It’s not enough to leave Egypt — we need to understand what we are leaving behind and where we are heading. To do that, we need to explore not just the 49 steps of the journey from Egypt to Sinai, but also the 49-year journey that ends in the Jubilee year.
Jubilee is the fiftieth year, the year after the seventh Shmita or Sabbatical year.
In Shmita, we “re-wild” the land – gathering produce from any field we wish, never hoarding (or selling) what grows, taking down fences to let wild animals share food alongside us. At the end of Shmita, all debts between people are canceled – we become equals once again. Then, in the Jubilee, all land is redistributed, so that each family has an equal share.
The vision underlying Jubilee is that society needs a radical overhaul at least once in a generation, and more frequent re-tuning – every seven years – in order to reflect the divine intention for humanity and the earth. It’s not enough to be good people doing good deeds. We also need to let go, undo and remake our relationships with each other and the land, if we want an equitable and just world. This is so important that we are commanded to practice letting go every single week – this is the Sabbath, which is a mini-Shmita. S
habbat, Shmita, Jubilee, are rooted not just in celebrating Creation but in aligning ourselves with land and Creator. The opposite of Jubilee is a society like the one we live in, where accumulation has no limit, and destruction of the earth seems unstoppable. But Jubilee is “a time of rebirth for the whole world, grounded in divinely-given freedom” (Rav Kook).
It teaches us that it is not too late to remake our society and ourselves, to fix this world.
