A Thought on Parshas Behar

"...Shabbos Shabason yi'yeh l'aretz Shabbos la'HaShem..." "...a complete rest for the land, a Shabbos for HaShem..." (25:4) In overly concise terms, Shmita and Yovel are about bitachon. They are about having faith and trusting that HaShem will care for us. He does. Shmita is Shabbos for HaShem. ibn Shu'aib analyzes the concept of bitachon. He sees four facets of the experience, and the commandment, for a Jew to have secure trust and faith in HaShem. 1. We align our desires with all that HaShem wills for us. We shun those things which He forbids us. This way, whether or not we are worthy of His merciful intervention, we will at least be deserving of grace and kindness. This is what Dovid tells us (Tehillim 32:10) v'ha'botea'ach ba'HaShem chesed yesovev'enhu - the one who places his trust in HaShem will be surrounded by kindness. 2. We do not depend on intervention as inevitable or as automatic. This means that when we do not get what we yearn for, we don't complain that life is unfair. We instead accept that HaShem provides what we need, even if that seems not to coincide with what we want at that moment in time. 3. We recall and review past interventions, including miraculous ones throughout Jewish history. This strengthens our faith by making our comprehension and sense of faith more real. It is easier to trust in something that you believe in. 4. We give praise (birchas ha'gomel; seu'das hoda'ah) following Divine interventions. This demonstrates that we acknowledge that it was HaShem who delivered us, and it was not happenstance, chance, luck or our entitlement. ibn Shu'aib teaches that the concept of observing the Shmita and the Yovel are to express our utter faith and trust in HaShem's caring and kindness. We neglect the land and we abandon its produce in order to assert that we trust and feel secure that HaShem will still provide for us and protect us. We align our will with His, and we reject what He abhors. We accept our lot and view it as Divinely dictated. We spend the seasons away from our farms immersed instead in serving HaShem through studying His Torah, reminding ourselves of His Presence throughout our history and our present lives. We continue to worship Him during those seasons. We devote our year to bitachon in HaShem in all four facets. Now, why not just abandon all connections with mundane life and place all of our fate in His hands at all times? ibn Shu'aib says something powerful about this: in Divrei HaYamim 2:16:12 we read that King Asa was criticized for not seeking out HaShem when he sought out doctors during his illness. ibn Shu'aib comments that based on the words of that verse, we can infer that had he sought out the doctors yet also placed his trust in HaShem along with his trust in the skills of the doctors, he would not have been chastised. Using this as his thesis, ibn Shu'aib says that our efforts are generally an important part of our reality. During Shmita and Yovel, we put all our efforts into maximized faith. The rest of the time, we put efforts into our efforts, yet we make sure to include effortful faith in the process. Lastly, ibn Shu'aib offers a novel perspective on the consequence of neglecting the mitzvos of Shmita and Yovel. We know that the loss of the land of Israel and the exile were a result of our people not observing those laws. The casual explanation or assumption is that we were punished for abusing the land, so it reclaimed its "rest" by our having to vacate it. ibn Shu'aib posits that the loss of the land was a consequence of our neglecting our internal mitzvah of developing and acting on our bitachon. Not having worked on our faith when effortful faith could have borne the fruits of peace, security and vivid protective intervention from Above led to our forfeiture of the possibility of having such constant revealed sense of His Presence. We instead had to subsist in exile, where we are constantly laboring to survive, and to arduously seek out His Presence. Good Shabbos. D Fox