Taking the easy way out, let’s just say that God was a good farmer. Every seven years, he told his chosen people, they must let the land of Israel rest and lie fallow. No sowing, no reaping, no working the vines. Just take it easy and give the land a chance. And a fallow year, called a schmita, began at the Jewish New Year last month.
“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.”
I don’t actualy understand that; how are the poor and the stock to eat if noone is growing anything? But no matter. The weird part is, God told all Jews to take their sabbatical in the same year. So how are they supposed to feed themselves? Some take a sophisticated approach, selling their land to an accommodating gentile for a nominal sum. Thus it is no longer “their” land, they continue to work it (and to profit, if profits there be) and at the end of the sabbatical, they buy it back again. Some use science: fruit and vegetables are grown hydroponically, or on raised platforms, not in the land of Israel. I visited a research centre that was working on systems to delay the germination of wheat, so it could be sown in the previous year, grow steadily through the schmita, and be harvested the following year. They were also researching effective ways to miss a year of pruning grapevines.
But ultra-orthodox Jews are determined to close these loopholes. They think the government should subsidize farmers who do indeed let their fields lie fallow, in fact as well as in law. And they are creating opportunities for their neighbours. Farmers in Palestine, Turkey and elsewhere are now selling into the Israeli market, and business is better for them.
It’d be nice to think that a year of trading produce would help peace to grow between Israelis and their neighbours, but given the entrenched attitudes and conservative views that seem to have given rise to the very strict interpretation, that seems unlikely from the Israeli side. I wonder whether the Palestinian farmers, who will probably enjoy a better income this year, would see it as in their interests to promote peace.