This is the shmitah year – the year of letting go, in which we leave our fields fallow and release debts. In this series we will look at shmitah-related texts and react to them, seeing what they inspire in us.

Session 1 Today

Today we look at the Torah texts about the shmitah or sabbatical year, and the additional texts about the jubilee or 50th year. What does this system of mitzvot suggest to us as a planetary ethical system and as a kind of spiritual direction?

Session 2 (April 27th)

In this session we will look at Rabbi Hillel’s prozbul – a legal device that allows some debts to survive the shmitah year. What’s behind this? What ideas might we draw from this about working with shmitah values in a complicated world full of compromise?

Session 3 (June 22nd)

In this session we will look at shmitah from a perspective of land justice and land transition. Does the land itself have a voice that needs to be part of conversations about land control and ownership? Can we think about land differently in a culture in which land is property? How might new thinking affect us?