As We Have Also Forgiven Our Debtors…

Last updated on: September 26, 2014 at 4:27 pm by Leah Libresco

As We Have Also Forgiven Our Debtors… 2014-09-26T16:27:40-04:00 Leah Libresco

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This year’s Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of a shmita year for Jews; the time, once every seven years, when the land is supposed to be left fallow, the poor are allowed to eat what does grow, and debts are forgiven. The New York Times had an interesting piece this week on how rabbinical authorities have translated the tradition in the modern age, when few people (Jewish or otherwise) work on farms:

Yossi Tsuria, a founder of NDS, a video-software company now part of Cisco Systems, has been promoting a list of 49 things technology firms might try to fulfill the shmita spirit. They include a patent pool, where companies could donate patents not part of their core business to be used by any entrepreneur; required rotation of business models and management positions, and: “A year without exorbitant bonuses. The money can be directed to social causes.” (No. 32). “The workday will be no longer than eight hours and the work week will have no more than five days” (No. 40). “Email only works during business hours. If an email is received out of hours, a message will be returned explaining policy.” (No 41).

Just as land is left fallow in order to prevent depletion of the soil, these companies are trying to figure out what is a good idea of respecting their human capital and preventing it from being exhausted and selfishly used up.

I hadn’t heard the specific word shmita before, and it turns out, while I was reading the article, that I had confused it with Jubilee years, which actually once every fifty years, once the once-every-seven-year shmitas have repeated seven times. Leviticus 25:10-12 describes the Jubilee as follows:

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

The jubilee tradition meant that there could be no perpetual debts. Although a debt might pass from parent to child once, or a family in slavery might bear children into bondage, once every fifty years, these debts and persons were released. No one could claim a permanent hold on another.

There is no such tradition in most of the world today, so the Rolling Jubilee movement has been trying to fill the gap.

We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt — instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. All proceeds go directly to buying and canceling people’s debt.

To date, Rolling Jubilee has used slightly over $700,000 to wipe out $18.5 million in debt, freeing people to begin the next new year in the sweetness of freedom.

Shana tova.

Today is the fourth day of a novena to St. Therese of Lisieux, timed to end on her feast day (Oct 1), which is also the One Rose Invitation Day, sponsored by Imagine Sisters

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