Jewish law: How to purchase produce during shmita

• Author: SHLOMO M. BRODY
• Published date: 30 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Scholars cite many different reasons for this mitzvah. The Torah itself highlights the potential social benefits of granting time for the poor and underprivileged (as well as for animals) to rest (Exodus 23:12) and enjoy the fruits of the abandoned fields (Leviticus 25:6-7). Yet already in antiquity, the rabbis found that these laws could actually harm the underprivileged. The threat of debt cancellation caused lenders to stop providing loans to the poor, which ultimately led Hillel to famously enact the pruzbul document, which allowed people to collect their loans after the shmita year. Many Talmudic sages, followed by most medieval scholars, believe that shmita restrictions today stem only from a rabbinic decree. A few even assert that our observance of these laws is a pious custom.

This factor was critical for many rabbinic scholars who searched for dispensations to help grapple with the economic problems posed by shmita when large numbers of Jews returned to Israel in the late 19th century. Deeming it economically untenable to leave the lands fallow, several rabbinic scholars, led by Rabbis Shmuel Mohliver and Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, supported the heter mechira mechanism in 1888 (5649). This allowed Jews to formally sell the land to non-Jews for the year, thereby enabling farmers to continue working the land. Many decisors, including Rabbi Naftali Berlin, outright opposed this legal fiction, while others, including prominent Jerusalem scholars Rabbis Shmuel Salant and Yehoshua Diskin, fluctuated in their support depending on their assessment of the economic strain. Over time, the primary representatives of each side became Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who favored the heter mechira, and Rabbi Avraham Karelitz (the Hazon Ish), who opposed this solution.

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Heter mechira rests on the following halachic assumptions: 1) Shmita today does not have the status of biblical commandment, as discussed above. 2) Land in Israel owned by a non-Jew does not need to remain fallow. This was the opinion of Rabbi Yosef Karo, which was historically observed, even as his Safed colleague, Rabbi Moshe Trani, strongly opposed this position in a famed 16th century polemic. 3) Even a Jew may work the fields owned by a non-Jew. 4) Despite the general prohibition of selling Israeli territory to a non-Jew, one may temporarily sell Israeli territory...