Torah Talk for Your Shabbos Table “…when you come into the land that I am giving you, the land shall rest a Sabbath for HaShem.” (Leviticus 25:2) This parsha elaborates on the laws of Shemitta, the sabbatical year that occurs every seven years when the land is to be left fallow and unworked. Rashi famously quotes the Toras Kohanim’s question, “What is the purpose of juxtaposing Shemitta and Sinai?” They answer, just as all the laws of Shemitta were given at Har Sinai, so, too, were all the details of all the mitzvos given at this time. This gives rise to the question why Shemitta was chosen as the mitzvah used for this comparison and not any of the other mitzvos that were taught earlier or later. Another curious thing is that the Torah begins by saying, “When you come into the land I am giving you, [then] the land will have its rest. That’s not what happened though, because Shemitta is the seventh year. It should therefore have said, “When you come into the land, you shall work for six years, and in the seventh year the land shall have its rest.” What is the Torah telling us by this seemingly out of order directive? Perhaps the Torah is teaching us an amazing insight into the mechanics of the world. It is common for people to look at maser or tzedaka as the price they have to pay for earning money. Shemitta, too, is the price we have to pay for getting to work the land for six years. We can have it as long as we give G-d His share, the seventh year. This is quite untrue. The Torah here teaches us that when you come into Eretz Yisrael, [the land that HaShem “is giving” us, because it’s not a one-time thing but an ongoing process to merit having the land,] you shall let it rest. Why? Because that is the focus of going into the land. Not to eat its fruits, but to fulfill its mitzvos. Therefore the Torah says, “When you come in, the land will have its rest, a rest for G-d.” The purpose is to fulfill this mitzvah. How do you do it? First you work for six years, and in the seventh year you desist. It’s not that you get to work six years if you let it rest on the seventh, but on the contrary, in order to properly perform the Shemitta year, you must work for six years. This is why Shemitta is singled out to be juxtaposed to Sinai. It teaches us that the mitzvos are our priority and the prosperity is secondary. In other words, our primary goal in life should be to fulfill all the mitzvos in the Torah not because they are a means for us to merit a good, pleasant, successful life, but on the contrary, we live our lives in order to be able to fulfill the mitzvos
Posted on: Thu, 08 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000
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