Behar begins with the laws of Shemittah, the Sabbatical Year. Just as Sabbath, the day rest, follows six days of work, Shemittah, a year of respite for the land, follows six years of farming. Every seventh year, fields and vineyards in the land of Israel must lie fallow, with any crops that grow left available to man and beast.
Lest the farmer wonder what he will eat during the Shemittah year, God promises, “I will command My blessing to you in the sixth year, and [the land] shall produce crops for three years. And you shall plant in the eighth year, and you shall eat from the old grain until the ninth year, until its crop comes in …” The practice of Shemittah thus stands as a dramatic demonstration of faith and trust in God.
Shemittah also cancels all standard loans; the lender must relinquish any money owed to him. Centuries ago the great Sage Hillel, observing a reluctance to lend money on this account, instituted a document known as prozbol, through which a lender gives power of attorney to the court and gains immunity from annulment of his loan. Prozbol is still practiced today.
Like the Counting of the Omer,[1] Shemittah follows seven cycles of seven years each– forty-nine years in all. The fiftieth year is called Yovel (Jubilee), another name for shofar; a shofar is blown to mark the special status of this year. Like Shemittah, Yovel is a time when fields like fallow and loans are annulled; it is also a time to “proclaim liberty in the land to all its residents”: subject to certain qualifications, servants are freed and fields [in the land of Israel] revert to their ancestral owners. “The land shall not be sold with finality,” declares the Torah, “for the land is Mine.” By adhering to the Torah’s regulations, we affirm that we are “sojourners and settlers” – but not masters – of the Land.
While Yovel is not in effect today, Shemittah observance is widely practiced by farmers in the modern State of Israel. Others utilize a legal exemption, selling the field to a non-Jew for the year.
The Parsha also discusses various regulations for real estate transactions in the Land of Israel; prohibitions against lending or borrowing with interest and overcharging or underpaying in a business transaction; and the obligation to help our fellow man achieve financial stability.
[1] See last week, Parshas Emor
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