Comments on It's the Sabbatical Year!

I've only a few months left to consolidate all my credit card debt in an Israeli bank!

Wow, the 5678th anniversary, that is old!

We went to CroatiaFest at Seattle Center yesterday and thought that had some nice history. Who knew all the cool art, worktools, photos and photos galore, maps, fishing fishing and more 1st person fishing accounts. They were all proudly displayed 4-H style from the Anacortes, Bellingham, Roslyn, Tacoma and surrounding area Croatian communities. So much cool cool stuff and the place was packed with song, water and women. I had a blast (read:humbled) even though Croatians are distant ancestral relatives of mine.

Thanks Eli, for digging up a memento of your past, but seriously, how can you call it a problem? Maybe you can turn it into a weekend folkcirlce dance at Sea Center next year. We'll play the Tamburitza so loud, all 5678 of us who show up, that'll we'll strum and strum til we blow the fricken EMP all the way over into the next parking lot.

I love Eli Sanders!!

I want to know what Issur thinks about this.

hey jews-

your religion is anachronistic!

love, a post-monotheist.

@4 Issur is busy planning his sabbatical and can't post today.

Issur is still trying to find where the 'hip' Jews go to Temple.

Issur has inspired me to dress as Sacha Cohen this year for Halloween. And I'm going to bring my acoustic and play the Hannukhah Mariuanica song on the sidewalk. I hope I can rig a legal bicycle rack for the geetar to make it up to Wedgewood (don't want to play favorites, but I like that synagogue for some reason).

Miss Erica, do you have time in that bizzywizzy head of yours, to suggest an eco-touring-bike-carrier idea?

Superstitious nonsense.

The bible is quite specific on this one. But the main Israeli agribusinesses have dealt with it long ago. The productive land is held by impersonal (nominally non-Jewish) entities, at least for these 'quiet' years. So the problem is sort-of glossed over. The super hardliners are of course not amused. But nobody really cares about those noodniks.

Eli, this is no problem at all. We're Jews. We've been lawyering up to deal with G-d's law for 3,000 years now, and we're good at it.

LoL! Thanks guys. I believe it's true that if a Jew sells his land to goyim this year, then the Jew can still sell the harvest from the land and keep the money.

Halaka is very complicated, but if you study it well you will see the justice beneath the surface inconsistancies. Thank you Eli for this mention of our sacred duty as Jews. And yes I'm still looking for a hip temple for worship.

I have always thought that the sabbatical years (and to a sevenfold extent, the Jubilee) is a GREAT idea for a nation, primitive or not. The details can get worked out by Gitai and the lawyers, as usual... it's the spirit of rest and "re-set" that I find so refreshing. (Not that the sabbatical years have been really celebrated in centuries, given wars, foreign occupations, etc etc etc... Were they ever truly celebrated? I don't know, I'd have to hit the books... Still! Good idea! Should go up in Good News Monday!)

I think all American passport holders in Israel and Palestine should come home for the Year that the land is to be fallow.

Makes sense to me.

(they might actually solve something while we're gone, too)

Okay, I can see the usefulness of taking one day off out of every seven, but a whole sabbatical year? Isn't that... inconvenient?

Life is inconvenient, @15. Religion doubly so. The question then becomes ... how observant should one be?

I can't recall how many religious holidays exist in the Roman Catholic or Anglican/Episcopal calendar, but I think there are a lot more than we commonly observe.

#9 -- this shmitta year is not based on superstition but on common sense. It rests the land and the people tending it. And as Gitai pointed out, the beauty of Torah is that there are many loopholes. We don't do dogma especially well.

Torah is a beautiful tapestry with many threads. It isn't necessary to be dogmatic. Why should Jews forgive their debtors this year or any year? As for resting the land, I can't see any harm is renting the land to goyim this year and allowing them to do the work while we rest!