Behar-Bechukothai: Time

The midrash quoted  by Rashi on the first verse of this week's reading  has become the cliche that expresses irrelevant juxtaposition. 

. מָה עִנְיַן שְׁמִטָּה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי —  Mah inyan shmitah aytzel har Sinai

What has the matter of the Sabbatical year to do with Mount Sinai 

This could be translated as " What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?", the roughly equivalent American idiom. 

Rashi's answers this question: 

to teach regarding every Divine command (lit., Divine utterance) that was spoken to Moses that in every case they, their general rules and minute details originated at Sinai and that they were only repeated again in “the fields of Moab”.

Mentioning  Mount Sinai as the place of origin validates the law and its details. Taxes, rules regarding property use and real estate transfers can be written and/or twisted for  profit; they become a means to acquire wealth without labor or production. As the song, John Wesley Harding, goes: 

Some will rob you with a six gun,  Some with a fountain pen.

Robin Hood rescues the common folk from the impoverishing  conspiracy of the clever and the state. The Law, imposed by the Powerful upon the defenseless, is controlled by its enforcers. Welcome to the USA ( or the Soviet Union, or Sweden, etc.) Thus, Rashi addresses the problem of validating land laws that can lead to economic ruin, and are, therefore, subject to scrutiny and mistrust. The mistrust multiplies over time, as situations change.  

Rashi also alludes to the fields of Moab. This is the place where covenant between Gd and Israel is reviewed, just before the entry into the Promised Land, where  all these laws will soon apply.  The regulations stated in this week's readings will not apply for 40 years. They are agricultural rules given to nomads. 

In the context of the story, the population at Sinai did not know that they would wander in the desert for 40 years. The 40 year odyssey was decreed based upon subsequent events. The tribes at Sinai believed they would be entering the Promised Land in days or weeks. But when we read this chapter, we know what will happen; Rashi reminds us. By the time the Israelites actually stand on the Plains of Moab, these rules, that appear dangerously deranged ( as evidenced by the reassurances that surround them:

וְכִ֣י תֹאמְר֔וּ מַה־נֹּאכַ֖ל בַּשָּׁנָ֣ה הַשְּׁבִיעִ֑ת הֵ֚ן לֹ֣א נִזְרָ֔ע וְלֹ֥א נֶאֱסֹ֖ף אֶת־תְּבוּאָתֵֽנוּ׃ 

And should you ask, “What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?”), 

These rule are stale ( hence questionable) memories. Another meaning  of 

מָה עִנְיַן שְׁמִטָּה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי —  Mah inyan shmitah aytzel har Sinai

What has the matter of the Sabbatical year to do with Mount Sinai. 

These laws are being given outside of their time. 

The Zionist resettlement  of the land makes this question more acute. These rules are ancient: pre-fertilizers, pre- market, pre-Feudal. Their age raises questions of applicability.  Kohanim ( the priestly class) cannot be identified reliably; the ancestral provenance of the land is long lost. Yet, there are attempts to apply these laws with various clever interpretations and workarounds. 

In modern times, the answer to : Mah inyan shmitah aytzel har Sinai  evolves into defining the relationship between those that have land, grain, food, money - and those who do not. The laws obligates those with wealth to provide for the downtrodden. The law obligates respect and care for the land. 

In a sense, if there is no mores shmitah, no more Sabbatical year, there is no more Sinai, no more belief in the Divinty of the Law. For a people exiled for millennia, binding agricultural law to Sinai, and the communication from Gd that it represents, is strange and tenuous. It my lifetime, it has had interesting consequences.