My Father’s Sabbatical Years

My family always loved sabbatical years. They meant that my father — who does research in pure mathematics — was more available to take us on trips and go on adventures. Without a teaching schedule or the need to travel abroad for research, he was more relaxed, more present. We kids loved it, and I imagine my mother did, too; in a sabbatical year, she shared parenting responsibilities more evenly.

When I first learned about shemitah — or at least the first time I recall, sometime around fourth or fifth grade — my teacher said it would be a hard concept for us to grasp. After all, we lived outside of Israel, and in post-Temple times. But that didn’t feel true to me. I understood shemitah well because of my father. To my younger self, a sabbatical was special, like summer vacation or my birthday. And as an adult, I now realize my experience was a rare one. Few people have the chance to step back and take a true pause from daily life.

Long before the famous marshmallow experiment was devised, the Jewish people were commanded to let the fields lie fallow every seventh year. Shemitah was a test of faith, discipline, and endurance. Parashat Behar-Bechukotai outlines the commandment, the rewards for observing it, and the consequences for neglecting it. God introduces shemitah accordingly:

When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of God. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of God: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather.

Here, God links the seventh year (shemitah) to the seventh day (Shabbat). Both are sacred pauses in which we step away from the work that sustains us materially. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in The Sabbath that “there is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.” Though referring to Shabbat, his words also reflect the spirit of shemitah: a year to be, to give, to share, and to live in harmony.

We often underestimate how difficult shemitah must have been for the ancient Israelites. In 1908, an Irish scholar discovered the Gezer Calendar — a 10th-century B.C.E. stone inscribed with the seasonal agricultural cycle: fruit and olive harvests in Tishrei and Cheshvan, grain sowing in Kislev and Tevet, flax harvest in Nisan, and so on. While scholars debate its exact intent, it unmistakably reflects how intertwined agriculture was with ancient Jewish life.

Some commentators suggest that shemitah had ecological benefits, increasing the land’s fertility. But the Kli Yakar offered a different view: Shemitah was meant to cultivate faith in God. “Perhaps when they would come to the land they would work the soil in the natural way, and when they would be successful they would forget Hashem and remove their trust from Him,” he wrote. “They would think the land belongs to them; they are the masters and no one else.”

There is a balance captured in the commandment of shemitah. Work the land — make it fruitful. But pause, once every seventh day and every seventh year, and see that God is ultimately responsible for your harvest. It will require discipline and strength of character. It will be uncomfortable, at times even painful. But the land must rest, and if you do not elect to observe shemitah, God will make the land desolate and exile her residents so she can make up for her lost years of rest.

For centuries of Jewish exile, the commandment of shemitah went mostly (or entirely) unobserved. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, idealistic young Jews began returning to the land of Israel. Anu banu artzah livnot v’lehibanot ba, they sang as they farmed, we came to the land to build and be built by her. And then the budding agricultural rebirth was met with a challenge our ancestors knew too well: shemitah. 

Some rabbis felt that there was a workaround to the whole issue: a heter mechira, or deed of sale to a non-Jew, during the year of shemitah, which would allow the Jew to work the land as he did not own it. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook permitted the heter mechira to olim who needed it because “the very basis of Jewish existence in Israel [was] at stake.” But others posited that it could not be relied upon. 

In one notable incident, the secular farmers of Gedera refused to farm during the shemitah year. They were threatened by Dr. Leon Pinsker, president of Chovevei Zion, who ordered that no support should be given to the farmers unless they worked during shemitah. Other early Zionist leaders threatened to report them to Turkish authorities for threatening their profits. Ultimately, the farmers of Gedera caved to the pressure and went back to work. 

But not all leaders agreed. Rav Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, a religious figure within Chovevei Zion, wrote to Pinsker expressing hope that future shemitah years would be fully observed. Shemitah, he insisted, “is the basis of our existence in our Holy Land.”

***

In Vayikra Rabbah, the rabbis interpret the psalmic phrase “mighty in strength.” Who are these mighty ones? Rabbi Yitzchak believed it meant those who observe shemitah:

The way of the world is that a person performs a mitzvah for a day, a week, or even a month. But for an entire year? This person sees his field fallow, his vineyard fallow, and still pays his land tax—and remains silent. Is there anyone mightier than that?

Even as an adult, I still love my father’s sabbatical years. This year, he had the freedom to visit my daughter — his granddaughter — who adores him. On each visit, he reads her book after book (sometimes the same one, over and over!) and takes her to the playground for hours. We feel privileged to share this time with him.

It’s not always easy, my father told me when I asked. Even now, he feels pressure — to publish, to accomplish, to stay productive. The unstructured time can be intimidating.

But it’s still a gift, even if it means he has to wrestle with himself. Or maybe it’s a gift because he has to wrestle with himself.

“God is not in things of space,” Heschel wrote, “but in moments of time.”

May we all find sacred moments — when we walk together, and with God — just as my father now walks with my daughter.