Leader's Materials:
You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month – the Day of Atonement – you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you may eat only what the growth direct from the field.
Leviticus 25:8-12.
Shabbat and the sabbatical year afford the land the ecologically sound practice of taking a rest. Now we turn to the idea of the jubilee as a time of release of all debts.
- In ancient Israel, at each jubilee year, land was re-distributed, so that anyone who had accumulated large parcels of land over the past fifty years had to return it to its original “owners” (tenants, actually, since God is the real owner).
- Why do you think there was a need for this law? (To maintain an equitable and just society)
- How might some individuals have accumulated large parcels of land? (They could buy out people who had owed them large sums of money)
- What do you think happened to the former “owners” who were “bought out”? (They may have become servants or be homeless).
- Do you think this was just?
- How might the principles of this law be applied today? (Think about international agribusiness, which accumulates huge lots of land in the Third World, at the expense of peasant farmers)
Participant's Materials
You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month – the Day of Atonement – you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you may eat only what the growth direct from the field.
Leviticus 25:8-12.
Shabbat and the sabbatical year afford the land the ecologically sound practice of taking a rest. Now we turn to the idea of the jubilee as a time of release of all debts.
- In ancient Israel, at each jubilee year, land was re-distributed, so that anyone who had accumulated large parcels of land over the past fifty years had to return it to its original “owners” (tenants, actually, since God is the real owner).
- Why do you think there was a need for this law? How might some individuals have accumulated large parcels of land?
- What do you think happened to the former “owners” who were “bought out”?
- Do you think this was just?
- How might the principles of this law be applied today?