Today’s New York Times reported:

As Israel’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables.”

Indeed.

As Yigal’s article mentioned, the ancient, Torah-mandated practice of shmita leaves the contemporary land of Israel, its farmers - and also its eaters - in a peculiar bind.  The problem is, unsuprisingly, religious.  Israel’s chief rabbinate condones the loophole practice of heter mechira, or growing food on Israeli soil if it is temporarily sold to non-Jews.  Still, it allows rabbis of local cities to decide for themselves whether heter mechira will rule, which opens the “two Jews, three opinions” floodgates.

The problem is also political - Times’ contributor, Steven Erlanger, writes: “Zionism was founded on the notion of a return to the land, but a modern country cannot live on what falls to the ground.”  More than that, some modern Zionists say that the country cannot thrive for the year without strong farmers.  Is it really better, they ask, to purchase produce from non-Jews in, say, Gaza (which, since Hamas takeover in June, has been forbidden) than to allow Jewish farmers to continue farming the land through heter mechira?

Unfortunately, through all the religious and political hubub, the notion of “resting” the land during the shmita year (one of the ancient biblical notions that holds clear relevance to today’s ecological concerns), seems all but forgotten.

Read the full article: ”As Farmers and Fields Rest, a Land Grows Restless“