B"H

What is the Connection Between

Leviathan and Shmitta?

A very good Jew described the created reality as being something in which he often feels lost and out of control.

I've never experienced the world this way. I didn't know that any Jews really do.

שָׁם אֳנִיּוֹת יְהַלֵּכוּן, לִוְיָתָן זֶה יָצַרְתָּ לְשַׂחֶק בּוֹ

A Jews' existence in reality is supposed to be like that of a ship skillfully navigating the surface of formed reality and like that of the Leviatan's experience in the sea.

Witness the Leviathan! It looks like a fish, but it is not.
It comes to the surface to breathe, then dives deep into the ocean. It lives in the sea, like true fish, but it is not a fish.

A Jew's conscious experience should be that of HaShem willingly diving into the sea. God playing at being human and playing that He is a human striving to be God. Like all sport, life is challenging and demanding, often exhausting and always pushing us past our former limits.

But a Jew should never be lost in creation. How can we give the Gentiles a hand out if we ourselves are drowning?

A Jew's existence is something like physicists calling a photon a wavicle. A photon is a wave that acts like a particle and a particle that acts a wave. We Jews are God acting like human and human acting like God - and we must have the conscious ability to adapt to either phase as the circumstances require.

 Evidently, there was always a tendency for Jews to get lost in the creation and be מושפעים  rather than משפיעים.

It is precisely for this reason that we are supposed to keep  שמטה in every detail, including the nullification of loans.

That is why I keep calling for a retraction of Prozbul.

It is because Jews do not nullify their loans that they get lost in the creation of their own hands. That is exactly what
עבודה זרה really is. The mitzvah of שמטה  was given to us to protect us from being lost in the reality we are creating.


Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan , Tzfat

DoreenDotan@gmail.com