Behar: the dream

מָה עִנְיַן שְׁמִטָּה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי?  What has the matter of the Sabbatical year to do with Mount Sinai?

Rashi quotes the Sifira to  give a religious answer. The mention of Mount Sinai validates the laws of  Sabbatical and Jubilee, equates them with the other laws transmitted from Gd to Moses. This is  a(n a)historical view, it could not have been how the message was originally received. Those listening at Sinai could not have known that these particular laws would not be repeated in Deutoronmy, on the plains of Moab, in the days before entry into the land  - where they were supposed to apply. To the Sinai audience these were details about a dream. 

A model of social justice is presented to people who had been slaves a year ago. It is a system based upon an (almost) irrevocable  ownership of land , all "sales" of  rural land  are  limited to  49 years. The land  then reverts to the ancestral family. The laws of inheritance will be detailed later (when they are challenged to determine the status of women), on the Moab plain. After the conquest of the land, the new owners could never transfer possession ( short of their dispossession by a usurper).  Is this the reverse of their position in Egypt? I think it likely that  part of their  servile status was an  exclusion from owning land.  The prohibition on owning land is an age old method of preventing a foreign  group ( like the Jews in Europe) from integrating into an area of settlement. When the promised land is won, the Hebrews will be the owners; no one else would be allowed in. 

The new order would include the Sabbatical year, when the land is left fallow and whatever it produces (in the absence of cultivation) is left for the wanderer and the beast. I speculate that the story of the Egyptian famine is connected to this plan. We recall that following the seven years of plenty, there is a severe famine through which Joseph comes to acquire all of the land of Egypt in the name of Pharaoh.  There is a recognition that  interminable tilling of the soil leads to its exhaustion. Giving the hoarder unlimited opportunity to accumulate leads to a slave society. Thus, every seventh year the land lies fallow and no one can use this produce to add to the silo. 

While attending this class on political microeconomics, taught by Moses, the  newly freed slaves see the wisdom in the system, and say they accept it. ( When I was 18 I joined the Peace and Freedom party, because I believed in these values.)  The next parsha, Bechukothi ( my [ Gd's] laws), in its litany of punishments states the expectation that these rules will not actually be followed. (Lev 26;34)

אָז֩ תִּרְצֶ֨ה הָאָ֜רֶץ אֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתֶ֗יהָ כֹּ֚ל יְמֵ֣י הׇשַּׁמָּ֔הֿ וְאַתֶּ֖ם בְּאֶ֣רֶץ אֹיְבֵיכֶ֑ם אָ֚ז תִּשְׁבַּ֣ת הָאָ֔רֶץ וְהִרְצָ֖ת אֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתֶֽיהָ׃ 

Then shall the land make up for its sabbath years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its sabbath years.

(compare with Herzl: אם תרצו, אין זו אגדה,  usage of tirzeh)

 Food insecurity is too frightening,  greed is too powerful,  to expect voluntary adherence to statutes that seem arbitrary, possibly absurd, in the context of local conditions: drought, flood, the conspicuous consumption of neighbors. Faced with the need to produce grain, to replace the manna from heaven, these restrictions look different.  They were not repeated on the Moab plain, just prior to entry into the land. 

The actual implementation of socio-political economic theories has a very poor track record. What justice we have has come from providing the masses enough to deter revolution; and when appeasement has failed, and revolution has come, the new system, developed in the optimism of powerless hope, has soon become oppressive. Discovery and technology have improved living conditions so that in many places, the distribution of wealth is not  a matter of life or death, but justice is in the eye of the beholder - minister or critic. 

 Economic justice  applies in the classroom. Every economic  system outlives its usefulness.  To the hungry, a meal beats justice.