וידבר ד' אל משה בהר סיני לאמר: דבר אל בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם כי תבאו אל הארץ אשר אני נתן לכם ושבתה הארץ שבת לד': (“And Ha-Shem spoke to Moshe at Mt Sinai to say: Speak to the bënei Yisra’él and you shall say to them, 'For you will come to the land which I am giving you, and the land will rest a shabbath for Ha-Shem”). So begins our parasha.
Rashi famously asks, following the midrash Torath Kohanim: מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני והלא כל המצות נאמרו מסיני אלא מה שמיטה נאמרו כללותי' ודקדוקי' מסיני אף כולן נאמרו כללותיהן ודקדוקיהן מסיני וגו' (“What has shëmitta to do with Mt Sinai? Were not all of the mitzvoth said from Sinai? Rather, just as the generalities and details of shëmitta were said from Sinai, so were the generalities and details of all of them said from Sinai....”). The point seems to be that just as all the details of shëmitta, which had no practical application until after the conquest of the Holy Land had been completed, were stated at Sinai, so, too, were all the details of those mitzvoth more immediately relevant to Israel in the desert enumerated there.
By juxtaposing shëmitta and Mt Sinai, then, the Torah appears to be establishing some equivalency or special link between the circumstances of shëmitta and the rest of Torah as a whole. Such a conclusion would appear to be bolstered a bit later in our parasha, after the discussion of the principles of shëmitta and yovél, the larger cycle of seven shëmittoth, where we read: ועשיתם את לקתי ואת משפטי תשמרו ועשיתם אתם ישבתם על הארץ לבטח: (“And you shall perform My laws [huqqothai] and My judgments [mishpatai] shall you preserve and perform them; and you will dwell upon the land in security”; ibid., 18).
Yet, the fact is that there are many mitzvoth dependent upon residence in the Holy Land or engagement in agriculture: ‘orla, tërumoth u-ma‘sëroth, leqet, shichëha, pé’a, and so on. Why did the Torah single out shëmitta?
The Spinker Rebbe, Rabbi Yitzhaq Eizik Weisz זצ"ל, was also bothered by this question, and offered the suggestion: בפשטות י"ל בטעם ע"פ המדרש דאמרה התורה איש פוני לכרמו איש פונה לזיתו תורה מה תהא עלי', וא"כ כל ימי השנה היו ישראל טרודים בעבודתם ובפרנסתם ולא הי' להם פנאי לעסוק בתורה אלא בשבתות ויו"ט וע"כ נתן השי"ת מצות השמטה שיהי' פנוים מעבודת השדה כדי שיהי' להם פנאי לעסוק בתורה כל השנה (“Simply, one may say concerning the reason for shëmitta according to the midrash, one man turns to his vineyard and another to his olive grove; what will become of Torah? And if so, all the days of the year Israel would be busy with their work and livelihood, and would have no free time to engage in Torah save on shabbath or yom tov; and therefore Ha-Shem gave the mitzva of shëmitta, so that they would be free from fieldwork in order that they would have time to engage in Torah the entire year....”; חקל יצחק, פרשתנו).
This, then, is the relationship between shëmitta and the rest of the Torah implied by its juxtaposition to Mt Sinai: The bënei Yisra’él, who had just spent the greater part of 40 years in what, in modern terms, we would consider a vast kollel, miraculously supported by the man and Miriam’s well, engaged in intensive Torah study, would one day enter the Holy Land, where they would implement what they had learnt. But learning also requires frequent review, lest one forget what one has learnt, and the drudgery of earning a living as a settled, agricultural people would ordinarily leave little time for such review. Thus, the shëmitta was established to provide a venue for continuing education, every seventh year.
C.
Another aspect of this relationship can be grasped by consideration of the famous Talmudic statement: "ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר" א"ר אבדימי בר חמא בר חסא מלמד שכפה הקב"ה עליהם ההר כגיגית ואמר להם אם אתם מקבלים את התורה מוטב אם לאו שם תהא קבורתכם (“‘And hey stationed themselves beneath the mountain’; said Rabbi Avdimi bar Hama bar Hasa, '[This] teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, imposed the mountain upon them like a barrel and said to them, "If you accept the Torah, it becomes good; and if not, there is you grave!"'”; שבת פ"ח.).
