7 year Sabbatical and the need for financial reset
As originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post on May 24, 2024.
Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved. –Herbert Hoover
I’ll start with a public service announcement: Remember to shut all windows on Saturday and Sunday nights as it’s Lag B’omer which means lots of smokey bonfires. While I usually will write about the special day, this year I’d like to focus on this week’s Torah portion, Behar. At the beginning, we learn the laws of Shmitta- the Sabbatical year, where in year 7 of the cycle the fields are to lay fallow.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs Z”L wrote, “The fundamental insight of parshat Behar is namely that economic inequalities have a tendency to increase over time, and the result may be a loss of freedom as well. People can become enslaved by a burden of debt. In biblical times this might involve selling yourself literally into slavery as the only way of guaranteeing food and shelter. Families might be forced into selling their land: their ancestral inheritance from the days of Moses. The result would be a society in which, in the course of time, a few would become substantial landowners while many became landless and impoverished. The Torah’s solution, set out in Behar, is a periodic restoration of people’s fundamental liberties. Every seventh year, debts were to be released and Israelite slaves set free. After seven sabbatical cycles, the Jubilee year was to be a time when, with few exceptions, ancestral land returned to its original owners.”
Rabbi Sachs continues, “Three things are worth noting about the Torah’s social and economic program. First, it is more concerned with human freedom than with a narrow focus on economic equality. Losing your land or becoming trapped by debt are a real constraint on freedom. Fundamental to a Jewish understanding of the moral dimension of economics is the idea of independence, “each person under his own vine and fig tree” as the prophet Micah puts it. (Mic. 4:4) We pray in the Grace After Meals, “Do not make us dependent on the gifts or loans of other people … so that we may suffer neither shame nor humiliation.” There is something profoundly degrading in losing your independence and being forced to depend on the goodwill of others. Hence the provisions of Behar are directed not at equality but at restoring people’s capacity to earn their own livelihood as free and independent agents.
Next, it takes this entire system out of the hands of human legislators. It rests on two fundamental ideas about capital and labour. First, the land belongs to God:
“And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine. You are foreigners and visitors as far as I am concerned.” Lev. 25:23
Second, the same applies to people:
“For they [the Israelites] are My servants, whom I brought out from Egypt, they cannot be sold as slaves.”Lev. 25:42
This means that personal and economic liberty are not open to political negotiation. They are inalienable, God-given rights. This is what lay behind John F. Kennedy’s reference in his 1961 Presidential Inaugural, to the “revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought,” namely “the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
He concludes, “Third, it tells us that economics is, and must remain, a discipline that rests on moral foundations. What matters to the Torah is not simply technical indices, such as the rate of growth or absolute standards of wealth, but the quality and texture of relationships: people’s independence and sense of dignity, the ways in which the system allows people to recover from misfortune, and the extent to which it allows the members of a society to live the truth that “when you eat from the labour of your hands you will be happy and it will be well with you.” (Ps. 128:2)”
Thinking about this it’s interesting to note how Joseph’s economic plan to save Egypt from famine, fits in. I realize that it was a time of crisis, but it still seemingly flies in the face of what Rabbi Sachs postulates. In any event, I think that would be a whole other article. But something worth thinking about.
It’s as if every 7 years and 50th year were times for both an individual and national financial reset. While we don’t exactly practice widespread debt forgiveness (except for President Biden and student loan forgiveness!) nor do we require property to be returned every 50 years to its ancestral owners, I think the concept of a financial do-over should be alive and well. How many times have I mentioned the verse in Proverbs 22:7 that the “borrower is slave to the lender?” I can tell you from years of working with many people to help get them out of debt that they don’t feel like they have freedom. They are so busy juggling all the ‘debt’ balls in the air that they lose their internal peace, are always on edge, and it impacts their close relationships.
Learn from this week’s Torah portion. Now is the time to start over. Get out of debt, live within your means, save and invest. That is the way to have both financial and inner freedom.
The information contained in this article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. or its affiliates.
Aaron Katsman is the author of Retirement GPS: How to Navigate Your Way to A Secure Financial Future with Global Investing (McGraw-Hill), and is a licensed financial professional both in the United States and Israel, and helps people who open investment accounts in the United States. Securities are offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. (www.prginc.net). Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, SIFMA, FSI. For more information, call (02) 624-0995 visit www.aaronkatsman.com or email aaron@lighthousecapital.co.il.
