Strange Land, New World

I am the first Jew to live in this cloistered Benedictine monastery. I don’t blend. I wear a kippah everywhere I go, and I observe the Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. I’m studying to becomearabbi ,andIlivehereinthisremotecommunityofCatholic monks vowed to chastity and obedience. I didn’t come here because of any personal interest in their religious practice. I came here to resolve a question I’ve been living with for a decade, since spending a year of contemplation in a matchstick hut on a hilltop in the Galilee. A lot of things happened that year, but there are three in particular that have become central features of my life: Shabbat, hitbodedut, and the Yovel. The first two are practices; the third, a quest. Shabbat is Hebrew for the Sabbath, and I’ve been keeping it—no computer, phone, TV, car, or money from Friday sunset to nightfall on Saturday—ever since. Hitbodedut is an ancient practice of walking out into the fields, the forest, the hills … wherever you can be alone, and talking out loud—to God, the source of all being, Allah, whatever you want to call it. It’s my central daily ritual; I don’t know who I’d be without it. The Yovel is the Jubilee Year, and I first truly noticed it that year in the Galilee. I was immediately taken. I had spent the previous four years working to end hunger. During that time I encountered no one who had the answers I was looking for. I decided to find my own. Israel—the land, the region—had been, in a sense, the source of an idea—the idea of one God—that swept the globe. It seemed to me we needed a new idea, not to counter that one but to move us forward as a species, to lead us to change the way we relate to one another so as to move beyond the eminently avoidable crisis of hunger. I decidedtogoandfindoutwhatitwasthathadgiventhatfirstideasuchlegs . That’s when I came upon the Yovel. If you don’t remember it from the Bible, the Jubilee Year is the fiftieth year of the economic cycle, when all property and productive resources are meant to be redistributed equally to ensure, among other things, that disparities in wealth do not balloon out of proportion, and to firmly establish economic justice as a core feature of life in the Promised Land. It’s God’s holy reset button. After spending so much time applying Band-Aids, it was refreshing to come across an approach that was boldly idealistic, that addressed the problem in a fundamental, structural way. Here was the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, wearing its social justice boldly on its sleeve. I wondered how it could be that as a people we can get so caught up in the particulars—so bent out of shape if someone uses a light switch on the Sabbath or blends linen in a wool garment or, God forbid, enjoys a little bacon—yet when it comes to something so obviously relevant to this world, so clearly beneficial and spelled out in black and white with no room for misinterpretation , we hardly even acknowledge it, let alone practice it, not once. N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 59 Strange Land, New World by Jonathan Shefa Thoughrecentlydefrocked,JonathanstillconsidershimselfaJewishmonk.HenowlivesinJerusalem, where he continues to work on Global Sabbath. He holds degrees from McGill and Harvard. Visit www.globalsabbath.com. CREATIVE COMMONS/JRWOOLEY6 Religion_1.qxd:Politics rev. 10/12/10 1:00 PM Page 59 So I began to look into it, and I’ve been doing so ever since, delving deeply into the dimensions ,meaning,andpracticeofthisancientcommandmentthatseemedembeddedin myconsciousness.Atonepoint,IbeganworkingwithanOrthodoxrabbitostudyallofthe commentaries and super-commentaries on the section of the Torah dealing with the Jubilee Year. I quickly went from one to three mornings per week. I’d get up at dawn to make my way through the slush and snow so we could pore over the texts. If you knew me, you’d be all...