Secondly, whereas Jewish slaves were freed in their seventh year of service (Deuteronomy 15:12)-a seven-year cycle that, depending upon one’s interpretation, may have operated either independently of or as a component of the seven-year shmita cycle-in a yovel year, all slaves, Jewish and not, and regardless of years of service, were to be freed (Leviticus 25:10). The effect was that Tu B’Shvat was transformed from a tax day to an Earth Day. Tu B’Shvat as we know it today is a refinement of the 16th-century kabbalist reinvention. In the mid-1500s, kabbalists in the Galilean city of Tsfat revived Tu B’Shvat observance and, inspired by Tu B’Shvat’s earthy roots, reinvented the holiday as one celebrating trees and nature as manifestations of God’s wonders and the abundance that God provided. After Jewish sovereignty was lost over the Jewish homeland (what largely constitutes modern-day Israel) in the year 70, Tu B’Shvat fell into disuse. While Tu B’Shvat always was connected to both trees and the land, it originally was a tax holiday-the day that determined in which year a tree’s fruit would be tithed. A non-biblical holiday, Tu B’Shvat became the New Year for Trees (one of five New Year days described in the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 1:1)) during Judaism’s Second Temple era, roughly the 500-year period before Christian tradition dates the birth of Jesus. On first blush, the Jewish environmental movement’s embrace of shmita echoes the reinvention of Tu B’Shvat, the modern-day equivalent of a Jewish Earth Day. The reembracing of shmita is proving to be one example of how religious practice changes in response to modern environmental problems. (See Appendix A for a list of seven Jewish environmental initiatives that are leading the shmita revolution).
However, that began to change over the last seven-year shmita cycle as the Jewish environmental movement has rediscovered shmita, promoted it as a core concept of Judaism, and led activities in North America, Europe and Israel that have reintroduced shmita to world Jewry. Social justice and environmental components of the biblical laws have been pushed aside, widely through rabbinic-sanctioned exceptions and loopholes.
The result is that in common practice, shmita has been observed largely only in Israel, and even then only by those within Judaism’s Orthodox sects. But over the past 2000 years of Jewish history, biblical commandments to forgive debts and let the land lie fallow during shmita have been reinterpreted through rabbinic workarounds. Because the laws of shmita are delineated in the five books of Moses, the Torah in the Hebrew Bible-the basis of Jewish law-shmita is as Jewish a practice as other biblical edicts, including abiding by kosher dietary rules and observing Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath. Shmita (alternatively spelled shemitah, shemitta, or shmitah)-the sabbatical year, or seventh (sheviit) year-is a biblical prescription for and inoculation against environmental and social problems, including habitat destruction, hunger, overwork, soil-nutrient loss, unabated growth, wealth gaps, and the disconnects between people and their food and people and the Earth. This article also describes shmita as delineated in the Torah and through the rabbinic canon of halacha (Jewish law), and explains shmita practice from biblical times to the present day. Their work has brought shmita from an obscure law dealt with mainly by Israel’s Orthodox to a new Jewish ethos being discussed across the United States, Europe, Israel, and even on the floor of Knesset, Israel’s parliament. They see shmita as a core Jewish value-one that, like Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, has the power to transform society. Primary research was conducted through key-stakeholder interviews with leading American and Israeli Jewish environmentalists and thought leaders. Historically rooted in agriculture, modern Jewish environmentalists are seizing upon the long-ignored environmental and social justice (tikkun olam) aspects of shmita as originally described in the five books of Moses, the Torah in the Hebrew Bible, the basis of Jewish law. Jewish observance of shmita (alternatively spelled shemitah)-the sabbatical year, or seventh (sheviit) year-is changing.
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