If you are lucky enough to be in Israel this year, you will notice a few new signs displayed by fruit and vegetable vendors. Some notify consumers that the produce was grown by non-Jews. Others include Hebrew phrases like heter mechira or otzar beit din. The reason for these proclamations is that this year, according to the Hebrew calendar, is the sabbatical year – shmittah.
The concept of a year of rest for the land appears in Leviticus, where God says, “I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years” (Leviticus 25:21). These extraordinary words of divine providence inspired generations of Jews in exile, who dreamed of one day returning to Israel. And by the end of the 19th century, the theoretical became practical: after a 2,000-year hiatus, Jewish farmers were once again growing crops in Israel.
The first shmittah of the modern era occurred in 1889, and Jewish farmers quickly turned to rabbinic authorities to learn how to deal with the issue. Many wondered how they could cease working the land for a whole year? They expressed in writing to the rabbis that if they did so, the few buyers of their goods would turn to others, and their loss will devastate the fragile new economy of the land.
Among the many rabbis who addressed the problem was the great sage Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno. The solution he suggested was to sell the land to a non-Jew, with the intention of buying it back after the shmittah year concluded. Technically, then, the Jewish farmers would not own the land for the year, and work and production could continue. But not all rabbis were comfortable with what came to be known as the heter mechir (literally “sale permit”).
In 1909, as another shmittah approached, a new significant rabbi got involved in the issue. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, who would later become the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, approved the heter mechira and even encouraged farmers to sign the documents that would officially transfer the land out of Jewish hands.
But the zealots of the Old Yishuv (the Jewish community of Israel that predated the Zionist aliyah) passionately rejected Rabbi Kook’s position. The most vigorous attack came from Rabbi Yaakov Dovid Wilovsky, recognized throughout the world as a great scholar after he published his annotations on the Jerusalem Talmud. Rabbi Wilovsky’s scholarship, coupled with his fiery personality, helped convince the Union of Orthodox Rabbis to elect him chief rabbi of the Russian-American congregations in Chicago in 1909.
But Rabbi Wilovsky did not last long in the Windy City. He tried very hard to fight the dishonesty and corruption in the kosher meat industry, but did not succeed. Within a year he found a new home in the land of Israel. And when he heard of Rabbi Kook’s promotion of heter mechira, Rabbi Wilovsky immediately went on the attack, noting that, historically, most rabbinic authorities never approved of the concept.
Predictably, the farmers who were attempting to work the land and produce during the shmittah year by implementing heter mechira, were upset at Rabbi Wilovsky and the Old Yishuv. They claimed that their lack of appreciation for people who were actually working for a living guided them to their position. They alleged that the only thing the Old Yishuv was interested in was fundraising opportunities. The farmers even tried to turn the tables, arguing that since members of the Old Yishuv were purchasing produce from Arab farmers they were, in the words of the Jewish farmers, “supporting the ones who are afflicting us in our ancestral land.”
The debate between rabbis Wilovsky and Kook was fierce and bitter, and the residual effects of that tension can still be felt over a century later. As you enjoy the fruit of the Promised Land, it’s worth being mindful of the challenges of the past that have shaped our present.
Rabbi Yirmiya Milevsky is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Torah in Toronto.