A Powerful Teaching on the Earth from Our Bat Mitzvah

This past Shabbat we celebrated the Bat Mitzvah of Stella Wolson. Stella’s parashah (portion) was a double portion called Behar-Behukotai, the culminating portion of the third book of Torah, the Book of Vaykira, or, Leviticus.

Stella’s parashah begins with, from our contemporary perspective, a radical set of land use laws.

Now, lest you be concerned that Stella drew the short straw in landing on a set of arcane property laws for her parashah that no 13-year-old could find modern relevance in, I can reassure you that (a) Stella would have been up to that task (b) these laws are indeed very susceptible to modern commentary.

Her parashah begins, “Adonai spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the LORD” (Leviticus 25:1-2). God goes on to explain what this intriguing notion of a sabbath for the land means. “Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the LORD: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard” (Lev. 25:3-4).

Stella next explained the subsequent land innovation identified in the parashah: the jubilee year. Every 50 years, God instructs, “You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family” (Lev 25:10). Here, too, we encounter a radically different approach to property ownership. Land could not be sold “beyond reclaim.” In the 50th year, all land sales reverted to the original owner (a feature which was factored into the initial sale price; it caught no one by surprise). This was apparently to prevent some landowners from amassing too much wealth and others from going destitute.

Underlying both of these features of ancient, sacred property law—both the sabbatical and jubilee years—was a simple and straightforward principle: “the land is Mine,” said God. “You are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land” (Lev. 25:23-24).

Stella quickly latched on to this image of the land as, almost, personified, in need of tender care, and did not mince words, taking on the prophetic voice, and in a sense wanting to go even further than the Torah: “If you ask me, the land really needs more than just one year of rest,” she wrote. “We work the land to exhaustion using chemicals and machines while we sit inside and rest.” She concluded that “we need to remember that the earth is not ours to do what we please with” and offered a teaching that our ancient ancestors used to have better senses of smell before losing this trait as we lost our connection with the earth. “The Torah was God’s way of trying to remind us to take care of the earth,” she said. Amen, Stella. Thank you for your provocative and thoughtful Torah.