Should Love Be Earned or Given? What Shmita Teaches About Marriage

The Torah often addresses both of these people within us. The part of us that resonates and understands that there's truth. And then the part of us that says, "Well, what about how I feel and what about what this means to me?" Okay friends, the story begins the Torah portion of Bahar which talks about the laws of Schmita of sabbatical actually talks about the laws of sabbatical every seven years in the land of Israel there is a harvesting sabbatical you can't plant you can't do anything to do with the fields you got to just leave them alone and let God take care of business every seven years. And it's like Shabas. Shabas is every seventh today. But the land sabbatical is every seventh year. This starts from I mean God is telling us about this in the Sinai desert as we're on our way to the land. Everybody's letting us know you're going to get to the land and you're going to participate in this 7-year cycle of what we call schmita of the sabbatical. What is the purpose of this mitzvah? What is the reason for this mitzvah? Every mitzvah has its own value that it conveys, its own meaning. Um, on the most basic level, if you want to just be simple, and this is true, but it's quite simple. God said to do it, so we do it. But that's every mitzvah. Every mitzvah has that in common. But besides the fact that it's God's will and God wants us to do it, every mitzvah conveys some sort of value, has some sort of particular reason for it. And the commentaries discuss the significance of Shmita, the significance of letting the land rest. Let me start with the Maharal. The Maharal of Prague. Rabi the law of Prague from the 15th or 16th century. Rabi the Lao of Prague. The Maharal explains that what is this idea of resting? You rest because there's nothing to do. You got it all. We rest every Shabas. We worked six days, but on Shabas, this world is on a holier state. We're on a holier state. And we have this feeling of completion. God completed the world. He was complete. There's nothing else to do. We feel complete. There's nothing else to do than to just be, to just exist. And it's the same thing with the land. Just like us as human beings, as Jews, we have Shabas. The Jewish land also has Shabas. We are complete on the seventh day. The land is complete on the seventh year. It parallels the human cycle. That's what the Maharal of Prague says. One of my favorite biblical commentators is known as the Cleoer. The Cleoer quotes my monities who says letting the land rest is good for the land. It's healthy for the land itself. Cleakar doesn't like that. We're not doing this for us. It literally says in the Torah, it should be a shabas hashem, a Sabbath for God. It literally says in the Torah to do it for God. So why is my monity saying do it for ourselves? It's good for the land. It has to be good for God. How is it good for God? So the clea explains that God every seven years forces us to have faith because if you're going to let the land rest and you're going to let the r land recharge and you're not going to plant, how are you going to sustain yourselves? How are you going to eat? Especially since, and we'll talk about this soon, the first uh Shmita cycle, when the Shmita begin, when you get there, we'll talk more about that soon, but when you get to the land, you start off with Shmita. Then you have a seven-year cycle. In the seventh year, again, you have Shmita again, you have the sabbatical again, which means you're coming from the comfort of the Sinai desert. And the reason why I say comfort of the Sinai desert is because there were the clouds of glory that protected them. There was the mana from heaven that fed them. There was the well of Miriam that sustained them and enabled them to drink. They had all their needs. They're going to come to the land of Israel. They're going to have to start working. They're going to have to start getting their own food. They're going to have to start planting. They're going to have to join the real world and actually work. This is why the spies, you know, going back to the story of the spies in the Bible, in the Torah, the spies never wanted to go to the land of Israel. They were intimidated. And one of the reasons is because it was simply more comfort comfortable in the desert. It's easier to be Jewish when God is giving you all your needs and feeding you and you don't have to actually work for a living. Little did they know that the whole purpose of existence and for which God had created the world was to go into the workforce and be an inspiration in the real world and not just sit in your cloud of glory on your eye and be all holy. That's not the purpose of creation. So we're going to come to the land and it's like okay we have to actually work. We have to feed ourselves. We have to hustle. and we start off with a vacation and it's like we're itching like what happens to hustle? How am I gonna feed myself? The very first thing we do before working is we start off with faith. We know whom we're really working for and who our and from whom our paycheck is really coming from. And we start off going into the workforce by not working. And by the way, I just thought of this now, but Jews are forced to do this all the time. It's like you join this new job, you join your new company in September, and it's like, oh, by the way, Russashan is coming up two days, then Yum Kipper, then two days of sukus. and then two days of okay now I could work but we start off the workday and and that's not easy for people to tell their employers especially when they're new but you start off your workday with faith this is what the kakar says this is what shmita is all about it's about faith I'll share with you a third interpretation by another classic commentator known as Rabenuay. Raen Bakaya says similar idea to the clear with a little bit of nuance. He says this is almost like a flavor or a taste of the messianic era which is the ultimate purpose the ultimate purpose of existence of is is really leading to the messianic era leading to this period in time where we're going to get to know God where we're going to get to experience God's presence described in Isaiah where the whole world will get to know God like the like the the knowledge of God will cover will be filling the world will fill the world. My English is off. The knowledge of God will fill the world as the sea fills the