Category Archives: The Food System

Actions, The Food System, The Land, The People

A Dream of Shmita in a Pandemic Year

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It is time. We have entered the “sixth year” of the seven-year Shmita cycle. Unbelievably, we are doing this from within the perspective of a global viral pandemic that, within the past nine months, has dramatically changed the world. Things that seemed impossible to change changed overnight. For better, and also for worse. This dramatic proof that change is possible has the ability to break through our internal narrative about possibilities and cause us to dream of a better world. And with the arrival of the “sixth year,” now is the time to do that within the context of Shmita.

Shmita, described as the Sabbath of the Land, is part of a relationship between the Earth and God. The human being’s role in this relationship is precisely to step back and permit it take place – to cease our exploitation of the Earth for one year out of every seven and enable it to rest.

The sudden stop that we all just experienced is in no way the golden version of the Year of Release that I have unabashedly dreamed of and that I had hoped to play some part in bringing about with care and intention. It is humbling and terrifying to witness the devastation that the virus and the accompanying economic collapse are causing as they roll across the world. To my sensibilities, this is what it feels like to have been brought into a very abrupt, unexpected, bruising experience of Shmita; Shmita the hard way. It’s something like being in a car crash along with everyone else on Earth, each person suddenly experiencing varying degrees of injury; some are dead.

In Torah we are warned what will happen if we don’t let the Earth observe its Sabbaths, and “you will be hit-by-plague” is right in there, in the early stages in a multi-phased unfolding of horrible consequences stemming from poor choices coupled with a lack of humility. Spoiler alert: it can get worse.

I’m not a religious fundamentalist. I don’t claim to “know” the meaning of Torah, and I always compare what I read against the voice of my own conscience. When I read Torah, I hear the voices of an Author from a vast and deep past with a message for the future. The text hints at how we can live together in a just society and warns about dire consequences and choices that can lead to catastrophe. The advice can be murky after traveling through many ages in the form of ambiguous stories written in an ancient language. But as I listen to this strange and often beautiful song echoing through time, I marvel that it has served as a living thread of cultural DNA for thousands of years and still has the power to shape human destiny.

I confess that I do have an irrational belief about Torah: I believe that as human experience evolves and culture develops, the actual meaning of the text unfolds. I believe that the ancient Author’s voice continues to speak, and that some of what was encoded in the Torah’s song was intended specifically for our ears, in these times, our personal lullaby and lesson even though the words were written long ago.

Ever since I read the story of Shmita six years ago, it has called to me. From the beginning, I heard it whispering that the time had come for it to be brought to life. While it feels like we are late in receiving its message, the truth is, it would have been unlikely that we would have heeded it, or even heard it, before the need began to make itself felt; we would not have recognized it as the solution to a problem if the problem had not begun to press in upon us. Hopefully there is still time, and we can learn from it, before the worst consequences take root and doom us to live the prophesy to the end.

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Whether we like them or not, we know the Ten Commandments from the Torah; they infuse our culture, whether we adhere to them or resist them. The commandment to keep the Sabbath is built into the fabric of our lives whether we observe it as part of a religious tradition, or just appreciate that our secular society has been shaped by it into a seven-day work week with a weekend attached.

But unlike the weekly Sabbath, which is practiced in some form almost everywhere in the world, the commandment to observe the Shmita year remains obscure, even to many who are familiar with other aspects of Torah. It has not been fully unpacked, unfolded, interpreted, or embodied, and it has certainly not found its way into the culture the way the weekly Sabbath has.

Like the Author of Torah, I would have preferred to introduce the story of Shmita with a promise, a golden vision of what could be, not with a threat, and certainly not with the sharp sting that we are experiencing today as I write this during the global pandemic of 2020 CE.

In Torah, Shmita is referenced more than once, and the reader is left to do the important work of discerning its many meanings. It is letting the Earth rest; it is freedom from debt. I personally first encountered Shmita when reading Parshat Behukotai, and my reaction to it at that time is expressed in the d’var Torah I gave that year.  Shortly later, I started this blog, to help bring to life a sense of how a Shmita culture might emerge in our times.

