Resources

This year, I’ve found myself obsessing over the Passover Seder plate. I don’t usually do that, I promise! I like it, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t dwell on it all that much. But this year, I have been reading a fair amount of sources on new symbols that can be added to (or...

If the full yovel sourcebook feels a little overwhelming, consider these two condensed forms as a starting point. The Yovel Sampler offers one text from each of the eight sections, in Hebrew and English, with discussion questions. It’s a great way to get the 30,000-foot view on yovel in a single class. The “Yovel at...

Many groups and individuals have decried Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories on moral or legal grounds. The purpose of this white paper is to envision what the values of the halakhic tradition might be if we considered the State of Israel and its occupation through those eyes. Its analysis will also inform to some...

This Torah portion begins the book’s extensive treatment of the sacrificial system that was practiced in Israel for more than 1000 years. And it is now some 2000 years since we stopped offering sacrifices. In the interim we have developed a sense of distance from that ancient cultic practice. Nevertheless, it may still be possible...

In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up...

The Torah describes counting a cycle of seven seven-year periods—forty-nine years in all, and then sounding the shofar to announce the beginning of the yovel (Jubilee) year, during which land returns to its original owners and slaves go free. We associate the shofar primarily with Rosh Hashanah, which is known in the Torah as Yom...

The Jewish mystical tradition offers depictions of periodic cosmic rebirth, in which every 50,000 years, the entire universe returns to its original state. This can be seen as a more mythic, cosmic version of a the radical notion of land-return in our earthly yovel, the biblical commandment in which every fifty years, land would return...

In The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously frames Jewish perceptions of holiness as holiness in time rather than in space: “The quality of holiness is not in the grain of matter.  It is a preciousness bestowed upon things by an act of consecration and persisting in relation to God.”  He describes Shabbat as a...

In the yovel year, the enslaved go free; the Hebrew word d’ror refers to this release, and to liberty itself. Perhaps the most famous use of Leviticus 25:10 is on Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, on which is enscribed: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”.  The iconic bell was created for the...

We don’t know exactly when the Yovel year begins. It’s the culmination of seven cycles of seven years, each culminating in a sh’mitah—sabbatical—year. The only way to arrive at Yovel is to count seven years, then seven again and again until forty-nine years have gone by. Similarly, the Torah never tells us precisely when to...