Жеті жылдық шаруашылық айналымы және «Шмита» жылы

Seventh year of the seven year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel

The sabbath year (shmita; , literally "release"), also called the sabbatical year or shǝvi'it (שביעית, literally "seventh"), or "Sabbath of The Land", is the seventh year of the seven year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah in the Land of Israel and is observed in Judaism. During shmita, the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity, including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting, is forbidden by halakha (Jewish law). Other cultivation techniques (such as watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying, trimming and mowing) may be performed as a preventive measure only, not to improve the growth of trees or other plants. Additionally, any fruits or herbs which grow of their own accord and where no watch is kept over them are deemed hefker (ownerless) and may be picked by anyone. A variety of laws also apply to the sale, consumption and disposal of shmita produce. All debts, except those of foreigners, were to be remitted. Chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus promises bountiful harvests to those who observe the shmita, and describes its observance as a test of religious faith. The most recent shmita year was 2021–2022 or Anno mundi 5782 in the Hebrew calendar. The next shmita cycle will be in 2028 2029, year 5789 in the Hebrew calendar.

It is still discussed among scholars of the Ancient Near East whether or not there is clear evidence for a seven year cycle in Ugaritic texts. It is also debated how the biblical seventh fallow year would fit in with, for example Assyrian practice of a four year cycle and crop rotation, and whether the one year in seven was an extra fallow year. vertical align=sup suggests that the land may have been farmed only 3 years in seven. Elie Borowski (1987) takes the fallow year as one year in seven.

Various attempts have been made to reconstruct when Sabbatical years actually fell using clues in the biblical text and events clearly dated in fixed historically understood calendars. This is important because the system of shmita and Jubilee years provides a useful check in deciding between competing reconstructions of the histories of the First Temple period and earlier and the history of the Second Temple period and later. There are explicit mentions of a Sabbatical year found in Josephus, 1 Maccabees, and in various legal contracts from the time of Simon bar Kokhba. In contrast, no direct statements that a certain year was a Sabbatical year have survived from First Temple times and earlier. The Jewish method of calculating the recurring Sabbatical year (shmita) has been greatly misunderstood by modern chroniclers of history, owing to their unfamiliarity with Jewish practice, which has led to many speculations and inconsistencies in computations. According to Maimonides (Mishne Torah, Hil. Shmita ve Yovel 10:7), during the Second Temple period, the seven year cycle which repeated itself every seven years was actually dependent upon the fixation of the Jubilee, or the fiftieth year, which year temporarily broke off the counting of the seven year cycle. Moreover, the laws governing the Jubilee (e. g. release of Hebrew bondmen, and the return of leased property to its original owners, etc.) were never applied all throughout the Second Temple period, but the Jubilee was being used during the period of the Second Temple in order to fix and sanctify thereby the Sabbatical year. A Sabbatical year could not be fixed without the year of the Jubilee, since the Jubilee serves to break off the 7 x 7 year cycle, before resuming its count once again in the 51st year. While the 49th year is also a Sabbatical year, the fiftieth year is not the 1st year in a new seven year cycle, but rather is the Jubilee. Its number is not incorporated into the seven year cycle. Rather, the new seven year cycle begins afresh in the 51st year, and in this manner is the cycle repeated. After the Temple's destruction, the people began a new practice to number each seventh year as a Sabbatical year, without the necessity of adding a fiftieth year.

The first shmita year in the modern State of Israel was 1951–1952 (5712 in the Hebrew calendar). Subsequent shmita years have been 1958–1959 (5719), 1965–1966 (5726), 1972–1973 (5733), 1979–1980 (5740), 1986–1987 (5747), 1993–1994 (5754), 2000–2001 (5761), 2007–2008 (5768), and 2014–2015 (5775). The last shmita year began on Rosh Hashanah in September 2021, corresponding to the Hebrew calendar year 5782. The 50th year of the land, which is also a Shabbat of the land, is called "Yovel" in Hebrew, which is the origin of the Latin term "Jubilee", also meaning 50th. According to the Torah, observance of Jubilee only applies when the Jewish people live in the land of Israel according to their tribes. Thus, with the exile of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Menashe (about 600 BCE) Jubilee has not been applicable. In 2000, Sefardic Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron withdrew religious certification of the validity of permits for the sale of land to non Jews during the shmita year following protests against his endorsement of the leniency by members of the Haredi community.

