Sabbatical and Sinai - Balancing the Paradox
What does the Sabbatical have to do with Sinai?
That is the question the Midrash asks addressing the opening commandment of this week’s Torah portion, the commandant to let the land rest every seventh year.
And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,
Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land shall rest a Sabbath to the Lord. (Leviticus 25:1-2)
Rashi quotes the Midrash which asks why the Torah introduces this specific commandment with mentioning that it was stated at Sinai:
What does Shemittah [the “release” of fields in the seventh year] have to do with Mount Sinai? Were not all the commandments stated from Sinai?
The Torah was given at Mount Sinai, in the desert, because the desert is a place void of civilization, agriculture, and distraction, a place removed from the concerns of physical life, where the focus can be completely on spiritual reality. The land of Israel seems to be a dramatic departure from the Sinai lifestyle; instead of wholehearted devotion to spirituality, the people are called upon to work the land; to plow, sow, and harvest. How can one bridge the experience of Sinai with life in the land?
The Sabbatical year teaches that the objective of Torah is that a person inhabit two opposite plains simultaneously. The mission of a Jew is to unite the physical and the spiritual, heaven and earth, finite and infinite, Mount Sinai and the land of Israel.
The Sabbatical demonstrates that while owning land, and being deeply involved in agriculture, a Jew can experience a sabbatical year for Hashem. The work done in the first six years is not a means for itself, but rather it is for the sake of the Sabbatical year.
What does the Sabbatical have to do with Sinai? The objective of the Sabbatical is connecting the holiness of Sinai with the soil of the land. It reminds us that Torah’s instructs not to retreat to the solitude of the desert, nor to experience a transcendent spiritual reality, but rather it is to live a life that unites opposites, a life that connects the intense holiness and transcendence of Sinai with the finite time and space we inhabit.
(Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Lekutei Sicos 1 Behar)