Making Earth into Heaven: Shemitah as a Shabbos for Hashem

1“Speak to Bnei Yisrael and say to them: When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall rest a Shabbos for Hashem.”¹ The holy Alshich writes: “We must pay attention to the words ‘that I give you,’ which are unnecessary. Who does not know that He, blessed be He, is the Giver, since ‘the earth and its fullness are Hashem's’?² All the more so, since the Torah says this several times.” So far his words.³ On the words “the land shall rest a Shabbos for Hashem,” Rashi explains: “For the sake of Hashem, as is said of the Shabbos of Creation.”⁴ But what is the link between shemitah, the seventh year in which the land rests, and the Shabbos of Creation, the weekly Shabbos?

2To resolve all this, let us begin with something well known: there are two paths in avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem. On the first, even when a person is busy with physical matters and all his needs, he remembers Hashem in them, as in the verse “Know Him in all your ways.”⁵ The Shulchan Aruch speaks of this at length; see there.⁶ But there is a higher path: a person occupies himself at all times with the spiritual alone. This path is like the World to Come, of which Chazal said: “In the World to Come there is no eating, no drinking and no sleep; rather, the tzaddikim sit with their crowns on their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.”⁷ As my holy ancestor R' Nosson Dovid of Shidlovtza, zt"l, said on the verse “The heavens are the heavens of Hashem, but the earth He gave to the children of man”:⁸ Hashem gave the earth to the children of man to make heaven out of it, that is, to make it spiritual. Not everyone is privileged to reach this level, only rare individuals and the tzaddikim of each generation.

3This was R' Shimon bar Yochai's view at first, when he came out of the cave and saw people plowing and sowing. He said, “They forsake eternal life and busy themselves with the life of the moment!”⁹ He held that people must occupy themselves only with the spiritual, since man was created to make heaven out of the earth. If people do not do so, the whole purpose of creation is lost, and they have no right to exist in the world. Here R' Shimon bar Yochai is consistent with his view elsewhere, for he said, “When Bnei Yisrael do the will of the Omnipresent, their work is done by others.”¹⁰ For every Jew was created to raise up all of creation by occupying himself with the spiritual. Yet not everyone is privileged to reach this. For most people, R' Yishmael's words apply: alongside words of Torah, “conduct yourself in the way of the world,” and read “and you shall gather in your grain” in its plain sense.¹¹ Even so, they too need times when the spiritual is their main occupation, such as the holy Shabbos and the shemitah year.

4This is the meaning of the verses “Six years you shall sow your field … and in the seventh year … a Shabbos for Hashem.”¹² If you conduct yourselves in the way of the world, working the land and dwelling “each man under his vine and under his fig tree,”¹³ you must also keep “in the seventh year … a Shabbos for Hashem.” In that year you should be occupied with Hashem's matters alone, not with physical ones. It is like the Midrash quoted in the Tur: “The Torah said before the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘Master of the world, when Israel enters the Land, this one will run to his vineyard and that one to his field, and what will become of me?’ He said to her: ‘I have a partner whom I will pair with you, and Shabbos is its name. On it they are free from their work and can occupy themselves with you.’”¹⁴ In the same way, the shemitah year was given to Bnei Yisrael as a year of rest from working the land, so that they can rise higher in the spiritual during it, as on Shabbos. This is what Rashi means by “as is said of the Shabbos of Creation”: the mitzvah of shemitah is in essence like resting on Shabbos, which was given to them so that it should be “a Shabbos for Hashem.” That is also why this mitzvah says “that I give you.” Through the power of this rest, and of their engagement in His service, Bnei Yisrael will raise all their affairs of the six years up to Him, and they will feel that everything is a gift from Heaven.

5May Hashem grant that we keep shemitah according to its laws, and in its merit may we be privileged to see the Beis HaBechirah, the Chosen House, built soon, speedily in our days.