The gist of what I learned was that if we play our cards carefully, we can live with one another in peace and receive ample and abundant blessings manifest through a fruitful and generous Earth, and even experience the divine presence in our midst in this world, like in Eden. If we don’t, the consequences will bubble ominously through the web of life until the land itself, the source and medium of divine blessing, chastises us to such a degree that it becomes “a desolation, and the cities a wasteland,” (Leviticus 26:33), and only then, when the hand of the human being has been shaken off and a complete rest from human exploitation has fallen over the Earth, will its rest be restorative, and the land become capable of providing for the human family once again. The worse the damage we do, the longer the period of rest from the human hand that will be needed to restore it.

Rest

The rest of Shmita contains dormancy and healing, pregnancy and power. We are learning this from watching the more than human world answering the Shmita that has been forced upon us. There is early evidence of a spectacular recovery of species across the world. Fish, birds, mammals, and insects, all of which had been under pressure from relentless human exploitation, are resting and re-birthing.

The disruption of global supply chains has relieved pressure on the world’s fisheries. The cessation of travel has cleaned the air and quieted the oceans. The absence of people in parks and urban areas has given space back to wildlife.

Within the human family, the rest is terrifyingly uneven. There are those who have secure homes and income who are finding new delight in simple pleasures: taking walks in quiet nature, dining in and cooking from scratch, gardening, and jigsaw puzzles. And there are those whose rent and groceries will not be paid if they do not go into work, often at jobs that involve lots of interaction with the public, and exposure to the virus. Some people have no paid sick leave and have to choose between staying home when sick and paying the rent; others are finding themselves without health insurance as the economy sheds jobs. Our current forced Shmita has exposed lethal flaws in the way our society has chosen to allocate resources, with the rich suddenly aware of the poor now that the virus can be passed across social class.

Agriculture

In Torah, the Shmita year is deeply about agriculture, requiring as it does that the fields be left fallow. The promise is that a Shmita observing world can be so productive in six years that the lack of a harvest in the seventh will be amply compensated.

In the Shmita year, fences are removed from farmed fields. The produce that grows there is freely available for all to all to take from. Everyone, regardless of their status in society, is welcome to what grows there with just a single condition: that they take only what they need. They may not hoard; they may not convert food into money by selling it. The animals, wild and domestic, are also welcomed into the fields during the Shmita year.

Our industrialized, global agricultural system is highly unsuitable for observing a Shmita year. Farmers who are finding their supply chains disrupted are euthanizing livestock (1), pouring millions of gallons of fresh milk down the drain (2), and plowing under ripe produce (3), all while starving people line up at empty food banks (4).

But seeds of adaptation are also sprouting. Some farmers in the Great Plains have begun to plant fruits and vegetables as cover crops to feed starving neighbors on fields that have typically been sown with only commodity crops. They explain that they will let people come to the fields in person and harvest the produce when it is ripe (5). The same is true of the famers who brought hundreds of thousands of pounds of potatoes to give away in Tacoma (6), and the farmer in Pennsylvania who sold out overnight after deciding to bottle his own milk and sell it from his farm, which shortened his supply chain and brought people out into farm country to find the source of the abundance they enjoy (7). There has been a huge surge in interest in planting food gardens closer to home. These are all examples of dormant seeds of Shmita germinating in the culture in a time of need.

Economics

Shmita has even another element of release: the cancellation of debt. Imagine a world in which every person emerges from the Shmita year debt free.

What is a debt besides a gamble that we will have more in the future than we have today? And what is a lender besides someone who purchases a piece of someone else’s future? Shmita would periodically erase the debt-fueled pressure to produce more, and then even more, next year than this year. After all, what is interest but the belief that next year there will be “more.” But more of what? If in the Shmita year we discover that is already more than enough, then the promise of “more” is empty. How might this dawn of awareness transform the way we think about economics?

