BeHar - A Time that is Completely Shabbos

The theme of parshas Behar is the agricultural laws concerning the land of Israel. Essentially they require that the land be left fallow during the seventh and fiftieth years. Sowing and plowing are specifically prohibited. Trees are basically to be unattended. Any person can pick anything they want for themselves, family, or friend; however, there is to be no professional harvest.

The Chumash refers to this as a "Shabbos to Hashem". The idea is that just like a Jew refrains from work and engages in religious pursuits on every seventh day something similar is done on every seventh year. In addition just like there are holidays that are devoted to a specific theme and no professional work is done likewise there is the Jubilee which comes every fifty years. The simple understanding of the Chumash is that the Jubilee immediately follows a seventh year meaning that for two consecutive years the land is not worked. However the Talmud and many commentaries say that this is not necessarily the situation.

The Chumash anticipates the obvious question, "“What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?” (Leviticus 25:20). The answer is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will command His blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years. will command His blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years.

Various reasons are given for the Sabbatical. A person needs a long period of rest from time to time. In a year one accomplish things not possible in a shorter time. The land needs rest so as to keep producing. A person should see the world in its pristine state and get close to nature.

The Midrash Agada explains that when man sins the earth is struck for his sake as it says, "Cursed be the ground because of you, "By toil shall you eat of it All the days of your life", (Genesis 3:17). The Redak explains, "you will have to work the soil until you will be able, finally, to eat its produce, whereas up until now you did not have to toil in order to assure yourself of your food supply. All you had to do was to pluck the fruit from the trees in Gan Eden. When the Torah had spoken of Adam’s task in Gan Eden as to work it and protect it, the amount of physical work required to attend to that task was minimal. Now he would have to work intensively, as illustrated by the metaphor “you will eat your bread in the sweat of your brow”.

The idea is that with war, pestilence, and famine, man is in fact living in prehistory. The Sabbatical is one sixtieth of the Messianic era. It will be in a day that is entirely Shabbos that man will truly begin to live.

לע"נ  האמא מלכה בת חיים ז"ל נלב"ע טז ניסן תשנ"ח

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