When our educational director first said she wanted to sponsor today’s Kiddush in honor of her birthday and Mother’s Day, I thought I would break with my usual tradition of tying the Torah portion into current events. We should talk about mothers. After all, G-d couldn’t be everywhere so He created mothers. It is no accident that the kippah I chose to wear today is pink with the eye of G-d. My mother used to say she had eyes in the back of her head. And so today’s sermon is dedicated to the memory of my mom, Nelle Sicher Frisch. All moms really who taught us Judaism, who taught us right from wrong, who taught us how to be a mensch.
Today is the 25th Day of the Counting of the Omer. Half way between Passover and Shavuot. Halfway towards freedom. And today we read the famous line…”Proclaim liberty throughout the land.” Be careful, in our translation you might miss it. In our translation they use release.
So what is the difference between freedom and release? Release is something you let go of. You give it permission to go.
Today we will also read about the Sabbatical year, the Shimta year. Rabbi Katy Allen points out that there is a relation between the Sabbatical year and Rainbow Day, the anniversary of when the animals were released from the ark are related. The rainbow that appeared as a sign of the covenant and G-d’s promise to never destroy the world by flood again, is a sacred partnership about sustainability. We too have an obligation to take care of the earth.
How do we do that?
The Torah provides a radical idea. A blueprint where everyone in society is equal. Proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants. Not just slaves. Not just the rich people. Everyone.
But everyone was not happy. If we don’t plant and we don’t harvest, what will we eat? How could it be fair to release debts in the seventh year? Why would anyone want to lend money in the 6th year if the debts would just be cancelled the following year? Valid questions. G-d promises that “If You shall observe My laws and faithfully keep My rules, that you may live upon the land in security.”
What does security mean? People answered that it means knowing the borders are safe and we won’t be invaded, that we have feeling of safety. that we are free from fear and anxiety.
Why do we read this portion now? We are halfway to Sinai, we haven’t received the 10 Commandments and yet the portion begins with an interesting verse, “Adonai spoke to Moses in Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, “When you come into the land which I give you, the land will rest, a Shabbat for Adonai…”
There are two puzzles here. The first is how is G-d speaking in Sinai? How is G-d speaking from a place we haven’t been? The congregation answered because G-d is G-d. G-d is everywhere. G-d know no bounds and no timeframes.
The second puzzle is does this mean that the land rests first year when the Israelites reach the promised land? Why? Perhaps because the land is toxic from those who inhabited it before the Israelites.
Sifra, one of the earliest works of midrash provides a deceptively easy answer. Because all of Torah is to create a society that is just. The purpose of the covenant, first with Noah, and later with all the Israelites is to create a world where the earth is respected, so that we can live on the earth without anxiety, in security. We don’t own the land. The Psalmist sang, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” “For the land is mine and you are strangers and settlers with me, this very portion teaches.
Now I want to cue Colors of the Wind from Pocahantas here:
You think you own whatever land you land on
The earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
C
an you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once never wonder what they’re worth
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
Or let the eagle tell you where he’s been?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
How high does the sycamore grow?
I
f you cut it down, then you’ll never know
And you’ll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind
You can own the earth and still
All you’ll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind
In the modern State of Israel they take this seriously. You may only “buy” your land for 50 years, then it reverts back to the state. Some kibbutzim rest their land. They rotate their crops so that one field lies fallow and money is given to the poor. During the 2007-2008 Shmita year, the Israeli Supreme Court demanded that there be one law for all of Israel rather than allowing each individual rabbi to decide matters of leniency.
If none of us own the land, as Pochantas and Torah suggest, we cannot buy it, cannot sell it, then the differences between rich and poor are not as great, are not generational, are not insurmountable, are not intractable. This is, as I said, radical stuff.
And relevant today. Who amongst us was not aghast, if that is even strong enough, when the terrorists, let’s call them what they are, announced, they would sell the Nigerian girls into slavery. This portion is clear. One human being cannot buy or sell another. And trafficking does not just happen in Nigeria. It happens right here in Elgin. One of our members was quoted this week about her work with Administer Justice. The full article is on our Facebook page, but here is a haunting quote from Jack Blake, the head of special prosecutions for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office: “You all have a human trafficking problem,” Blake said. “Everyone has a human trafficking problem in the Northern (Illinois) District.” He continued that now it has become gang activity, rather than prostitution. He said that many gangs now prefer humans to drugs. “You can sell a kilo once. You can sell a child over and over.” You can sell a child over and over again.
We are halfway to Shavuot, halfway to Sinai. The world is not perfect. Clearly if you can sell a child for sex. When I started writing this sermon, I was tired. It has been a long week. I knew I needed Shabbat. I need to rest. Abraham Joshua Heschel says that Shabbat is a palace in time, a foretaste of the world to come.
How can we rest when a child can be sold over and over?
But the text teaches us something. We need to rest and the land needs to rest. We know how to rest, how to do Shabbat. And we can. And some of us do. But Shabbat by itself is for us, or even for G-d without giving the land its rest is not enough. Then, we will be exiled from the land, cut off. The need of the land to rest comes even before our own need, according to Rabbi David Seidenberg, the neochasid.
He teaches: “Only in such a society can people learn to share their wealth, nurture the poor alongside everyone else, relieve debts, end hunger, and respect the fundamental human right to be free. The Sabbatical year was the guarantor and the ultimate fulfillment of the justice that Torah teaches us to practice in everyday life, and it was a justice that embraced not just fellow human beings, but the land and all life. The Sabbatical year was the ultimate meaning of rest, which we practice every week in the observance of shabbat. It was the Sabbath of sabbaths, Shabbat shabbaton.”
How does it work to let the land rest? How can everyone eat their fill on the volunteers that might crop up? In our community garden we had one onion winter over and reappear. G-d promises that somehow there will be enough, for us, for our servants and hired workers, for the settler living as a stranger with us, for our beasts and wild animals.” Really. It requires trust. The word trust betach, is related to the word security. We have to have trust. But the rabbis weren’t sure so they mandated that during the shmita year that the gates to the fields had to be left open. So that everyone could eat the same food, everyone, including the wild beasts.
This is that radical hospitality I have been talking about. That is Abraham and Sarah’s tent open to all four sides, ready to receive visitors. This is the wide open tent, Big Tent Judaism. This is even more than that…the only other time when humans and animals ate together in peace was when? In the Garden of Eden. Before the flood. This is the ultimate goal of the Shmita year. To return to a time when we enter paradise, when we are back in the Garden of Eden. When the world is sustainable and there are enough resources to go around. When no one is bought and sold. No one. This is what it means when it says to choose life that you might live, you and your seed after you.
This is what it means when it says if we follow G-ds’ commandments, including the command to rest ourselves and to rest the land, then our days of our lives and the lives of our children will be increased on the land. Then we will live in security.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Not just a Hallmark holiday. This was a day set aside by mothers during the Civil War to say that they were not willing to send another child to war. I am not willing to sacrifice another child to trafficking. I am not willing to sacrifice the land to Monsanto and other big polluters. I pledge to teach my children, Sarah, Anna, Richard and Gabrielle, and all my students who therefore become my children, this radical Torah. This is how I will spend Mother’s Day. Then I will plant my own little garden.
This is what it means then, when it says, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land.” It is not freedom to do whatever we want. It is freedom to make the world a better place. To protect the world and very land that sustains us.
We have an obligation to do so. Kohelet Rabbah says there maybe no one who will come after you to repair it. (7:13). We owe it to our mothers who taught us so well. We owe it to our children and their children.
We can do it. We have all the resources we need. It is radical. But first we have to rest.