The Yoval, or Jubilee, known as the Shmita of Shmitas, takes this idea even farther. The Yoval takes place every 50 years – once in a generation. It follows the seventh Shmita year and involves a complete leveling of society, the elimination of debt, and even more dramatically, the restoration of each person to an equal productive endowment. In Torah, that entails a return to the land one’s ancestors were given; but a modern interpretation would be a radical redistribution of wealth, so that each person had the means to fully realize themselves according to their ability and inclination, not owing someone else before they rise in the morning to begin working, not scraping by, but fully endowed with the means to earn a productive livelihood: to feed, shelter, and educate themselves. The decision to implement a worldwide Jubilee as a response to this virus will be the subject of its own essay.

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It is impossible not to be struck by the congruence of the requirements of Shmita and the situation we are facing today. Have we ever really let the Earth rest? Have we ever perceived a value or a requirement, or a hint or suggestion that we should do so? Have we ever experienced the promise of what a Shmita-aware social order could look like?

Farmers have long understood the value of letting a field lie fallow as a way to allow it to regenerate and restore its productivity. And some universities offer researchers a Sabbatical year, which is intended as a time to break old ways of thinking, rest, refresh, and learn new skills and perspectives. There is something of this restorative, but also transformational fallowness about the Shmita year.

But in our world, every year, exploitation of the land increases; we use our ingenuity to invent new methods by which to extract its abundance to the last drop. We whip what we need from the Earth with increasing ferocity, exploiting it with industrial agriculture that poisons the land, industrial overfishing that kills the birthing grounds of the life of the seas, fracturing its bedrock and contaminating the pristine aquifers deep underground; we recklessly plunder the treasure chests of time without replacing a dime.

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Today, many destructive processes have fallen silent. A quiet ocean is hearing whale song that has long been drowned out by vessel noise. Quiet cities are being reclaimed by curious wild animals. Clear skies are giving an urban generation that had never even known its own wealth a glimpse of its gorgeous birthright of a horizon studded with stars by night and snowcapped mountains by day, a glimpse that a generation of children and young people have never had before. It seems that we hold in this strange, still moment a glimpse of a world that is possible, if we can grasp it.

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A Solution Without a Problem

When I began to study Shmita six years ago, I remember seeing it referred to as “an answer without a question,” or a “solution without a problem.” (7) People looked at it and asked, “what for”? Why would we do this thing that seems so difficult? Perhaps it was not possible to know, or to feel, the answer to this question until today. Perhaps it was for us that the Author of Torah encoded this mysterious lesson from the past.

People who have never experienced a day of rest, a Sabbath, or a Saturday if you are not religious, might wonder: what it would be good for? Wouldn’t life always be better with a little bit more money? Can’t I just take a few minutes of rest this afternoon, get a good night’s sleep, and maybe another couple of hours on Wednesday late afternoon, and it all adds up to the same in the end? And yet the idea of a day of rest has spread. First the Jews were called lazy by the Romans for adamantly refusing to work on the Sabbath; then the Roman people began to clamor for it. Now it is universal. Can this happen with the Year of Rest, once every seven years?

I ask you to dream with me, to plan. What would it be like if we agreed to meet back here in seven years for another, better Year of Release, hopefully not under the cloud of a global pandemic virus, and in a world where we have made real progress in mending the rifts between the secure and comfortable and the perilously economically fragile?

Could preparing for a world that takes a deep breath together bring about a transformation in our relationships, to our friends and family, to our fellow human beings in general, with places where we live, and with the Earth itself?

Let’s answer that question together. Let’s share our essays and dreams and visions, our art and our music and our literature, our data and statistics and research, and most importantly, our expression of Shmita in our intentional formation of social bonds and modes of human connection and interconnection.

Let’s begin to dream a dream of Shmita, and then wake up and bring the dream to life, together.

(This piece was originally published by Hazon. A few edits have been made to reflect the passage of time since it was published.)

