Let's Talk About Shmita
Learning With Your Own Havruta
Course Details
Shmita, the biblical, agricultural seven year cycle, is arguably the most under-appreciated idea in Judaism. It embodies profoundly relevant values of socio-economic equality, environmental sustainability and societal renewal. Yet, in recent decades the public face of shmita has emerged in increasingly bitter disputes about kashrut certification in Israel.This course was created for the shmita year 2014-15, a year which has proved to be different. A network of rabbis, educators, social activists, environmentalists and business people spanning Israel and the Diaspora had begun recovering the values of shmita and finding creative ways to express them in the public sphere. This remains true for the current shmita year as well.
This course will explore some of the foundational texts and values of shmita, seek to understand a little of the history of shmita since the return of Jewish agricultural pioneers to Israel in the 1880s and attempt to envision new possibilities for shmita in the coming decades. This course is offered in partnership with Hazon.
Rabbi Yedidya (Julian) Sinclair is an economist, writer, and rabbi. He began his career as an economist advising the UK government, was Vice President and Senior Economist at Energiya Global, an Israeli solar developer, and works as an independent consultant on development projects in Africa. Yedidya was Senior Rabbinic Advisor for Hazon, and Campus Rabbi at Cambridge University, where he also taught Jewish Studies in the Divinity School. He holds degrees from Oxford and Harvard Universities and lives with his family in Jerusalem, where he enjoys tour guiding in his spare time. His book, The Sabbath of the Land, was published by Maggid Books in February 2022.
