Sabbatical year
A sabbatical year or Schmitajahr (Hebrew shnat shmita ), also called Schmitah (שמיטה) for short, is a year of rest for the arable land in Israel according to the Torah .
Biblical foundation
After 6 years of building, the land - analogous to the Sabbath as a day of rest - is left fallow for a year ( Ex 23.10-11 EU ; Lev 25.1-7 EU ):
“ 10 You can sow and reap in your land for six years; 11 in the seventh you should leave it fallow and not order it. Let the poor of your people eat of it, and let the animals of the field eat the rest. You should do the same with your vineyard and your olive trees. "
Proceeding there in Deuteronomy the determination to emphasize the Schmitajahr the debt and debt slaves release ( Deut 15.1-2 EU ):
“ 1 Every seventh year you are to keep fallow fields. 2 And this is a provision for the fallow land: Every creditor should let the part of his property which he gave to another under personal liability as a loan lie fallow. If the other is his brother, he should not act with force against the other; for he has proclaimed the fallow for the Lord. "
The Schmita year is seen as “an extension of the basic idea of the Sabbath commandment ”, the purpose of which is “not to get the very best out of the earth's resources, not from capital, not from the labor of others and not from one's own”.
According to Lev 25.8-34 EU , seven Schmita years are followed by a "jubilee year" ( year of remission , year of reverberation).
history
European exegetes long assumed that the Schmita year was not practiced. Today the opposite is assumed. By Flavius Josephus the following years are attested as actually held Schmita years: 164/163 BC. Chr., 38/37 BC Chr., 68/69 AD. The command is still observed by Orthodox Jews today .
This regulation meant that hardly any loans were granted before the year of the remission. At the turn of the century, the famous scribe Hillel allowed a clause to be added to contracts of debt that allowed the debt to be collected at any time, even after the seven years ("Hillels Prosbul"). This should serve to create a more socially just order.
The year 5775 (September 25, 2014 to September 13, 2015) was the last Schmita or Sabbath year. Even if the divisibility of the Jewish year number by 7 without remainder suggests a start in the original year of the Jewish calendar, today's counting goes back to the year 3829 (68–69 AD).
Incomprehension in the Roman environment
Tacitus did not like the institution of the Schmita year: "septimum quoque annum ignaviae datum". In his eyes the seventh year was dedicated to laziness, just as he was hostile to the institution of Shabbat and interpreted it as a sign of the laziness and indolence of the Jews ( Histories 5,4,2).
literature
- BZ Wacholder: The Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles during the Second Temple and the Early Rabbinic Period. In: HUCA 44 (1973), pp. 153-196
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Jürgen Ebach: Work and rest. In: Wolfgang Kraus, Bernd Schröder (Hrsg.): Cultural foundations of Europe: Basic concepts. Lit, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11862-2 , pp. 95–110, here p. 105.
- ↑ “Shemitah 101” at chabad.org