References

  1. Farmers euthanizing livestock. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/hog-cattle-futures-fall-by-daily-limit-on-slaughter-disruptions
  2. Farmers pouring milk down the drain. https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-dairy-farmers-dump-43-million-gallons-of-excess-milk-1476284353
  3. Farmers plowing under ripe produce. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/04/06/Farmers-destroy-crops-grown-for-restaurants-hotels/2211585843469/
  4. Demand at nation’s food banks rises. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-19-crisis-heaps-pressure-nation-s-food-banks-n1178731
  5. Great Plains farmers growing fruit and vegetables during pandemic. https://civileats.com/2020/05/12/most-farmers-in-the-great-plains-dont-grow-fruits-and-vegetables-the-pandemic-is-changing-that/
  6. Potato giveaway in Tacoma. http://www.chronline.com/community/farmers-to-give-away-200-000-pounds-of-potatoes-at-tacoma-dome-on-thursday/article_afae25e0-93e9-11ea-9d2a-234cd8f5d015.html
  7. Stop the Machine. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/stop-the-machine-the-sabbatical-year-principle/
Actions, The Food System, The People

The Gift of the Fruit Tree

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Apple TreeIf you follow My laws and faithfully execute My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit. – Leviticus 26: 3 – 4.

You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.   – Khalil Gibran

Seattle is a city of indescribable abundance when it comes to fruiting trees. During late summer, the modest trees that you may not have even noticed standing along roadway medians and in city parks reveal their true nature, branches extended and fairly aching with the gift of heavy ripe fruit, the mercy of their abundance bestowed freely and without prejudice. Individuals fortunate enough to have a private fruit tree or two may wind up with hundreds of pounds of ripe pears, plums, quince, or figs in a season.

What to do with that abundance? How much of it can be harvested and enjoyed, and how much is destined to go unpicked and fall to the ground? How much is insect damaged? How many trees do not reach their full productivity for one reason or another?

The trees themselves are the spoken words of the Divine, and their meaning is clear. “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” they whisper. If only there were some way to care for these trees, to harvest this magnificent crop, and to enjoy what we can and distribute the rest freely to people who are hungry…

It turns out there is a way, and it is called City Fruit. City Fruit is a Seattle area nonprofit that cares for these trees, harvests their crop, and distributes it to food banks. If you’ve ever driven past an apple tree growing in the median of a road, or along a trail, or in a park, that has been draped in a fine white net, that’s the work of City Fruit, protecting the fruit from insect damage. At the end of the season, the undamaged fruit will be harvested.

City Fruit is truly Shmita in action, honoring the gift of the abundant fruit, and ensuring that it is put to its best and highest use. As importantly as all of that, City Fruit engages homeowners, volunteer harvesters, and a multitude of businesses and nonprofits across the city to build community around this gift. It engages each participant in the Divine project of nourishing human bodies; the project itself nourishes the soul of the individual, and of the community as a whole.

Here are some of the ways that City Fruit enriches our community:

  1. Netting public trees to protect the quality of the fruit produced
  2. Harvesting fruit in the fall
  3. Distributing fruit to food pantries
  4. Enabling homeowners to register their fruit trees and give permission to City Fruit to harvest and donate all or a portion of their crop
  5. Sponsoring classes to teach home owners to care for their trees
  6. Forming partnerships with different communities such as immigrants, refugees, and youth in growing, caring for, and harvesting fruit

Last year, City Fruit achieved the following remarkable statistics:

home-harvest-results-2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a world in which some seem to have so much and others have seem to have barely enough to survive, we are taught a lesson by each fruit tree. Each tree reminds us that we are all loved no matter who we are; that we are all worthy to be fed; and there can, indeed, be enough for all, if we will just take that lesson to heart.

Thanks to the groundwork laid by City Fruit, we can all take part immediately in fulfilling the Divine intention, which begins with the gift of the fruit tree.

Actions, The Food System, The Land, The People

Shmita: A Workplan for the 21st Century Economy

Imagine my surprise and joy when I opened my email inbox this morning and found a link to this incredibly inspiring Eli Talk about Shmita! Through  my long dormant connections to the wider Shmita world, Aharon Ariel Lavi was able to reach me, and his words give me comfort because now I know I am not alone in beginning to ponder the question of how to respond as the next Shmita cycle begins to awaken in our consciousness.

As it happens, I have never really stopped thinking about Shmita, and like Lavi, I too dream of a day when, as he puts it, “Shmita can become a self-evident part of our society and economy.”

