By Amy Meltzer I’m no farmer. The amount of produce harvested from everything I’ve ever planted would surely not top ten pounds. The impact of adapting the agricultural principles of…
By Deirdre Gabbay As we move through liturgical time, we are called upon to embody the various mindsets that Torah wishes specifically to cultivate. During Pesach we meditate on the…
by Akiva Gersh It’s fair to say that Shmita inspired me to become religious. After learning about it and other environmentally-related laws and values of the Torah towards the end…
The digital countdown clock at Isabella Freedman now reads that we’re under 35 days until Shmita. It’s hard to imagine how quickly time has raced since the clock read nearly…
It is 11:30 am, and I am sitting in a field in the middle of the Rocky Mountains surrounded by horses, trees, compost toilets, a bike blender and solar ovens….
Shalom! I’m Molly, a member of the program support staff for this tour, and I’m thrilled to be putting up the inaugural post for this blog. Today marks…
Dear All, Ahead of this shabbat’s Torah portion of Behar Sinai (which begins with one of the explications of shmita in the Torah) I want to give you a flavor…
Written by Charlene Seidle for a session at the recent Jewish Funders Network Conference Posted on eJP on March 20, 2014 As funders, the onset of shmittah offers a good…
by Yigal Deutscher Commonly translated as the ‘Sabbatical Year,’ Shmita literally means ‘release.’ Many may recall the year of Shmita as a time when agricultural lands were collectively left fallow. Yet, the Shmita…
by Yigal Deutscher Jewish culture arose and took shape primarily as a land-based tradition, directly linked to a particular piece of land. Many of the laws, rituals, and beliefs of…
by Yigal Deutscher Many of us, even if we are Jewishly knowledgeable, know less about Shmita than we do about other Jewish traditions. Today, Shmita does not define Jewishness like…
Cycles of time are central to Jewish life, and they are amongst the most significant of our contributions to the world around us. The modern weekend of western tradition is…
Dear Friends, The story of Hazon is often a story about stories. Next week, on Tuesday, April 1, at the Green Building in Brooklyn, we’ll be telling the stories of…
Roseanne Barr invoked Jewish values to change lives at an innovative, enlightened, and provocative Purim retreat at Isabella Freedman this past weekend. In the last decade of the 20th century,…
While we have been working to raise Shmita awareness and organizing here in the states, there is much simultaneous work happening in Israel. Much of this is being organized by…
Within the Shmita Project, we have been exploring many of the complex issues that Shmita touches upon on a societal level. Beyond the societal aspects, however, there is something very…