earth. And with that comes incredible tranquility, incredible peace, incredible love, incredible connection. Life no longer becomes about the hustle. It becomes about purpose and meaning. And it it really is like one big shabas. That's what the messianic era is described as in in Kabala Shabbat. It's it's one long shabas. It's this whole sacred era and period in time. And we have to experience that weekly on a micro level, but we have to experience that every 7 years on a macro level as well to remind ourselves that our goal in going to the land is for a greater purpose. It's not just a land that we have so we can escape genocide, so we can escape because of the Holocaust or these are good reasons to have a land. These are good reasons to be a Zionist. Maybe it's safe, but that's not the purpose. It's not about running away from harm and having a just being a sovereign nation. It's about this sacred space that has sacred time where heaven and earth can literally meet the land of Israel, especially with the temple there. And we are waiting for this period in time. We're doing whatever we can to usher this period in time. And we have to stop and allow ourselves to experience it by not doing which is normally what we do but by being. Shabas is about not doing but being. We don't do things on chabas. We don't most of shabas is about not doing. I mean there's a lot of there are things we need to do on shabas like kdish and stuff but the the big part of shabas which people struggle with. It's hard is not doing because you're just trying to be. And we have to do this on a macro level in the land of Israel every seven years. Not do but just be. And being and not doing is very expensive. Like the Cleo says, it requires a lot of faith. But this is what we're going to have the luxury of experiencing in the messianic era. We have to start now. This is what says everything in the Torah, and we already see this just with Shmita unpacking it just a little bit, everything in the Torah has relevance. Even if you and I don't own a plot of land with which to fulfill the mitzvah of Schmita, we don't own a plot of land in Israel to do this mitzvah necessarily. The mitzvah is still relevant on a spiritual level. And what I mean by spiritual is emotional, psychological, metaphysical. Like we can walk away from this discussion implementing schmita in our own life, in our own heart on some level. But before we do this, I h there's a question that commentaries ask by way of introduction. And here's the question. I'm going to read the text. I'm going to give my own loose translation and you tell me if something pops out. If something seems difficult to understand, God tells Moshe, "Speak to the children of Israel. Tell them when you come to the land that I'll give to you and you should rest in the land. It should be a Sabbath for God. First thing you do is rest and let there be a Sabbath for God when you come to the land. Six years you should sew your field. Six years you should harvest your vineyard. You should gather your produce. Again, this is just my loose translation. And in the seventh year, it should be a Sabbath, a Sabbath of all Sabbaths. It's not just a weekly Sabbath. It's the Sabbath. It should be a day of rest in the land. A Sabbath for God. You should not plant or sew. You shouldn't harvest. You notice something interesting here? You show up to the land and the very first thing you do is rest. Then you work six years. then you rest. Which is kind of interesting. That doesn't replicate the weekly Shabas. It's not like you start off with Shabas, then you have a six day work day week, and then you have Shabas again. Shabas is the culmination of a work week. The sbatical is not just the culmination of a seven-year cycle. It's the beginning of a seven-year cycle. You get to the land of Israel. We haven't started working yet. We haven't done anything yet. We haven't engaged yet. We literally just showed up. So I would think, okay, work six years, seventh year from now, from when we just entered in seven years from now, we're going to have a sbatical. That's not what the Torah says. Have a sabbatical right away. Then work seven days, six years, sorry. Seventh year, have a sabbatical. Okay, I understand the seventh year sbatical. You're resting from working. But when you just show up to the land of Israel and you haven't done anything yet, why would you start off with a rest if you haven't done anything yet? Okay, there is the Cleakar's answer which I think answers this question on some level because it represents faith. It's like we're itching to get work done, but no. start off with faith. But I want to share with you another perspective, a deeper perspective, a perspective that I think really can talk to our heart and soul. And my hope is can really help us experience alignment. And what I mean alignment is we we often experience dissonance. We experience a gap between what we know to be true and or what is actually true and how we feel about truth. There's a gap. There's a gap between reality and how we experience reality subjectively. There's a there's there's I mean the the the raw truth is not always comfortable for a reason, right? Being blunt and just saying life, just saying it as it is without any filter is a good way to lose friends for a reason. And the reason is because there's a gap between truth and how we experience truth. This is true in the paradigm of Torah. Torah is the ultimate truth, what God wants. And it's like, well, how do I connect it out? Where do I fit in this? How is this meaningful to me? But this is true in really any relationship. This is true in a marriage. In a marriage, you have both of these connections. You have the truth. You know what the truth is? You're married whether you like it or not. You're stuck with each other whether you like it or not. So, stop complaining. Right? That's the truth. But nobody wants to hear that truth. You know why they don't want to hear that truth? Because it doesn't align with how people always feel all the time. Okay. So now you have to take a step back and be sensitive and talk to people's hearts. And that's not a problem. That requires a lot of patience. But the reason why is because we are misaligned. Humans are by default misaligned. And one of the reason one of the things we're trying to accomplish in this world is alignment. One of the thing this is I I think where you see this the most and