Process Theology and Eretz Yisrael: Why the State of Israel Desperately Needs Rabbi Artson's Process Theology

"Bless Adonai, you God's angels, you mighty ones who do God's bidding, who obey God's word" (Psalm 103:20). Rabbi Yitzḥak Nafḥa said: "This refers to those who abide by the laws of sh'mittah. And why were they called 'mighty ones'? For they see their fields abandoned, their trees untended, their fences breached, their fruits being eaten, and yet they repress their urge [to work the land and keep its produce] and say nothing."¹

The choice of Rabbi Yitzḥak Nafḥa, a second-generation amora living in the Land of Israel, to place the concept of sh'mitah amidst this verse was profound. For it is truly so that the art of releasing one's hold on his or her own plot of land in Eretz Yisrael and its produce is an act reserved solely for the brave.

Imagine that farmer, every crack in whose hands testifies to his enduring labor over the last six years. Imagine the vast obstacles to fulfilling the commandment of the seventh year: the fear of losing hold of the land, its shape and boundaries, and the deep rhythm of travail acquired by years of harsh labor. Releasing his hold would mean enabling other elements to reshape and redefine the land anew, its potential anew, its purpose anew. Yet in the seventh year, the farmers of Eretz Yisrael are commanded to let go of the land that they had cultivated and of their claim of ownership, doing so with the greatest of might. For thus is the cycle of farming in the Land of Israel, a cycle dependent on the brave art of sh'mitah.

And yet, sh'mitah is really only part of a greater picture. The commandments relating to the actual land of the Land—the so-called mitzvot ha-t'luyot ba-aretz—are, as a whole, a set of commandments restricting our sense of ownership of the land and its produce. Leket (the obligation to allow the poor to glean in one's fields), shikh'ḥah (the obligation to leave one's forgotten sheaves for the poor), and pei'ah (the obligation to leave the corners of one's fields for the poor to harvest for themselves) introduce us, too, to a very different sense of relationship with land, practically causing an invasion of unfamiliar human elements into the farmer's plot—initiated by the farmer himself, faithful to the word of God. It seems, therefore, that there may be a greater purpose to those unique commandments of Eretz Yisrael. They may perhaps be perceived as initial glimpses to a higher invitation, one that leads towards the ability to open our soil to change and to surprising intervention, and to renew our work of cultivation.

Rabbi Isaiah Ha-Levi Horowitz (1558-1630), called the Shlah after his most famous work the Shnei Luḥot Hab'rit, described this invitation in a most challenging way:

He who dwells in the Land of Israel must always remember its name, K'na'an, which teaches servitude and subservience (hakhna'ah) to God.

The Shelah is thus saying that the name K'na'an reflects a spiritual quality demanded by the Land of Israel, one that would deny the inhabitants the privilege of ever fully reigning over the land. And then he continues, "Thus, may it be granted you to be (that is, to think of yourselves as) strangers in your land, as David said: 'I am a stranger in the land: hide not your commandments from me' (Psalm 119:19). From this we learn that the settlers in that land must, as strangers, be in a state of ongoing subservience (Hebrew: yoshvei ha'aretz tzerikhin lihyot behekhneia) and not make the settling of the land into the essential element of the enterprise." It is thus their spiritual bearing that is the crucial thing, not merely the settlement or resettlement of the land.

The Shlah demonstrates this with an example: "And Jacob settled . . . in the land of Canaan (Genesis 37:1...