Jubilee years and Shmita (Sabbatical) years in Israel

Factual Questions
1

Sorry for posting this on Shabbes, but I have the time to post now, and read your answers later…

I was wondering about the practice of Jubilee, or a special Sabbatical year, in modern Israel. When reading in the Hebrew Bible about the Sabbatical years and the Jubilee years, I always thought that the Sabbatical years made sense from a purely utilitarian viewpoint, too: with the ancient knowledge of agriculture, a period of dormancy to replenish the soil was necessary for continued fertility. (The middle Ages used the three-plot-method similar to this without religious reasons).

But the Jubilee year concept goes far beyond that: not only do the fields lie fallow, but all debts are cancelled, slaves set free and so on. It’s truely a wonderful illustration of the idea of Shabbes as a glimpse of the world God wants humans to have, a better one. a liberating idea.

But I wondered how this worked on a practical scale in a real. property-based society - Israel had kings and cities and social structures, not communes like modern-day Kibbuzim.

The wikipedia Article makes it sound as if not only the counting itself is disputed - the 49th or the 50th year? - but also whether it actually did ever happen or was maybe added after the time.

The article on the Sabbatyears notes that they are obeyed by modern Israel (and contrary to the humorus story by Ephraim Kishon I read years ago), but that the Jubilee was not observed. The reason given

sounds like a thin pretext to weasel out of it to me.

So, if modern Israel is observing Shmita, shouldn’t they also observe Yovel? Shouldn’t they find a way to decide - as they probably had to do with a bunch of other things from tradition when they were setting up a real working country again after the diaspora - on the counting? Is the real reason for the non-observance that cancelling all debts would be impossible to do in a modern state that trades with other non-jewish nations? Though apparently they are provisions in the codes for that, with the debt getting smaller the closer Jubilee approaches. Was it the whole palestinian problem, of giving land back to them, that prevented it?

I think it sounds like a wonderful idea; I can guess that people initially would balk at it being impossible to overturn a big part of the foundation of modern society with property rights; but shouldn’t it be tried out nevertheless?
After all, the Israelis managed to make Kibbuzim work, after the examples with forced communes in the Soviet Union were failures, and showed everybody that idealism and belief in the human nature isn’t only money-grubbing aren’t wishful thinking only.

What do the experts on Hebrew Bible, on Jewish law say and think? Could it work today? Should it? Why not? Will it come a bit later, once the problems have been solved?

2

I think this sounds like a GD question.

Right now, I’m blanking out. It’s been a long day. maybe in the morning I’ll be able to say something coherent.

If you want to ask a real rabbi, askmoses.com has a live chat feature.

3

To be clear: Debts were also canceled in the sabbatical year as well as in the Jubilee year.

There is a question of when the Jubilee year was celebrated and if it still applies. It would be hard to give land back to the original owners who received it from lot when the Jews first settled the land with Joshua since there is no longer any record of the original land holders. We don’t even know if the Jubilee is celebrated in the 50th year or the 49th year (which would mean two straight years of the land lying fallow).

And, if there is no Jubilee year, is Shmita still followed? Since there was a question of whether the sabbatical year still applied, the Rabbis created a Rabbinic Shmita year commandment. We celebrate Shmita now due to Rabbinic law.

So, if you cannot return land to the original owner in the Jubilee year, what else is there? There is a requirement to free slaves, but slaves were supposed to be freed after seven years of service. Besides, the slavery in ancient Israel was quite different from that 18th century Southern U.S. institution. In Israel, a runaway slave couldn’t be claimed by his owner. Slaves could also sue their owner for mistreatment.

The celebration of Shimta and the Jubilee might have seemed like great ideas, but never worked out too well in practice. For example, people couldn’t get loans because the person giving the loan worried about his debt being canceled. This caused hardship since people couldn’t get the money they needed to do business dealings. Therefore, the Rabbis worked out a way to move private debt (debt that could be canceled during the sabbatical year) to the public sphere. During times of food scarcity, farmland was sold to non-Jews temporarily “in trust” for the Sabbatical year in order to allow the farmer to grow and sell crops.

The Sabbatical Year is still followed, but mainly due to Rabbinic decree (since we don’t know if the Torah law still applies). The Jubilee year is pretty meaningless without knowing who the original land owners were, and since slavery no longer exists, it’s kind of difficult to free slaves.