משוויון לשבת הארץ: התמורה הרעיונית בהלכות שביעית התנאיות

The salient modern studies of Rabbinic teaching regarding observance of shevi’it – the sanctified seventh year – have noted a pronounced inconsistency in the Rabbis’ implementation of the pertinent biblical laws. The economic burden of these laws is obviously heavy: they include forgiveness of all loans, leaving the land fallow for an entire agricultural cycle, and more. But the ways the Rabbis deal with this burden – and with the unsurprising widespread failure to live up to the severe demands of the biblical shevi’it – show striking variation, ranging from decreeing stringent sanctions against transgressors to creative leniency (as in the famous instance of Hillel’s prosbul). Previous accounts have sought to explain this in terms of an ongoing tension between pious adherence to the law and the pressure of economic reality, sometimes exacerbated by political-historical circumstances. This kind of explanation is not only prone to circular reasoning, but is in many instances entirely untenable, as the two opposing modes of Rabbinic response occur contemporaneously. Instead, I offer here a comprehensive account of the evolution of these laws in the tannaitic era in terms of a consistent conceptual shift, reflecting a clear value-orientation. By distinguishing among the several aspects of the shevi’it laws, I show that the Rabbis sought to curtail the components promoting economic equality, while embracing and enhancing the components sanctifying the seventh year as an agricultural Shabbat.