Reap Without Sowing - Behar Bechukotai 5786

 There is nature and there are miracles.  We usually think of them as completely separate things.  Once in a while a huge miracle happens, like the sea splitting, or when thousands of missiles flew and a relatively tiny (though tragic) number of Jews died.  But the sun rises daily and sets, as does the moon.  We plough a field and sow it, it rains and the seeds grow into grain, vegetables or trees.  Sometimes it doesn’t rain and they don’t grow.  It’s the way of the world.  

It’s a common practice to let the land lie fallow on occasion, like rotating crops, in order to allow the earth to regain its strength, otherwise the amount it produces may drop.  I did some research about this and some modern farmers feel that fertilizing the land has the same effect, but certainly this was a practice in earlier times.  Many still believe in it today.

So then it would make sense that the Torah tells us, in the Parsha we read this Shabbat, to let the land rest once in seven years.  I have heard many times from people who believe that the Sabbatical year is indeed based on the natural needs of the earth.  In an agricultural society, “it became a common practice”, I’ve heard, for farmers not to plant once every seven years, so that the land regains its strength.  Could this natural cycle of crop planting be the source of this Mitzvah?

Well there is a slight problem with this theory.  Leaving everything to nature, you would expect the yield to be weak in the sixth year.  Yet the Torah gives a promise if we observe the Mitzvah of the Sabbatical year (Vayikra 25:20-22): “If you should wonder, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year? We cannot sow, and we cannot gather in our produce! I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year, and it will yield enough produce for three years, for you will sow in the eighth year, while eating from the old crops. You will eat from the old crop until the ninth year, until the arrival of its crop.”  This does not at all fit in with the natural order!

This is one of the lessons of the Mitzvah of the Sabbatical year.  What we see as nature is actually itself miraculous.  When we plant seeds, they grow because Hashem makes them grow.  The fact that it happens all the time does not change this.  It is an article of our faith that Hashem did not just create a world with a natural order and let it go.  Divine Providence means that every moment the world is being recreated.  We can’t see it with our eyes because we are trapped in a limited physical body, but if we look for it, I believe everyone can see it.  As long as we are willing to open our eyes.

This is why the Mitzvah of the Sabbatical year is such a central tenet of Judaism.  When we see that the land does the opposite of what would be expected naturally and produces triple on the sixth year, it reminds us that everything in the world is really run by a hidden Divine force.  The word for nature in Hebrew is Teva, which is from the same root as “sunken” or "drowned." When you look at a body of water, you don;t see anything that is in the water, even though there may be a whole world under there.  Just because you don’t see it does not mean it’s not there. 

When I was a kid I heard about one of the early Kibbutzim in Israel, Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim.  This was a religious kibbutz, and it was set up as a place where adherence to Torah was paramount.  When the first Shemitta (Sabbatical year) came, they decided to follow the Torah’s laws (the Shemitta laws apply only in Israel) and not work the field at all.  It caused great hardship for them, but they stuck to it.  Six years later, the Torah’s promise was miraculously fulfilled, and they literally had three times as much produce as usual in that year.

How can you apply this principle in your own life?