Authorities who prohibit farming in Israel generally permit hydroponics farming in greenhouses structured so that the plants are not connected to the soil. As a result, hydroponics use has been increasing in Haredi farming communities.

During the 2007–2008 shmita, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel attempted to avoid taking a potentially divisive position on the dispute between Haredi and Modern Orthodox views about the correctness of the heter mechira leniency by ruling that local rabbis could make their own decisions about whether or not to accept this device as valid. The Israel Supreme Court, however, ordered the Chief Rabbinate to rescind its ruling and to devise a single national ruling. The Israel Supreme Court opined that divergent local rulings would be harmful to farmers and trade and could implicate competition. The issue of secular courts ordering the rabbinate to rule in particular ways on religious matters aroused a debate within the Knesset. Israeli wineries often address this issue by making separate batches of shmita wine, labeled as such, and giving away bottles of shmita wine as a free bonus to purchasers of non shmita wine.

+ Sabbatical years in the pre exilic period, according to Thiele's approach (First Temple and earlier) Sabbatical years start in Tishri Year Event 1406 BCE Entry into land; beginning of counting for Jubilee and Sabbatical years, as calculated from observance of 17th Jubilee in 574/73 BCE and (independently) from 1 Kings 6:1. 868/867 BCE Public reading of the Law in 3rd year of Jehoshaphat. Also a Jubilee year, the 11th. 700/699 BCE Sabbatical year after the departure of the Assyrian army in late 701 or early 700 BCE. 623/622 BCE Public reading of the Law. Also a Jubilee year, the 16th. 588/587 BCE Release of slaves at beginning of the Sabbatical year 588/587 (Tishri 588). Summer 587 BCE Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in the latter part of the Sabbatical year 588/587. Tishri 10, 574 BCE Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple at beginning of 17th Jubilee year, which was also a Sabbatical year.

Another public reading of the Law, suggesting a Sabbatical year, took place in the third year of Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:7 9). According to the widely accepted biblical chronology of Edwin Thiele, Jehoshaphat began a coregency with his father Asa in 872/871 BCE, and his sole reign began in 870/869. The passage about the reading of the law in Jehoshaphat's third year does not specify whether this is measured from the beginning of the coregency or the beginning of the sole reign, but since the two synchronisms to Jehoshaphat's reign for the kings of Israel (1 Kings 22:51, 2 Kings 3:1) are measured from the start of the sole reign, it would be reasonable to determine Jehoshaphat's third year in the same way. In Thiele's system, this would be 867/866. However, Thiele's years for the first few kings of Judah has come under criticism as being one year too late, because of problems that appear in the reign of Ahaziah and Athaliah that Thiele never solved. Therefore, in 2003, an article by Rodger Young showed that the texts that Thiele could not reconcile were in harmony when it was assumed that Solomon died before Tishri 1 in the (Nisan based) year in which the kingdom divided, rather than in the half year after Tishri 1 as assumed, without explanation, by Thiele. In 2009 Leslie McFall, who is recognized in Finegan's Handbook of Biblical Chronology as the foremost living interpreter of Thiele's work, agreed with Young's correction that moved dates for Jehoshaphat and the preceding kings of Judah up one year, as have some other recent works by evangelicals and creationists studying this the field. With this resolution to Thiele's problem, the year in which Jehoshaphat had the Law read to the people was 868/867. This is 294 years, or 42 Sabbatical cycles, before Ezekiel's Jubilee. The 42 Sabbatical cycles would make six Jubilee cycles, so it was also a Jubilee year. It is of some passing interest that in 1869, long before the breakthroughs of Valerius Coucke and Thiele that solved the basic problems of how the biblical authors were measuring the years, Ferdinand Hitzig stated that the occasion for Jehoshaphat's proclamation was because it was a Jubilee year.