If you are inspired after listening to this talk and would like to take part in this ongoing exploration of possibilities about bringing Shmita to our lives in Seattle, in ways both large and social and small and individual, please reach out.

I will be teaching about Judaism-based environmental advocacy at Limmud Seattle in January, and Shmita will definitely be one of the topics to be explored. The Limmud presentation is intended to be a catalyst for a great deal more exploration and unfurling of Shmita over the coming years, in various contexts and communities.

Like Lavi, I consider the re-emergence of Shmita in the world to be part of an open conversation, and the more voices and the more ideas that are involved, the more it will grow and the richer and more meaningful it will become.

I am also looking forward to reading Aharon Ariel Lavi’s book, About Economy and Sustenance, which takes on the challenge of placing economic thought within a Jewish spiritual context.

Actions, The Food System, The Land

Shmita and Perennial Agriculture

“Now the Sabbath-yield of the land (is) for you, for eating for you, for your servant and for your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you; and for your domestic-animal and the wild-beast that (are) in your land shall be all its produce, to eat.”

Leviticus 25: 6-7

If the land yields food in a Shmita year that has grown without the sowing of seeds or the tilling of soil, then according to Scriptural Law, that food is considered Sabbath-yield and is permitted.*  Clearly an agricultural system that emphasizes food obtained from plants which either re-grow from their roots each year, or which are permanent fixtures of the landscape such as trees, shubs and vines, will produce more useable food during a Shmita year than one that is primarily based on crops which require the soil to be tilled and re-seeded every year.

Intriguingly, whatever our motivation may be for aspiring to a Shmita-friendly agricultural system, with doing so would come layer upon layer of tangible, ecological benefits.

According to Eric Toensmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to ‘Zuiki’ Taro, a Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles, perennials can be low maintenance: they do not need to be re-sown each year, and with their larger root systems, can draw nutrients and water from deep in the soil. They are soil builders: they “improve the soil’s organic matter, structure and porosity, and water-holding capacity through the slow and steady decomposition of their roots and leaves.” They provide ecosystem benefits: their root systems hold water, and they provide habitat to beneficial garden plants and animals. And they sequester carbon dioxide in their deep root systems.

Jerry Glover is another advocate for perennial crops, particularly, in his case, wheat. Glover is part of a movement of plant breeders and agricultural scientists working to develop new breeds of perennial grain crops that could replace some or all of the annual species currently in use around the world. The focus on grain crops is important because about 70% of all of the world’s cropland is in grain production, according to National Geographic.

Such research is moving forward in the part of the Pacific Northwest known as the Palouse, which is one of the world’s most productive wheat-growing regions. The hope there is that by reducing tillage, wind and soil erosion can be avoided. In Perennial Wheat: the development of a sustainable cropping system  for the U.S., Pacific Northwest, published in the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, the authors look at some new wheat varieties that are being tested for productivity, with the hope that they could be used in certain soil conditions in combination with traditional varieties of wheat to reduce soil erosion, enhance wildlife habitat, and provide other benefits such as water retention and carbon sequestration.

One of the practices I am incorporating into my personal Shmita awareness is learning about perennial food producing plants that I can one day incorporate into my landscape (starting in 5776, since another of my practices is to lay off planting new things in my garden in 5775!) This year, I plan to learn more about plants that I might want to  grow and explore the possibility of growing them in our shul’s garden. Maybe at some point I will have the opportunity to teach about those plants, encouraging others to try some perennial vegetables in their own gardens – so that they will be ready with harvests to enjoy by 5782, the next Shmita year.

I will also look for ways to support the development of perennial grain harvests. Every day we read about the rigor with which the Earth is worked to produce annual commodity crops, such as wheat, corn, canola, and soy. The soil is tilled, leading to erosion and destruction of native microbe communities, then it is sprayed with chemicals to prevent weeds and pests. The cycle seems to be a vicious one, as more chemicals are needed as the pests adapt, and more fertilizer is needed as the natural productivity of the soil is not allowed to regrow. Chemicals then flow off the land, where they  pollute water bodies and kill fish. Farms are no longer wholesome places to raise children, and clearly they are not welcoming places for wildlife.

