Halakhah su Levitico 25:8

Life during the shmita year is guided by the natural, inner desire for goodness and justice, equality, and calm, which God has planted within the nation. The people did not become like this by imitating something external; it is part of its nature. When this inner life starts to reveal itself in all its purity, it does not stand still. It is expansive and generous, seeking the power to act and to influence its surroundings. Israel’s inner nature soaks up the elevating power of its good choices, which restore our lives and the pure penitence that reconnects us to the source of the Jewish people’s inner strength. Holiness grows throughout these spans of time: “Count the shmita years in order to sanctify the Jubilees,”²⁷Talmud Bavli, Arakhin 32b. The Talmud describes here how the advent of the Jubilee was to be calculated. to prepare life for the Jubilee. “And you shall count off seven weeks of seven years—seven times seven years—so that the period of seven weeks of seven years gives you a total of forty-nine years.”²⁸Lev. 25:8. Shmita will suckle from the life channels of the Jubilee, which will gradually rise and spread, until they give shape to the life of the people. From those sources will the shmita be filled with a wholesome and invigorating glow that will arise out of the yearning for a divine order that fills all existence and not merely its own inner being.

The Jubilee is “seven sabbaths of years” (Leviticus 25:8). The Jubilee begins on the Day of Atonement, as it is written “on the Day of Atonement you shall pass a Shofar throughout your land and sanctify the fiftieth year” (ibid. 25:9–10). So the beginning of the Sabbatical year is like the beginning of the Jubilee year. Do not be puzzled that the year did not begin with the Day of Remembrance (Rosh haShanah, the first of Tishre). For if we should calculate that the first of Nisan was exactly on the vernal equinox, then the true third season (autumn) needs to add approximately ten days, the excess of the the solar year over the lunar year.¹⁰² Spring and summer together comprise 187 days (see note 52), while six lunar months consist of 6 ׳ 29.5 = 177 days. Therefore, we must add 10 days to the six months from Nisan until Tishre for the beginning of autumn. This turns out to be close to the difference between a solar year (365 days) and a standard lunar year (354 days). Also, since the sun’s movement is slow.¹⁰³ The sun’s movement appears slower near its apogee, which is during the summer (see note 49). Therefore the year begins with the Day of Atonement or Tabernacles.

The commandment of counting the seven [cycles] of seven years: To count the years - seven years - seven times to the Jubilee year, when we are in the Land of Israel after we have settled it, as it is stated (Leviticus 25:8), "And you shall count for yourself, seven cycles of seven years; seven years seven times." And this commandment - meaning this counting of the the sabbatical years until the Jubilee year - is given over to the great court, meaning to say, the Sanhedrin. And the commandment is such that they would count each year and each cycle of seven years until the Jubilee year, like we count the days of the omer. Afterwards, they would sanctify the fiftieth year with resting the land and proclaiming freedom for all of the slaves and maid-servants. And all the lands return to their [ancestral] owners.