Judith Antonelli on Shemitta - "The Land's Sabbath"

In her masterpiece, In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah, Judith Antonelli provides an historical and cultural context for the Biblical narratives and laws, sourced in the Rabbinic textual tradition, with a pervasive concern for humanism and ecology. Declaring "Mother Nature" to be the theme of the Tora portions of Behar and Behuqothai, Antonelli describes the relationship between the seven-year cycle of land use and rest, and the seven-day cycle of human activity and rest:

When you come to the Land that I am giving you, the Land must rest in a Sabbath to Hashem. Six years you will plant your field, and six years you will prune your vineyard and gather her crops. In the seventh year there will be a Shabbat Shabbaton for the Land, a Sabbath of Hashem. (Lev. 25:2-4)

I will command My blessing to you in the sixth year, and the Land will produce crops for three years. You will plant in the eighth year but will eat from the old crops until the ninth year. (Lev. 25:21-22)

Every seventh year the Land had to have a Sabbath, just as every seventh day the Jews had to have a Sabbath. Furthermore, enough food would be produced in the sixth year to last until the ninth year, just as the double portion of manna given in the wilderness on the sixth day lasted through the Sabbath.

Just as refraining from working at our jobs on the Sabbath requires faith that God will provide enough income for us, so too the observance of Shmitah requires faith that God will provide enough food. On a purely physical level, Shmitah allows the land to regenerate itself by lying fallow for a year; on a spiritual level, Shmitah affirms that the land belongs to God and may not be subjected to unlimited human exploitation. Similarly, the Sabbath allows us to regenerate ourselves by "lying fallow" for a day, and affirms that our creative endeavors also ultimately belong to God.

That the Jews found it difficult to have such faith is indicated in Leviticus 26:34-35. Because Shmitah was not observed, the Jews were exiled. Only through desolation was the Land of Israel given the rest it needed. The seventy years off Babylonian exile are said to correspond to the seventy Sabbatical Years that the Jews neglected to observe (Rashi). The term "Shabbat Shabbaton," which is also used to describe Yom Kippur (Lev. 16:31; 23:32), implies a relationship between Shmitah and atonement.