This entry is this substack's original intent: Raf's Dvar/Riff Torah -- Recently redirected for the "Is Raf OK?" series (at the well advised impetus of sister Tanya).
Updated post email release: To fix a couple of small issues in the section on the מודה אני.
Select Parsha Highlights
The sabbatical year for fields (every seven years). The Jubilee year of ownership reversion (every fifty years). A ban on charging interest. Rules for servants and slaves.
And much more.
I sometimes think the sabbatical and jubilee years are a compromise between socialism and capitalism. G-d claims ownership. We benefit, but essentially we rent.
Seven years for sabbatical and fifty for jubilee. Fifty: In those days that would be a lifespan, right? In that light, a person would have seven "phases" of life, each of seven years: 1) Childhood; 2) Adolescence; 3) Early adulthood (responsibility came earlier then); 4) Marriage & household; 5) Mature adulthood; 6) Maturity and, shall we say, the off ramp.
Seven phases of life.
A reset (reassessment?) marking each transition. (At least materially.)
When it comes to the jubilee, I don't mean "rental" in the sense of "borrowed time." I am thinking: Land is purchased for up to fifty years--a lifetime. Then the jubilee comes and it reverts. While the land is held, profit (crops) are yielded for each "cycle of life" (seven years) and then there is a pause.
Defining the Jewish sense of time is an off-and-on “family project.” We have discussed that the practice of Shabbat seems to create a different perspective of how to use time. What to do with it. I have long felt that shabbat brings time into focus: I will stop sending emails on Friday afternoon, so which ones are actually most important? Those get sent. The rest get parked (and often forgotten). Shabbat is a kind of "forcing function" that creates focus and a kind of decluttering: Secondary tasks get dropped [usually forever]. Primary tasks get done.
I wonder if the jubilee and sabbatical years do something like this for business sense. Yes, you have a plot of land today, and it will revert at the jubilee so don't waste what time you have with it. Ditto the sabbatical: Pay close attention to the land and then you and the land will get a break.
Don't take for granted that which is "rented" from G-d.
Don't take time for granted.
When you think about it, isn't life and everything else essentially "rented" from G-d? We didn't create anything from scratch. We were born into a world of physics, chemistry and biology. Those rules and systems simply run. I benefit from them, but I don't get credit for their existence. This is also what children are: They are users, consumers and beneficiaries of time. The gift of life is the gift of time.
What I make of the world is an accident and a blessing.
Because we are all on borrowed time.
What do we say in the morning?
מודה אני לפניך מלך חי וקיים שהחזרת בי נשמתי בחמלה - רבה אמונתך
I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faith-in-me is great.
I find the English wanting. It doesn't convey what I feel in these words. To me and my (partially educated) sense of Hebrew, I find the meaning better rendered as:
I am grateful to be in your presence, oh king of ongoing life, who has compassionately restored to me my soul [consciousness after the unconsciousness of sleep]. You, G-d, are faithful/empathetic/compassionate to/with me. [Thereby inspiring my gratitude.]
[Raf translation/interpretation]
(Thanks to A.K.)