Tosafoth note that this is all the more remarkable because it occurred ואע"פ שכבר הקדימו נעשה לנשמע (“even though [Israel] had already placed na‘ase [‘we shall do’] before nishma‘ [‘we shall listen’]”; שם דה"מ שפה עליהם ), that is, they had already declared their full willingness to accept the Torah and observe the Torah before learning what was in it. Rashba resolves the apparent contradiction by suggesting that the na‘ase vë-nishma‘ concerned only the written Torah, and that it was the Oral Torah which required the measure of këfiya, of coercion.
If, as the Spinker Rebbe suggests, the actual purpose of shëmitta is to provide an occasion for intensive study and review once in seven years, it stands to reason that this would involve the Oral Torah and its principles of Talmudic logic, not simply rote memorization of the Humash. If we look again at our initial passage, I believe that an allusion to this appears, in that the gimatriya or numerical value of the words ואמרת אלהם (“and you will say to them”), 723, is equivalent to תורה בפיך (“Torah by means of your mouth”), a count made possible only by the slightly anomalous spelling of אלהם without a yud.
In the second passage quoted, the huqqoth, “decreed laws,” would appear to signify the written Torah, whilst the mishpatim, “judgments,” are those which require the exercise of judgment and reason in discerning and deriving them by means of the Thirteen Principles of Talmudic Logic enshrined in the Baraitha dë-Rabbi Yishma‘él which we recite each morning.
This brings to mind something said by the Bënei Yisaschar in the name of Rabbi Zusia of Anipol (עיי' דרושי ראש השנה שם). He considers the verse כי חק לישראל הוא משפט לאלקי יעקב (“For it is a hoq to Israel, a mishpat to Ya‘aqov’s G-d”; Psalms LXXXI, 5) that even the huqqoth, the “decreed laws,” are matters of judgment to G-d, whether or not we are given to understand them, and in that spirit, whenever there is a time of danger, אזי אומר השי"ת כיון שישראל מקיימין מצות חוקיות בלא טעם כן אושיע אותם בלא טעם מדה כנגד מדה (“then says Ha-Shem, Since Israel are upholding mitzvoth [as if they are] huqqoth, without having a reason, so shall I rescue them without having a reason, measure for measure”); that is, if we recognize and accept all of the halachoth bë-geder hoq, our passage seems to suggest, then Israel will dwell securely in the Holy Land, and the apparent, impending dangers will pass us by.
D.
I have numerous times in the past cited the famous observation of the Shëlah ha-qadosh that there is an intimate connection between the parashoth and the seasons in which they are read (עיי"ש פרשת וישב). This is no less true of our parasha, which is being read during the sëfirath ha-‘omer.
The similarity of the seven times seven count of years in the shëmitta and yovél cycle to the seven “weeks” of seven days each which culminate in Shavu‘oth, the holiday which marks Mattan Torah, is obvious. Last week we discussed the intimate interrelationship between Torah and the earning of an agricultural livelihood, as typified by the second paragraph of the Shëma‘: והי' אם שמע תשמעו אל מצותי כו' ונתתי מטר ארצכם בעתו יורה ומלקוש: ואספת את דגנך ותירושך ויצהרך: (“And it will be, if hearkening you will listen to My mitzvoth.... And I shall give your land’s rain at its time, the early and the late. And you will gather your grain and your wine and your oil”; Deuteronomy XI, 13-15).
Here, too, the Torah reveals another facet of this same intimate interrelationship, that true security in the Holy Land and a bountiful harvest are entirely dependent upon the farmers’, and all of Israel’s, qëvi‘ath ‘ittim la-Torah, establishing fixed times for Torah study and review, on shabbath and yom tov, to be sure, but also to make provision to set aside the intense efforts expended in earning a livelihood, to devote some time to eternal things.
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