If 574/573 marked a Jubilee, and if the Sabbatical cycles were in phase with the Jubilees, then 700/699 BCE, the year often mentioned as a possible Sabbatical year because of the land lying fallow during that year (Isaiah 37:30, 2 Kings 19:29), was also a Sabbatical, 126 years or 18 Sabbatical cycles before Ezekiel's Jubilee. Assuming a 49 year cycle, the nearest Jubilee would have been in 721 BC, inconsistent with attempts to place a Jubilee after the Sabbatical year at this time. If a 50 year Jubilee cycle is assumed, the nearest Jubilee would be 724/723, and then assuming that a Sabbatical cycle began in the year following a Jubilee, neither 701/700 nor 700/699 would be a Sabbatical year. Could the passages in Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19 be referring to two voluntary fallow years? This might be possible if the Jubilee year was a 50th year separate from the seventh Sabbatical/shmita year. Young presents a linguistic argument against this interpretation, as follows:
Others have imagined that Isa 37:30 and its parallel in 2 Kgs 19:29 refer to a Sabbatical year followed by a Jubilee year, since the prophecy speaks of two years in succession in which there would be no harvest. But the first year could not be a Sabbatical year, because in it the people were allowed to eat "what grows of itself", for which the Hebrew word is ספיח In Lev 25:5 the reaping of the ספיח is forbidden during a Sabbatical year. Whatever the exact meaning is for this word, its use in Isaiah's prophecy and its prohibition in Lev 25:5 means that the first year of the Isaiah and Second Kings passages could not have been a Sabbatical year. This rules out the possibility that the passage is dealing with a Sabbatical year followed by a year of Jubilee. The proper understanding of the passage is that the harvest of the first year had been destroyed by the Assyrians, and the defeat of the Assyrian army came too late in the year to allow sowing that year. The destruction of the Assyrian host came the night after the giving of the prophecy (2 Kgs 19:35), so the reason that sowing and reaping were forbidden for the next year must have been because that year, the second year of the prophecy, was going to be a Sabbatical year.

It has already been mentioned that the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 14b) and the Seder Olam (ch. 24) mentioned a Jubilee in Josiah's 18th year, 623/622 BCE. With the proper assumption of a 49 year cycle for the Jubilee, the Jubilee would be identical to the seventh Sabbatical year, so that the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles would never be out of synchronization. 623/622 BCE would therefore also have been a Sabbatical year. In Sabbatical years, the Mosaic code specified that the Law was to be read to all the people (Deuteronomy 31:10 11). Although this commandment, like so many others, was probably neglected throughout most of Israel's history, it was observed in Josiah's 18th year (2 Kings 23:1,2).

Various scholars have conjectured that Zedekiah's release of slaves, described in Jeremiah 34:8 10, would likely have been done at the start of a Sabbatical year. Although the original Mosaic legislation stated that an indentured servant's term of service was to end six years after the service started (Deuteronomy 15:12), later practice was to associate the Sabbatical year, called a year of release (shemitah) in Deuteronomy 15:9, with the release of slaves. Based on a chronological study of Ezekiel 30:20 21, Nahum Sarna dated Zedekiah's emancipation proclamation to the year beginning in Tishri of 588 BCE. Although Zedekiah's release of slaves could have occurred at any time, the occurrence of a Sabbatical year at just this time provides some insight into the background that probably influenced Zedekiah's thinking, even though the release was later rescinded. The year 588/587 BCE was also the year that Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, consistent with the Babylonian records for the reign of Amel Marduk and the Scriptural data regarding Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. This is in keeping with the statement in Seder Olam chapter 30, properly translated as discussed above, that put the burning of the First Temple, as well as the Second, in the "latter part" of a Sabbatical year. The statement of the Seder Olam in this regard is repeated in the Tosefta (Taanit 3:9), the Jerusalem Talmud (Ta'anit 4:5), and three times in the Babylonian Talmud (Arakin 11b, Arakin 12a, Ta'anit 29a). An example of the caution that must be exercised when consulting English translations is shown by the Soncino translation in Arakin 11b, that the Temple was destroyed "at the end of the seventh [Sabbatical] year", compared to Jacob Neusner's translation of the corresponding passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, that it was "the year after the Sabbatical year".

