Halakhah su Levitico 25:10

In these years, when its inner character is being revealed, the nation gives a sign that it is preparing itself for an even higher level; one that can lead to a keen awareness of the godliness in life. The awakening of such awareness heralds a new spirit that announces great things: “Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month—the Day of Atonement— you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land,”²⁹Lev. 25:9. and a godly spirit of general forgiveness, such as the individual experiences on Yom Kippur, will arise through the holiness of the Jubilee and spread throughout the entire society, clothing the whole people in a spirit of repentance and acquittal that will straighten out the injustices of the preceding period: “You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants.”³⁰Lev. 25:10. From Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, slaves would neither become free to go home, nor would they remain slaves to their masters, but they would eat, drink, and rejoice with crowns on their heads. When Yom Kippur would arrive, the beit din would sound the shofar, slaves would be free to go home, and fields would return to their original owners.³¹Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 8b. See the introduction to this volume for a discussion of Rav Kook’s original reading of this talmudic passage. This freedom does not erupt like some volcano; it emerges gradually from the higher holiness. It is not a radical exception to the regular social order but flows from within it, nurtured by the life of the shorter, preceding periods until, reinforced by the revelation of our choices for good, it has the power to repair past injustices.

If individuals fall from the status of free men and women and, forgetting their inherent nobility, are made into servants—“the ear that heard the words at Sinai, ‘the children of Israel are My servants’³²Lev. 25:55.—My servants, and not the servants of My servants”—and yet in spite of this he went and acquired a human master for himself³³Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 22b. The Talmud here censures the Hebrew slave referred to in Exod. 21:6, who elects to remain a slave beyond the mandatory period. His choice shows that he has not internalized the innate freedom and dignity that attaches to being a servant of God, not of man. Rav Kook understands the return of each person to his ancestral land as the remedy for the indignity of selling oneself as a slave.—now his freedom and self-respect are returned to him. Holiness flows into our lives from the highest source, the place from which the nation’s soul suckles light and “freedom is proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”³⁴Lev. 25:10. Inequality in landed property, which resulted from bodily and spiritual weakness and error, sapped his strength, until he was forced to sell his ancestral patrimony. Now, however, restitution comes, corresponding to the people’s status at the beginning of its journey. The original property returns to those who have suffered from the vicissitudes of life, distorting their sense of their true value: “In this Jubilee, everyone shall return to his original holdings.”³⁵Lev. 25:13.

All these are signs of a spiritual vitality that this people will manifest when a divine sense of morality is alive within them. They will emerge from the complexity of the nation’s political situation in its full richness, “when all its inhabitants are living there.”³⁷Talmud Bavli, Arakhin 32b. The Talmud sets “when all its inhabitants are liv-ing there” as a condition for the observance of the Jubilee year. This is inferred from the verse referring to the Jubilee “freedom is proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Lev. 25:10), i.e., the Jubilee’s proclamation of freedom may occur only when all the land’s inhabitants are living on it. Rav Kook understands that the fulfillment of this condition effects a qualitative change in the people’s political situation. Thus will the people find a way to reveal an awareness of the godly integrity that stands above its innate quality, that is already within it, and that protects the people’s purposes so that they do not decline or disappear entirely.