Best wishes for a
happy. healthy
NOW Year.

Best wishes for a
happy. healthy
New Year.

JULIUS STOBINSKY

MR. & MRS.
SIDNEY STOLSKY

Best wishes for a
. happy. healt1'.y
New Year.

Best wishes for a
happy. healthy
New Year.

BERNICE STONE

PAULINE SZTARKMAN

wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year.

We

RHODA & MARVIN PERLIN
MITCHELL, STEVEN & ANDREW

We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year.

SAM & BARBARA PRESS & FAMILY

I wish my family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year.

MRS. LENA RICHTER

L'Shana Tova

Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness.

.THE NORBERS
JOE, DENISE, JOSH AND JEFF

A Very Happy and Healthy
New Year to All Our Friends
and Family.

SAM, MINNIE & SY BERMAN
JODY AND SHELLY MENDELSON

We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year.

FRANK & FAY RADZINSKI

To All Our
Relatives
and Friends,
Our wish for a
year filled with
happiness,
health and prosperity.

BEVERLEY & JACK SINGER & FAMILY

146

Friday, October 3, 1986

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Land Rests
In Shrnitta Year

We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year.

LOUIS & SHEILA ROSE
AMY, BLYTHE & JAIMEE

DVORA WAYSMAN

Special to The Jewish News

S

L'Shana Tova

Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness.

ROZ & SID PELTON
of Plantation, Florida

L'Shana Tova

Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness.

THE MAX PINES FAMILY

12T1D11 Tana nlur7

vanDri nay o nav2

to all
our friends
and relatives.

to all
our friends
and relatives.

OTTO, ERIKA AND
CHUCK HERCZEG

11110T1 n2.117 1] D'2

THE HIRSCHS

HENRY, CARYN, STACEY & RYAN

11T1DT\

to all
our friends
and relatives.

MR. AND MRS.
RUBIN HERMAN AND RON

A Very Happy and Healthy
New Year to All Our Friends
and Family.

FOCUS

Tnn

MU'?

to all
our friends
and relatives.

JAY & BLANCHE JOSEPH

A Very Happy and Healthy
New Year to All Our Friends
and Famik.

May the coming year be
one filled with health,
happiness and
prosperity for all our
friends and family.

DR. AND MRS. MATHEW BOROVOY

hmitta occurs every
seven years beginning -_/
on Rosh Hashana, and
although for most of world
Jewry it is just a theological
concept with no practical ap-
plication, for Israel's obser-
vant Jews it has profound
significance. "The seventh
year shall be a Sabbath of
solemn rest for the land," we
are commanded (Lev. 25:4).
Exiled for the greater part
of Jewish history, the
Shmitta year was largely for-
gotten by Jews who were not
obliged to observe it because
they lived outside Eretz Is-
rael. Even those who lived in
Palestine and were perse-
cuted had reason to waive its
observance. But since the - \
birth of the State of Israel, it
has become a voluntary act of
piety for observant Jews and
is again a lively issue in the
conscience of Israelis.
During the First Common-
wealth, (C. 1000-586 BCE)
the Jewish people were lax in
observing Shmitta and many
lapsed into idolatry. Ezra
ruefully observed in the
epilogue to Chronicles: "And
they burnt the house of God
... and those that escaped
sword did
from the
Nebuchadnezzar carry into
exile into Babylon ... until
the kingdom of Persia came
to the government to fulfill
the word of the Lord until the
land has been paid its (unob- =/
served) Sabbaths; all the days
of its desolation it rested
until 70 years were corn-
pleted."
Neglect of Shmitta brought
exile, and for more than four
of the nine centuries of the
First Commonwealth,
Shmitta was not observed
properly. When the exiles re-
turned under Ezra and
Nehemia, they solemnly
vowed to keep it.
It required great self-
sacrifice to refrain from cul-
tivating the land when the
Romans levied a heavy an-
nual crop tax. Yet even with
the fields lying fallow and
vineyards untended, most
Jews managed somehow to
satisfy the Romans' demands.
The rabbis dealt leniently
with Jews who could not ob-
serve Shmitta. In fact, Rabbi
Yannai ruled: "Go forth and
sow in the seventh year on ='
account of the arnona (crop
tax)" (Sanhedrin 26a).
Jewish farmers abroad are
not obliged to leave their
fields fallow, as the obliga-
tion begins "... when ye
come into the Land which I
give you ..." (Lev. 25:2).

For many generations both
. Jews and gentiles saw the
logic of letting the land rest
periodically and voluntarily
practiced crop rotation. In Is-
rael today, still largely an
agricultural land, Shmitta
brings with it a very heavy