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Honey is Sweet

A bit about today, and shmitta - 2008-07-06

I'm grateful for: a really good jigsaw puzzle; getting schoolwork done with S3; taking things a bit easier.

My endless refrain. I am tired. Tired, tired, tired, tired. I actually went to bed (tried to sleep) last night before midnight. I woke up before eight a.m., so I didn't actually make any progress on my sleep debt. I did some schoolwork with S3, answered email, did some work on a community forum, entered receipts, finished a jigsaw puzzle with the kids, had too many phone calls. I ate pretty well actually. I don't think I mentioned - when I was at the chiropracter I stood on the scale, and discovered I now weigh about as much as I did when I made aliyah four years ago. I gained back every almost every gram (I lost about thirty pounds in making aliyah). That's pretty depressing. And I still don't have my exercise bike back yet.

There was a telephone meeting tonight, but I didn't call to join it. And I've figured out (don't know if I've written this already) that I need to not talk to my sister whenever she is visiting mother. I just can't. She's back at her home now, so maybe ina couple of days I'll try it. I can leave that up to Hashem, thank goodness.

l-empress a few days ago suggested I write a bit about the shmitta year. It sometimes takes time for me to get to things. And I'm not very good at writing or explaining sometimes, but here goes.

It is part of Jewish law that every seventh year the land is supposed to be left to lie fallow. That means that it is not cultivated in any way. At least, that is the theory. In practice, not so much, but being Jewish most people don't just ignore the law - they come up with loopholes and work-arounds. But anyway...

The shmitta years (or shmita or shmitah, pronounced SHMEE-tah) are for the land to rest, just like people are supposed to rest on the seventh day. It's a little complicated for instance in that you can harvest things that were planted before the shmitta year starts - like potatoes that are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall (after the Jewish new year which occurs most often in September). So during the shmitta year you can have new potatoes, it is the following year that you get no new potatoes to eat. Fruit trees are another example - you can harvest the fruit during the shmittah year as long as it got it's start before Rosh haShana. Otherwise it is pretty straightforward. No planting, watering, fertilizing, pruning or harvesting during the shmitta year.

People can go out into the fields and grab whatever might be there - oranges that have fallen off the tree maybe, or volunteer peppers - the rule is that you can take only enough for three days, so it's not 'harvesting.' Anyone can pick up whatever they find in the fields - if you own an orchard you cannot legally stop anyone from going in and picking up fresh fallen fruit. Although good manners requires that if you go into someone else's fields you ask their permission, or the permission of whoever is responsible for managing the fields during the shmitta years.

You CAN water multi-year crops to keep them from dying. Asparagus and fruit trees are both good examples. Even though you can't take anything from the plants during the shmitta year, you are allowed to give them water to allow them to survive through until a time when you can reap from them.

Sometimes people will extend this to flowers, I don't know the halacha on this. I will admit I am watering my roses and geraniums, but only a minimum amount to keep them from getting sick or dying. Next year, ... next year, ... I keep telling myself. I once was an avid gardener, but lack of time and being disabled have pretty much killed that. I'd like to be able to do it again, working in the soil and bringing up plants is good for the soul. My soul at least.

You aren't supposed to water lawns or anything else that is unnecessary. Theoretically that means that every seven years the weeds take over, or everything dies here. But it doesn't work like that.

Anyone who is not Jewish is not by definition bound by halacha, Jewish law. So Arabs and Xtians continue to work the land during shmitta. Many Jewish farmers 'sell' their land to a non-Jew for the year, which they then either work for the 'benefit' of the non-Jew, or else allow the other to work it. At the end of the shmitta year the land is returned to the Jewish owner, kind of like selling off chametz for Pesach.

The law doesn't apply to breeding or grazing animals, or anything not directly grown in the land. So if you could set up greenhouses and have your plants in pots that didn't touch the ground, you could then plant, and harvest, and whatever you wanted with them.

Our moshav is an agricultural moshav which mostly observes the laws of shmitta, so most of the fields around here are 'resting.' Nothing is planted, whatever comes up naturally comes up, and on several occasional TH has gone out to this field or that to pick up melons, or peppers, or oranges. Our rabbi is quite stringent, which means that even though we needed to plant some grass or put down sod or something to prevent further erosion around our new sewer pipe, he said nothing doing - during the shmitta year. We covered it with wood panels and say to ourselves 'next year, ... next year, ...'

There are (of course) both farmers and city-folk who simply ignore the whole thing and carry on as usual. I can't speak for the city folk (and their lawns) or the suburban types (and their yards), but among the farmers people who ignore the laws of shmitta are pretty rare - you can always find some rabbi to figure out a way to let you do what you want to do - as long as you don't mind shopping rabbis.

Given our current water crisis, I would think that the lawn and yard people would at least think twice before violating shmitta - but then I'd probably be wrong. It constantly amazes me people's ability to close their eyes to whatever doesn't suit them. I know it's a flaw in me that I keep being amazed - it's not like it's anything new, is it?

Oh, and we can harvest food to feed our goats. Fortunately goats can eat just about anything, so TH goes out and cuts whatever weeds or grass are growing someplace convenient for days when we can't let the goats out to graze (because they keep escaping, usually). Our neighbour asked us to feed our goats some of her grapevines. They need pruning, and since she can't prune during shmitta, she thought the goats could do the job for her. Unfortunately, you can't direct goats to eat this bit of grapevine and not that, so nothing came of it.

I can't say much about where it comes from, the biblical injunction. It's one of those things I knew chapter and verse once upon a time, but time and use have reduced it to a simple 'I know I'm not supposed to do this, and it's okay to do that,' level of understanding.

Now it's almost 1am, and I just really need to sleep. Good night.

I'm not listening to anything right now.

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Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
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