03/10/2021
Shavua tov! I would like to share with you a dvar torah that I presented this shabbat about the Torah portion Genesis - בראשית.
As I was packing for my trip to America a little over a week ago I received a call from a close family friend in Jerusalem saying she had made a vegetable dish that my parents especially liked and that she froze some for me to take with me to bring them. We enjoyed it over chag and after it was over, we went to throw away the leftovers and then it dawned on me – I did know where these vegetables were grown and when they were harvested. Now in an ordinary year this would not matter. However, this year is the shmita year so things are a bit different. While I asked this question aloud (mostly to myself) in the kitchen, my mother looked at me, and from her facial expression I could tell she had no clue where and when these greens were from. She, like me, like most of us, don’t usually seek out where our food comes from. However, for those of us vegetable-eaters living in Israel this year, we do not have this luxury.
Shmita is one of the מצוות התלויות בארץ, approximately 26 commandments which only apply when physically located in the Land of Israel. These are mostly made up of laws applying to the beit makidash and Sanhedrin, laws applying to kings and governments, as well as in times of war and dealing with foreign countries. And laws pertaining to agriculture, such as the tithes and other crops which are donated, not eating fruit from trees under four years of age, and shmita – the sabbatical year.
I’m not going to get into all of the nitty-gritty details of shmita, but for those of us in Israel during this year, and even in the year after, we need to be extra careful when buying vegetables. Almost all produce in Israel will either have a sign or have written on the packaging if the item was harvested during the shmita year, and if so then how it was grown: either in a greenhouse (and not in the ground or outside), in the field belonging to non-Jews, imported from outside of Israel, or by heter mechira or otzar beit din. Heter mechira is a way of selling the Jewish-owned land to non-Jews, originally proposed by Rav Kook, but not accepted by everyone. Otzar Beit Din is a system where the price of the produce that the buyer pays covers for the cost of the farmers’ labor, but the produce itself is technically free.
Once brought into the house, leftovers of produce grown on Jewish land (not heter mechira) which are not going to be consumed must be made public, so that anyone who would want to partake of them could. This way the holy crops of the kedushat shvi’it are not wasted.
The members of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion have set up a neat way to do this: next to all of the trash and recycling bins throughout the kibbutz, they set up large wooden boxes for people to put their shvi’it produce in. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t help but think how they are just religious compost bins!
Anyway, back to the Israeli greens that I brought to America. Thankfully, it turns out they were harvested before Rosh Hashana so I did not have to try to figure out what to do in America with holy Israeli vegetables! However, it made me realize the privilege I have of living in Eretz Yisrael and it reminded me why I decided to make Aliyah. For me, my Zionism directly correlates to being a religious Jew. Living in the land where the Tanach actually took place, where our forefathers actually walked, amazes me anew every day, so much to the point that I have made a career out of sharing it with others!
The whole Israeli veggies ordeal got me thinking about why we have shmita. As we read in today’s parsha, G-d created man on the 6th day and then took the 7th day to rest. This is why we rest on shabatot, and similarly, every 7 years we leave the land to rest. But why, on earth, does the land need to rest?!
That brings me to my other passion, which will explain why I thought that the shvi’it containers were compost bins – I am a Jewish environmentalist. What does that mean? Just like how my Zionism stems from my deep connection to Judaism, so does my environmental awareness.
If G-d tells us that the earth needs to rest, clearly it needs to rest! In the second chapter of Breish*t that we read, G-d commanded us to “be fruitful and multiply, to fill the land and conquer it.” (now, we can talk about issues of overpopulation later…) From this we learn that humans basically run the world (though Beyonce would disagree). And once we are in control of the land, we are required לעובדה ולשומרה – to work it and to protect it. And this is why I believe that we as Jews are commanded to protect the environment. While I could go into a whole lecture about all of the ways we should change our lives to leave less of an ecological footprint behind us, I’m not really into forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. I’m not even a fan of forcing myself to do things that I don’t want. Which is why I like this notion of working and protecting, together. I understand this as needing to find a balance. For example, I really try to not to buy disposable plates and silverware and instead spend an extra couple of hours a week washing dishes. For me, this works. Another example: I would really love to keep a separate compost bin in my home instead of throwing out everything together. However, after a few months of trying, I realized it wasn’t working so well for me, so I stopped.
The lesson I learn from לעובדה ולשומרה is that each one of us needs to find our balance, the way that we each use the land to our benefit, but also equally protect it so that, … so that what? So that we can stop climate change? I think we might need to work a bit harder for that. But the least we can do is to our part. In Judaism this is called hishtadlut. In order for G-d to hopefully perform the miracle of stopping climate change one day, we need to our human hishtadlut, for, without this G-d will not be able to do his part.
In the beginning of this week’s parsha, G-d looks at all that he has created and proclaims that it is tov meod! However, at the end of the parsha, we are told that the world has become full of evil, which leads into next week’s parsha of Noach.
So, what can we take from this? In Bereish*t perek dalet, G-d calls out to Kain and asks where is Abel, your brother to which he responded “am I my brother’s keeper?” השומר אחי אנוכי? We learn from this that we need to watch out for our brothers and sisters, to take care for each other, for they are part of us. And I would like us to add Mother Nature to our protection. If we protected her as we protect our brothers and sisters and respect her along with our parents, perhaps our hishtadlut wouldn’t be so much of a challenge and we could all live in a better world together.