A convenient starting place for the study of Sabbatical years in the time of the First Temple is the Jubilee that the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Arakin 12a), and also the Seder Olam (chapter 11), say was the 17th and which began at the time that Ezekiel saw the vision the occupies the last nine chapters of his book. Although many of the chronological statements of the two Talmuds, as well as in the Seder Olam that preceded them, have been shown to be unhistorical, this particular statement has considerable evidence to support its historicity. One of these evidences is the consistency of this reference with the other Jubilee mentioned in the Talmud and the Seder Olam (ch. 24), which is placed in the 18th year of Josiah (Megillah 14b). Ezekiel's vision occurred in the 25th year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (Ezekiel 40:1). Babylonian records state that Amel Marduk (the biblical Evil Merodach) began to reign in October 562 BCE, and 2 Kings 25:27 says that it was in the twelfth month of this accession year (Adar, 561 BCE) and in Jehoiachin's 37th year of captivity that Jehoiachin was released from prison. By Judean reckoning, Jehoiachin's 37th year would then be 562/561 BCE. His 25th year, the year in which Ezekiel saw his vision, is therefore determined as 574/573 BCE, i. e. the year that began in Tishri of 574. Josiah's 18th year, at which time the Talmud says there was another Jubilee, began in 623 BCE, as can be determined from Babylonian records dating the Battle of Carchemish, which occurred shortly after Josiah was slain in his 31st year (2 Kings 22:3, 23:29). This is 49 years before Ezekiel's Jubilee, providing evidence that the Jubilee cycle was 49 years, not 50 years as is accepted by many interpreters, but which has been challenged by recent work such as the study of Jean François Lefebvre. Zuckermann also held that the Jubilee cycle was 49 years, as did Robert North in his notable study of the Jubilees. A fuller discussion of the reasons that the Jubilee cycle was 49 years can be found in the Jubilee article, where it is pointed out that the known chronological methods of the Talmuds and the Seder Olam were incapable of correctly calculating the time between Josiah's 18th year and the 25th year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, indicating that these remembrances of Jubilees were historical, not contrived. That Ezekiel saw his vision at the beginning of a Jubilee year is also shown by his statement that it was "in the twenty fifth year of our captivity, on Rosh Hashanah, on the tenth day of the month ;" (Ezekiel 40:1). It was only in a Jubilee year that Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day) came on the tenth of Tishri (Leviticus 25:9), the Day of Atonement. The Seder Olam, in relating that Ezekiel's vision was at the beginning of a Jubilee, does not cite the part of Ezekiel 40:1 that says it was Rosh Hashanah and the tenth of the month, indicating that the fact that a Jubilee was commencing was based on historical remembrance, not on just the textual argument regarding Rosh Hashanah being on the tenth of the month. Ezekiel also says it was 14 years after the city fell; 14 years before 574/573 BCE was 588/587 BCE, in agreement with "the 25th year of our captivity".

