The State of Israel Supports the Jewish Farmers on this last 7th Shmittah Year before the Messianic Year of Jubilee
The Shmittah Year, the 7th year of the Sabbatical Week of years started on September 24, 2014 (Rosh Hashanah 2014) and will end on September 13, 2015 (Rosh Hashanah 2015).
The current Jubilee cycle started after the destruction of the Holy Temple called King Herod’s Temple in the year of 68-69 CE. The first year of the seven-year Sabbatical cycle called the “Week of years” started again as Jewish religious life recycled again at that time. This 7th year is called the Shmittah Year at upon that agricultural year the land remains “fallow” or not cultivated and open to for all people to glean the produce from the land. This is predominately an agricultural cycle.
The year following the destruction of the second Holy Temple (3829 from creation, equivalent to 68–69 CE) was the first year of the seven-year Sabbatical cycle. We continue counting sevens from then.
Exodus 23:10, 11
“Six years shall you sow your land and gather in its produce. But in the seventh year, you shall let it go and abandon it, and the needy of your people shall eat, and the wildlife of the field shall eat what is left; so shall you do to your vineyard and your olive grove.”
Leviticus 25:1-7:
“And the L-rd spoke unto Moses in the Mount Sinai, saying: Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the produce thereof. But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto the LORD; thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
That which groweth of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. And the sabbath-produce of the land shall be for food for you: for thee, and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant and for the settler by thy side that sojourn with thee; and for thy cattle, and for the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be for food.”
It was in the 6th year of the Seven Year Sabbatical Week of Years that the beginning of this last seven year cycle that the Jewish people began preparing for the soon coming or the revealing of the Maschiach ben Dovid as Melekh HaMashiach (King Messiah). The Jewish people were beginning their preparation in anticipation of a new era of peace and social justice. Yet the 70 Gentile nations of the earth, plus most Christians were clueless. Even so, it is here and only HaShem, the G-d of Israel knows when the new “Era of the Messiah” will begin.
As reported in the “Breaking Israel News” on September 24, 2014, we read:
Breaking Israel News – “In the waning months of the Jewish calendar year (the Jewish new year falls in September), Israel’s Knesset has approved a budget for the upcoming agricultural sabbatical year, or shmita. On June 1, the Knesset authorized a NIS 100 million ($28.8 million) investment in the religiously significant period.”
As insignificant as this news appeared, it was huge news. The reason for the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and the city of Jerusalem in 586 BCE was because of one reason, the Jewish people and the Lost 10 Tribes of the House of Israel who were now in exile over in Khurasan near the Caspian and the Black Seas, refused to keep the “Shmittah Year” and allow the Holy Land of Israel to rejuvenate as it remained uncultivated every 7th year for 10 Jubilee cycles or 70 Shmittah years. So the Jewish people remained in exile for 70 years until they were redeemed by King Cyrus and the Persians. And would you believe that these Persians were the Lost Ten Tribes of the House of Israel and their ruler, Cyrus the Great and Gobryas the military general were predominately from the House of Gad.”
This time the State of Israel, even as a secular state is supporting and promoting the halakhic principles of Torah law and providing financial support to the Jewish farmers in the Land of Israel.
Fruit and Vegetable Market in Israel
The NIS 100 million was dedicated by the State of Israel to help the farmers and other agrarian enterprises plus also the modern non-agrarian society who are dependent upon the fresh produce to sustain their lives.
According to the biblical mandates, the agricultural land including the orchards must be left “fallow” every 7 years. Those fields and trees that produced fruits, grains vegetables for this year were allow to grow from the seeds that naturally sprouted in the soil and the fruit that is naturally grown from untrimmed and cultivated trees. These fields and groves are all open season for anyone to pick and use for their own families while the fields are left unguarded.
It should also be known that vegetable and fruit produce that is grown in a raised bed greenhouse or grown hydroponically are considered by Jewish halakhic law to be disconnected from the earth and not subject to the laws of shmittah.
Over the last few decades the State of Israel has been supporting the halakhic laws of shmittah. This past year, the Israeli government split the Shmittah program into various projects that included the following:
- NIS 45 million would subsidize farmers who abandon their farms temporarily in honor of the shmittah year,
- NIS 20 million will support those who do not harvest, but do minimally maintain their orchards as permitted by Jewish law.
- NIS 11.5 million would fund educational initiatives to train farmers in the laws of shmittah.
- NIS 11 million was used to form public produce treasuries, called otzar beit din, which permit the farmer to gather and distribute produce which has grown spontaneously for the benefit of the entire community,
- NIS 5 million went towards hydroponics and non-Jewish greenhouses, both of which fall outside the restrictions of shmittah.
- NIS 2 million each would be allocated for the distribution of information pamphlets to the public and the post- shmittah ceremony at the Western Wall, called hakhel, or gathering, in remembrance of the biblical tradition in Deuteronomy (31:10).
This is not the first time the Israeli government has supported the biblical mandates of shmittah halakhic law. This current 2014-2015 year budget was noted to be four times larger than the government subsidies of the 7th year of the Sabbatical Week of Years in 2000-2001, NIS 3 million less than the last shmittah year of 2007-2008. This current shmittah year of 2014-2015 the budget was split and distributed between the various ministries of the Chief Rabbinate. Wherever there is money, there can be shifts in power, greed, and control, and these human emotions are no different within Jewish rabbinate politics. Yet, the political infighting over the control of the monies between the Orthodox Jewish dynasties to distribute to the farmers eventually was resolved.
Beyond the distribution of money, the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi Rabbinates had to settle the debates over their halakhic differences and disagreements concerning the Shmittah loophole called Neter Mechira, where the Jewish farmers could ‘sell’ their land to non-Jewish farmers for one year who would instead continue to farm the land as usual.
A Jewish Farmer at Kfar Yehoshua in the Shmittah Year of 2007
To an outsider, this should be a no-brainer, for the purpose for the injunction to the land was not only to give the “land a year of rest” but also was to give HaShem’s Chosen Ones a year of rest from their regular jobs where they could spend a year in spiritual growth and development with their favorite rabbis and yeshivas in learning the Torah.
Yet, the important thing to remember, all of these changes that are today being kept as part of the halakhic law in the Written and Oral Torah law were not done before the destruction of either Solomon’s Temple in the 6th century BCE and also King Herod’s temple in the 1st century CE.
Maybe it is time to reconsider our own lives and ask, are we living the same lives we have for decades, or are we preparing our own lives for the arrival of the Maschiach ben Dovid (Messiah son of David)? This supernal revealing of the messiah will not happen according to our expectations but it will happen according the expectations of Shaddai, the Almighty One of Israel.
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If you have wondered how biblical prophecy fits into your life, and how it will affect the Return of the House of Israel, then the G-d of Israel is beginning his “call” to bring you home, too. You might desire to reconnect with the Biblical portrayals on what is and may be happening in your near future. This Biblical portrayal includes Prophecies that the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel are about to return to the Land of their Biblical Inheritance. This is Divine Destiny in living reality as the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel return to their Homelands first in Shomron (Samaria), Israel.
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