laura Bellows

With all my heart I called to you, God

And in my going out to meet you, I found you seeking me.

Yehuda Halevi

On Shabbat afternoons I walk down to Jamaica Pond to gather. The banks of this kettlehole lake, formed by a glacier in what is now the heart of Boston, are a meeting point for banjos and boomboxes, fearless toddlers and shy turtles, and generations of Sunday fishing lessons. The interlocked roots and sloping canopies of the great oaks near her shore attract spring couples with their whispering hammocks, summer potlucks full of cross-pollinated conversation and flirtation, and family lantern walks when the leaves begin to change. This pond has been a gathering and resting spot for nearly 10,000 years. A place where countless migrating birds pause their flight to rest and recharge, and, when loneliness strikes, chances are high that heading to the pond to watch the sunset will yield both inspiration and encounters with old friends and newly found loves.

In this busy city neighborhood, the shared commons of the pond is our watering hole and respite, our wilderness and place of possibility where time is given permission to release into a sort of spaciousness and the familiar banks, like a field left fallow, invite the unexpected to emerge. In short, what the pond is to Jamaica Plain, shmita is for our years.

Shmita (the sabbatical year, pronounced: sh’meetah), the ancient Jewish practice of release, recentering, and rest for the land once every seven years, is referenced many times in the Torah. “Six years you shall sow your land and harvest the abundance of it, but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat. What they leave, the beast of the field shall eat.” (Exodus 23:9-11) And again, in Leviticus 25:3-7 “Six years you shall sow your field and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its produce. But the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath for God; you shall not sow your field, nor prune your vineyard. The produce which grows by itself from your harvest, do not reap [that is, at a scale for sale], and the grapes of your untended vine, do not gather [at a scale for sale]; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. And the sabbath-produce of the land shall be food for you: for you, and for your male and female servants, and for your hired laborers, and for all who live with you. All of the land’s abundance may be eaten [meaning: accessible to] your cattle and the wild animals in your land.”

The third and final mention of the shmita year in the Torah (in Deuteronomy 15) expands the practice from the field to direct economic systems. In addition to leaving land fallow, releasing private lands to become commons, and collectively sharing the harvest, we are also instructed to forgive all debts in the seventh year. Yigal Deutscher, a Jewish farmer and the originator of the Shmita Project, noted that this last practice spoke to a different biblical economy and mentality than our present reality. When you offer a loan in a tribal village rooted in mutuality, it is not only the individual who benefits. Rather this loan can be understood as an investment in the community. You have made a gift to the collective from which you, too, benefit and on which you may one day rely in a time of need. Such an economy is one structured around mutual gain rather than individual profit; an economy whose most valuable asset is relationships, not dollars.

The Hazon Shmita Sourcebook notes that the biblical words “shvi’it” (seventh), “shmita” (release), and “shabbat la’aretz” (sabbath of the land) can be used interchangeably to refer to this sacred seventh year. Just as Shabbat serves as a once-every-seven-days obligation to reset and reconnect with family, friends, ourselves, and all of creation, shmita serves as a once-every-seven-years rest for the land and our society, ecologically, economically, and socially. The seventh year is called “shnat shmita” – the year of release and this year – 5782 on the Jewish calendar (from approximately September 2021-September 2022) -- is a shmita year. Welcome.

What may have been the purpose of this radical sabbatical practice for the ancient Israelites and what role might it play for the modern (mostly non-agrarian) Jewish community and for all humanity today? What effect might such a practice have on land, wildlife, and biodiversity?

After a year of living with the shared burden of food insecurity and needing to harvest from the same fields, perhaps shmita served to reset human relationships and level some of the economic disparities between landowners and gleaners. Perhaps this seventh year, in its simplest form, led to a greater sense of shared humanity and compassion. Perhaps shmita served to right the relationships between humanity, the Divine, and the land – reminding human landowners and gleaners alike that the land and its bounty belongs not to us but to God, wildlife, and all of creation.

Or perhaps shmita was envisioned as an ecological reset for all life in a region – a time for the fields to rewild, reminiscent of the biblical story of creation and the first Shabbat, and for animals of all kinds to remember what it is to roam freely. Perhaps this year of ecological rest and rewilding is also a biocentric reminder to humanity that we are not the pinnacle of creation, but rather deeply interconnected with it and subject to the abundance or scarcity of the earth.

For humans, especially those of us living in contemporary, individualistic, owning-driven societies, shmita year pushes us outside the comfort zone of our own literal and metaphoric fields. It forces us to seek sustenance from less familiar and more varied sources -- to let go of business-as-usual and rewild our way of being. Shmita time begs the question: what may sprout from a fallow field? What creativity and new ways of thinking may emerge when, for a limited time, we release our fences, invite in the other, and sit with the productive discomfort of non-productivity?

