32/33 Behar/Bekhukotai | Living in sacred balance with the earth

Rabbi Jonathan Kligler

Our Torah ancestors were an agrarian society, acutely aware that they must live in harmony with the needs of the earth and the creatures with whom they shared the land. Hence, the rules for the Sabbatical year, when the land rests fallow, and the Jubilee year, when land is redistributed, with the understanding that we do not and cannot own the earth. We align this wisdom to the wisdom of Native Peoples of our continent, as Robin Wall Kimrerer writes in her book "Braiding Sweetgrass."