In contrast, Shmita offers a vision of agriculture in which people and wildlife are welcome and nourished; a vision of an Earth which belongs to God and is entrusted to us as a perpetually renewable gift. May there come a day when we learn to treat it as such!

*Rabbinic law does not allow the use of plants which may regrow from seeds dropped the previous year, or which otherwise look exactly like plants which are prohibited, in the belief that people may cheat. See Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilchot Shmita v’Yovel 4.1-3 (source: Shmita Sourcebook)

 

Actions, The Food System, The Land, The People

The Puget Sound: Deepening Our Connection to Local Abundance

There is simply no way to get around the fact that shmita is deeply concerned with food, as a source of life, of health, of well being, and ultimately, of peace. The shmita year compels us to express and embody our latent awareness that the true source of food is not with us. Food comes as a gift from the Creator by way of the land. And significantly, through shmita laws, the Creator infuses the distribution of food with a concern for justice and compassion for each and every being.

Shmita imagines a food system so well integrated with natural processes that it can be left to run on its own one year out of seven and still ensure enough for all, including wild nature. Furthermore the sources of these foods will be so woven into the physical environment where we live that we will be able to harvest them ourselves as needed, without the need for commercial harvesters. Surely this is a powerful vision of a return to life in a garden!

A shmita food system is local – so that we can personally access and pick from the farms where our food is grown. It is chemical free – if the food is to be shared with wild creatures, it cannot be laced with poisons. And everyone has direct access to sufficient amount to eat to contentment, “sova”. There is no waste and no stockpiling. According to Dr. Jeremy Benstein, director of the Sova Project, “the fact that our globalized agricultural system is highly unsuited to local decentralized community based solutions says a lot more about the ills of the system than about shmita and its relevance.”

To my great surprise and delight, there is a body in the Seattle area that is expressing great sensitivity to the way that a strong local agricultural system is a foundational element of community and individual health and well being. graphicThe Regional Food Policy Council is looking holistically at the interaction between local government, education, health, equity, environment, agriculture and economic development. It is made up of a broad range of local stakeholders including farmers, policymakers, academics, native tribes, people concerned with availability of food within vulnerable populations, restauranteurs, and food processors. They meet downtown monthly and the public is welcome to attend. Register at their site to receive agendas and meeting materials.

Actions, Texts, The Food System, The Land, The People

Sabbath of the Land – Foraging in the Wild

“Now the Sabbath-yield of the land (is) for you, for eating, for you, for your servant and for your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you; and for your domestic-animal and the wild-beast that (are) in your land shall be all its produce, to eat. ” – Leviticus 25: 6-7

IMG_20140814_192156138

The shmita year invites us to explore and rediscover our relationship of interdependence with the plants and animals that inhabit the margins of our lands and our hearts.

As we shift from eating commercial harvests purchased at market to what we gather for ourselves, we may find ourselves looking beyond the planted fields and cultivated gardens into the wilderness, the marginal lands, and the forests that border our communities.

When we are asked to join with those whom we may, in other years, consider “other,” those who work “for” us, animals, and wildlife, to share the Sabbath-yield of the land, with all of us as equals, we are invited to get to know one another. What tender herbs does the “resident sojourner” use? What insights, what recipes, what medicines? What are the names of his children? By learning and teaching one another, and by sharing our knowledge and culture with one another, how will the web of relationships within our community grow and change?

How will our perception of wildlife change (and let’s include all wildlife, mammals, but also birds, fish, and insects)? As we see with our own eyes their ways of life, their needs, their relationships with the land and one another, how will we respond? If we are asked to share with them, this surely implies that we will not begrudge them their portion with netting, or try to eradicate them with poisons. Maybe we will even look to our own marginal spaces, the edges of our property, public spaces near us, and feel moved to choose plants and shrubs for those spaces that will meet the needs of these new friends of ours for shelter and food.

During this shmita year, we should learn about and surround ourselves with the richness and abundance that we may otherwise fail to notice or appreciate, but which is all around us. Here are a few suggestions as to how to do this.

Please share your thoughts on other ways of responding to the text above.