It
starts so early. The first word of many
a child is “Mine!” Thus begins a life of
striving after ownership. Much of
American culture is built around this propensity to crave and accumulate, with
multi-billion dollar industries manipulating us to want stuff we don’t need.
Of
course, as Ecclesiastes recognized long ago, this is a kind of vanity, a
striving after wind. Indeed, it is far
worse than empty gesture, for the impulse behind “mine!” is at the heart of
much of our human unhappiness. No matter
how much we acquire, the urge for more is never satisfied.
Given
this crushing human propensity to possess stuff (and sometimes people, too),
our weekly portion, Behar, offers
what I believe to be the most radical teaching in the entire Torah. Consider its words:
‘When you come into the land which I shall give
you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the Eternal. Six
years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and
gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall
have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord;
you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard.
‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of
years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the
seven sabbaths of years, namely,
forty-nine years. . . It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own
property, [e]and each
of you shall return to his family.
‘The land, moreover, shall not be sold
permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with
Me.
This
is extraordinary. Every seven years we
give the land a compete rest and every fifty years we redistribute it so that
no one is left poor and landless. This
guards against the grossly unjust distribution of wealth that increasingly
undermines both America’s and Israel’s economy.
It also reminds us that the assertion of “Mine!” is ultimately idolatrous,
for in the end, all of Creation belongs only to the Creator.
Imagine
if an America politician were to propose such a policy! This is not a platform upon which one is
likely to get elected, in either of our major political parties. Yet here it is in our Torah, as a core part
of its vision of a just society and a critical antidote to our consistent
craving for more power and possessions.
It may not become economic policy any time soon, but it remains
essential for us as a way out of the trap of materialism into which we
sometimes stumble.
Henry
David Thoreau reminds us that “in wildness is the preservation of the
world.” Why? Because what is wild is, by definition, that
which cannot be owned. This is why Torah
was given in the wilderness, a wild place, open to all, possessed by none. As we move toward Shavuot and our celebration
of receiving Torah, consider: how can I open myself to more wildness and escape
the clutch of my impulse to insist upon mine?
For
more on the sabbatical and jubilee years, and their potential to transform our
contemporary culture, see the work of Hazon, starting at: http://hazon.org/shmita-project/overview/
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