During this seventh year, according to shmita law, landowners in the ancient land of Israel were obligated to not sow, till, nor harvest from the land more than their family could consume in a day or two – or more than they could sell to sustain themselves for that short time. Lenders grew wary of providing loans given the forgiveness that would come in the shmita year. And while the rabbis of the Talmudic era, who designed much of today’s Jewish practice and ritual life following the destruction of temple-based Israelite traditions, defined shmita’s agricultural obligations as limited to those farms within the land of Israel, the obligation to forgive private debt applied (and still applies) in Jewish communities everywhere. Shmita posed such a significant economic and food insecurity challenge that scholars believe it may never have been practiced in its fullness. Many today, in Israel and in diaspora communities, use legal workarounds to manage their farms and lending (see Rabbi Hillel’s prosbul from the first century for one famous example that is still in use today).

And yet, contemporary Jewish scholars, farmers, and justice leaders around the world, especially in diaspora communities (Jewish communities living outside the land of Israel), have begun to learn about and embrace shmita as a radical model of release, rest, and reset for us and the land.

Historians and contemporary Jewish farmers have reflected on what types of perennial crops could have sustained an entire agrarian-turned-hunter-gatherer community for a year without planting or tilling. Perhaps crops of choice would have included perennial berries and fruiting trees such as dates, olives, figs, grapes, wild oats, and barley. Some Jewish farms, including Abundance Farm in Northampton, MA, Adamah Farm in Falls Village, CT, Coastal Roots Farm in Encinitas, CA, Bela Farm in Ontario, Canada, Linke Fligl in Millerton, NY, and Pearlstone’s Farm in Reisterstown, MD (among many others) have begun to integrate shmita practices by planting more perennials, focusing on issues of food insecurity, offering workshops and resources about the shmita year, and even taking a literal sabbatical release from farming to plan for the next seven years. Other organizations have adopted innovative shmita practices that fit with their unique work and missions. The Jewish Farmers Network offers shmita resources for farms and gardens and Kol Tzedek Synagogue in West Philadelphia, PA has decided to practice shmita by focusing on relieving medical debt and volunteering with local urban agriculture projects. From M2’s organization-wide “shmita month” for staff to reset and reenergize to Wilderness Torah’s multifaceted shmita-cycle strategic planning, Jewish organizations and individuals are getting creative and creating open fields for new ideas and connections to sprout.

In the first of a series of thought-provoking shmita-themed episodes, Judaism Unbound co-host, Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, spoke with Sarah Zell Young and Hannah Knibb Henza, the leaders of the Shmita Project, about contemporary shmita values, art, practice, and challenges today. Rabbi Rofeberg highlighted that unlike most annual Jewish observances that are filled to the brink with traditions, foods, ritual, and family stories, shmita is relatively sparse. Like a fallow field, the past two shmita cycles (since 2007) have begun to reveal an abundance of new connections, collaborations, and commitments inspired by the sabbatical year’s obligations to release debt, let the land rest, and rethink our relationships among and across species.

A dear friend once told me, in the midst of a sabbatical pivot from an intense job, that his goal was to be still long enough to be bored, and from that stillness, that openness, to see what new ideas and directions emerged from that fallow field. This shmita year, one of my practices is to go down to our neighborhood pond and be still; still enough to notice what emerges around and within me. Each week (ideally on Shabbat) I pack a picnic or thermos, a winter coat or summer hammock and binoculars, and go to sit in the fallow field of our neighborhood commons. I rarely know what conversations, observations, insights, or wildlife may come. But inevitably, like an open field, the sloped banks and park benches begin to fill with a magnificent diversity of voices, identities, stories, and species. In a society too busy to pause or put down our phones once every seven days, let alone to rethink business-as-usual for a year, shmita practice is an act of deep trust, connection, and release. What do you want to pause and plan for this year? When the land (or waterways or skies) take their rest, what will emerge? How will we grant each other forgiveness and liberation this year? And where shall we go to gather, to be still, to celebrate the shmita?

###

Rabbi Laura Bellows lives in Boston, MA, where she works to build climate resilient, justice-seeking, creative community rooted in Jewish practice and tradition. She is the Incoming Director of Spiritual Activism and Education at Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action and currently leads Teen Learning at Hebrew College. Laura has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College, rabbinic ordination from Hebrew College, and has served as a program designer, curriculum writer, educator, Torah scribe, and facilitator of courageous conversations for over 15 years with a focus on youth and young adults. This article is part of our Winter 2021 collection, Shmita Now, guest-edited by Yaira Robinson.