Vayikra 25:1-7
The Land Keeps Shabbat
Seven verses given at Sinai that hand the ground itself a Shabbat, in a law whose next round of argument reaches Israeli shops in 2028.
For children, teens and adults
This is the start of Behar, and the first strange thing about it is the timing. The Israelites are at a mountain in the desert, years away from owning a single field, and the law they are given is about what to do in the seventh year of farming land they have never seen. The second strange thing is the grammar. It does not say you shall rest from the land. It says the land shall keep a Shabbat. And the third strange thing is what this law still does. Every seven years the argument reopens for real, in the courts, in the Chief Rabbinate and on the sticker stuck to a box of tomatoes.
וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה בְּהַר סִינַי לֵאמֹר׃
Vayikra 25:1
Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe b'Har Sinai lemor.
Hashem spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying: