Eating Your Words

[Rav Yossie Bloch]

OK, it finally happened. Sh'mita is less than three weeks away, and the Jerusalem Post has been running a lot of stories about the preparations. The problem is that they invariably print a lie about the sabbatical year, which really upsets me. When Yael saw it this morning, she said, "You have to write a letter to the editor!" So I did, and here it is: To Whom It May Concern, I was shocked to learn that the Jerusalem Post has ruled, repeatedly, that all sh'mita produce from Jewish-owned land is forbidden for consumption. There's a book that's been out for a couple of years now, the Torah, in which God writes: "During the seventh year, you must remit and abandon it, and the needy of your nation will eat" (Ex. 23:11) and "The sabbath of the land will be for you to eat" (Lev. 25:6). While it is true that the rabbis prohibited s'fihin, species which are planted annually, and there have been various halachic solutions suggested for this, no one has ever prohibited fruit of sh'mita, which has sanctity; in fact, many authorities, such as Nachmanides, consider it an explicit mitzva to eat the produce of sh'mita in the proper way. The fact that some communities seek to avoid this mitzva--much like, say, army service--does not allow them to transform a divine command into a sin.