Shmita: 5712

Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard and gather in the fruit thereof;

But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy "vineyard.

--Leviticus 25:3-4

When the kingdom of Israel was governed by the Law, farmers scrupulously deserted their fields at the end of each six-year period. Throughout the sabbatical year, called shmita, the whole land lay fallow. The ancient Jews ate only meat and the grain they had stored, trusting in the Lord's bounty to see them through their man-made drought.

The year 1951 (by Hebrew count 5712) was the first shmita to come round after Israel gained its independence. But with a partly Socialist government and a farming population that is generally far from Orthodox in its religious views, Israel's modern Orthodox rabbinate was hard put to observe the Law. To avoid flouting it openly, the rabbis technically "sold" the entire territory of Israel to an obliging Arab named Mahmoud. Mahmoud gave the rabbis power of attorney, which enabled them to "sell"the state back to themselves, at the close of the sabbatical year.

This device satisfied some Orthodox Jews, but not the strictly observant. In a handful of Orthodox settlements, hungry farmers stoically watched their idle fields and the fruit rotting on their trees. To vary their meat diet, some Orthodox city dwellers furtively bought apples and tomatoes from Arab hawkers, determined not to purchase produce grown by Jews.

Last week the shmita was over. Ten thousand pilgrims, most of them newly arrived immigrants from the Middle East, marched to the top of Mt. Zion, where they celebrated the end of the seventh year--the ceremony of Hakhel--for the first time since King Agrippa presided over the rites in 42 A.D. This year, since none of the Israeli government leaders is strictly Orthodox, the head of the state was represented by Jerusalem's chief cantor, who read the Torah from the top of a truck. As he finished, old men blew on the double ram's-horn. Pilgrims wearing rich prayer shawls cried out in jubilation, dancing and clapping their hands to the jangling of tambourines.

The next morning Orthodox farmers went out to the land once more to plow their weed-choked fields and prune the tangled vines. There were relatively few of them who had made the sacrifice which the Law called for. Israeli government statisticians estimated the total loss in produce at less than -L-30,000 ($84,000).

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