+ Sabbatical years of Second Temple period (randomly mentioned by Josephus) Year Event 150 Seleucid era = 162 BCE–161 BCE Sabbatical year. Second year of Antiochus Eupator's reign. Judas Maccabeus lays siege to the garrison in the citadel at Jerusalem, with the Jewish runagates. 178 Seleucid era = 134 BCE–133 BCESabbatical year. Ptolemy slays the brethren of John Hyrcanus. 271 Seleucid era = 41 BCE–40 BCE Sabbatical year. Jerusalem captured by Herod and Sosius. Sabbatical years have been used to fix the exact time of historical events, as shown in traditional Jewish chronology, but which are rarely understood by modern chroniclers of ancient history. The first modern treatise devoted to the Sabbatical (and Jubilee) cycles was that of Benedict Zuckermann. Zuckermann insisted that for Sabbatical years after the Babylonian exile "it is necessary to assume the commencement of a new starting point, since the laws of Sabbatical years and Jubilees fell into disuse during the Babylonian captivity, when a foreign nation held possession of the land of Canaan We therefore cannot agree with chronologists who assume an unbroken continuity of septennial Sabbaths and Jubilees." The Seder Olam (ch. 30) is explicit that this was the case, i. e. that the returned exiles had a renewed start of tithes, Sabbatical years, and Jubilee years. The first instance of a Sabbatical year treated by Zuckermann was Herod the Great's siege of Jerusalem, as described by Josephus. Zuckermann assigned this to 38/37 BCE, i. e. he considered that a Sabbatical year started in Tishri of 38 BCE. Next, he considered John Hyrcanus's siege of Ptolemy in the fortress of Dagon, which is described both in Josephus (Antiquities. 13.8.1/235; The Jewish War 1.2.4/59 60) and 1 Maccabees (16:14 16), and during which a Sabbatical year started; from the chronological information provided in these texts, Zuckermann concluded that 136/135 BCE was a Sabbatical year. The next event to be treated was Antiochus Eupator's siege of the fortress Beth zur (Ant. 12.9.5/378, 1 Maccabees 6:53), dated by Zuckermann to 163/162 BCE. However, he also remarked on the difficulties presented to this figure by the text in 1 Maccabees, which would seem to date the siege one year later, and so he decided to leave it out of consideration. The final text considered by Zuckermann was a passage in the Seder Olam that relates the destruction of the Second Temple to a Sabbatical year, an event that is known from secular history to have happened in the summer of 70 CE. Zuckermann interpreted the Seder Olam text as stating that this happened in a year after a Sabbatical year, thus placing a Sabbatical in 68/69 CE. All these dates as calculated by Zuckermann are separated by an integral multiple of seven years, except for the date associated with the siege of Beth zur. Furthermore, his chronology is consistent with that accepted by the geonim (medieval Jewish scholars) and the calendar of Sabbatical years used in present day Israel. All of this would seem to be strong evidence in favor of Zuckermann's scheme. Nevertheless, some problems have been recognized, beyond just the question of the siege of Beth zur, which was one year too late for Zuckermann's calendar. A consistent problem has been the ambiguity alleged in some of the passages, notably of Josephus, where it has been questioned, for example, when Josephus started the regnal years of Herod the Great. In a study the chronology of all Herod's reign, Andrew Steinmann presents arguments in favor of dating Herod's capture of Jerusalem in 10 Tishre of 37 BCE, i. e. just after the Sabbatical year of 38/37, based on references to the activities of Mark Antony and Sosius, Herod's helpers, in Cassius Dio (49.23.1–2) and also on other considerations. This date is in agreement with Ben Zion Wacholder's chronology. Therefore, many modern scholars have adopted a Sabbatical year calendar for the Second Temple period that is one year later, although there are many prominent scholars who still maintain a cycle consistent with Zuckermann's conclusion of a 38/37 BCE Sabbatical year. Among those who have advocated an adjustment to Zuckermann's chronology, the most extensive studies in its favor have been those of Ben Zion Wacholder. Wacholder had access to legal documents from the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt that were not available to Zuckermann. The arguments of Wacholder and others to support the calendar one year later than that of Zuckermann are rather technical and will not be presented here, except for two items to which Zuckermann, Wacholder, and other scholars have given great weight: 1) the date of Herod's capture of Jerusalem from Antigonus, and 2) the testimony of the Seder Olam relating the destruction of the Second Temple to a Sabbatical year. Wacholder gives the dates of post exilic Sabbatical years in the following table:

+ Sabbatical Years in the post exilic period Year Event 331/330 BCE Remission of taxes under Alexander the Great for Sabbatical years. 163/162 BCE Second battle of Beth Zur; summer 162 BCE. 135/134 BCE Murder of Simon the Hasmonean. 37/36 BCE Herod conquers Jerusalem on 10 Tishri (Day of Atonement) just after end of Sabbatical year 37/36 BCE. 41/42 CE Recital of Deuteronomy 7:15 by Agrippa I in a post Sabbatical year, making the Sabbatical year 41/42. 55/56 CE A note of indebtedness from Wadi Murabba'at in 2nd year of Nero, 55/56 CE, indicating 55/56 as a Sabbatical year. 69/70 CE Destruction of Jerusalem in the latter part (motsae, "going out") of the Sabbatical year 69/70. 132/133 CE Rental contracts of Simon bar Kosiba indicating 132/133 as a Sabbatical year. 433/434 and440/441 CE Three fourth and fifth century tombstones near Sodom indicating 433/434 and 440/441 CE were Sabbatical years. Subsequent to Wacholder's study, Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster published the results of archaeological excavations at Beth Shean in the Levant that verified a record from the Cairo Geniza that gave 749 CE as the year for the "Earthquake of the Sabbatical Year". According to the Geniza record, the earthquake occurred on 23 Shevat, 679 years after the destruction of the Second Temple; this is January 18, 749 CE in the Julian calendar. + The Sabbatical year earthquake of 749 CE Jan. 749 CE "Sabbatical year earthquake": 23 Shevat=18 Jan., 749 CE.