the reason why I mentioned this is because you guys have familiarity with this. You see this in the Tanya literally if there's one message you walk away from the Tanya in my humble opinion is having alignment being able to be authentically Jewish and being able to carry that authenticity in everything we do in all of our relationships. The Torah often addresses both of these people within us. The part of us that resonates and understands that there's truth. And then the part of us that says, "Well, what about how I feel? And what about what this means to me?" If we could bring these close together, we're going to just shine. We're going to thrive. We're going to be resilient. We're going to be passionate. If a person can align their feelings with the marriage and not feel that the marriage is fighting their feelings, I use marriage as an example because number one, I think this is applicable to marriage, but number two, I think it's a great example to really just understand soul alignment. If a person if a person's feelings was aligned with the commitment they had made, how beautiful would that marriage be? Right? And the Torah is addressing both of these people. I'll give you an example. The Jewish people are often referred to as the children of Jacob because Jacob is the forefather of the Jewish people. Isaac is also the forefather of the Jewish people, but he also um the forefather of the Amalachites from Asov. Abraham Abraham is the forefather of the Jewish people. He's also the forefather of many of our Arab cousins because of his other son, Ishmael. But the Jewish people are often called Jacob Yakov because he is the exclusive forefather to the Jewish people. So we carry on that name Yakov which tells us a lot about ourselves. What was Yakov's other name? Israel. Israel. We are the people of Israel. And we carry both of these names. And they talk to two different parts of us. They talk to the part of us. There is a part of us that's a Yakov. There's a part of us that's a Israel. Let's go back to the story of how Yakov earned the name Israel. Yakov is by himself. If we look back at the book of Genesis, Yakov is by himself. He went back to retrieve some jugs that he had left when he was joining his family. And Asov really wanted to get this birthright that Yakob had stolen fair and square. So the angel of Asov, not sure what that means, but the angel of Asov comes and tries to assault Yakov and attack him. He ends up striking him in the sciatic nerve and destroys his sciatica, which is why we don't eat the sciatica vein in animals for that reason. And what does the angel say? He says, "Yakov, I am your father." No, I'm kidding. Sorry. had I had [Laughter] it. Sorry. I was getting carried away here. [Laughter] Okay. Okay. What [Music] is too much diet [Laughter] coke? What do we say? Hey, do we cut out my crazy laughing from this video or keep it? That's some good diet cooking. I think you should keep it. I'll have what he's having. Right. Totally keep it. Okay. So, he says to to Yakov, "What is your name?" He says, "My name is Yakov." He says, "From now on, you're going to be known as Israel." Well, where did he pull that name from? Where'd he get the name Israel from? He says, "You're a minister over angels." In other words, the angel was telling Yakov that angels can fight Yakovs, but angels can't fight Israel. And I thought I'd be able to fight you because I thought you were just Yakov. Turns out there is a version of you I was unaware of called Israel and I can't fight that version of you. The word Israel comes from the word s a minister. There's a part of you that has dominance and rulership, charisma, conviction. I thought I'd be able to overpower you, but there's a version of you I was unaware of. And and explains this is really the story of of every single Jew where sometimes theahara comes and attacks us. Sometimes that appears in the form of an internal voice that tries to destroy our confidence. Sometimes it appears in the form of external social pressure and turns out that there's a version of us as Jewish people that's not just a Yakob, but that's also a Israel where that voice just isn't relevant. It's like, yeah, you you can say that. I don't really care. You know, when I when I first started posting videos on on YouTube, I would get comments, especially since October 7th, of like free Palestine and you Jewish scumbags causing genocide and and I used to get into it with these guys, which is a very Yakov thing to do, dialogue. And then there was a yurel part of me that just doesn't care. I literally just don't care. It doesn't matter. I put a smiley face. I respond with a smiley face. Like great. Like you know what? Like whatever, man. You know, there's a part of us that is emotionally connected, intellectually connected to God, to our spouses, to our family and friends. And that connection grows. That connection fades. That connection fluctuates. That connection escalates and deescalates. It changes because it's very human. It's psychological. That's the Yakov. It's earned or what's the opposite of earned. Uh could be earned. It could be unearned. What? What's the word? Lost. Lost. Okay. That I should have known that. It could be earned. it could be lost. Then there is a part of us where this relationship can't be earned. And because it can't be earned, it can't be lost. It just is. It's inherent. That's the Israel. It literally just is the way just to put it in different language because this this when you learnic texts you're going to see this duality this theme again and again and again but very often with different vernacular different terms sometimes this idea appears in term of being a servant to God that's the yakov where there's work and toil And then you know if you want to be a good servant you got to work hard. Then there's being a child of God. That's the Israel. You know what you have to do to be a child of God? Nothing. You don't have to do. You have to be. Servants do. Children be. They just exist. This is the work week versus Shabas or the six years of working the fields versus the sabbatical where we're just being. And we'll get there in a second. But I want to share with you a few other terms that really, at least to me, drive this idea home. In Hebrew, there's what's called panmiov, which means the internal heart and external heart. There is an internal feeling of connection that you don't earn and you don't lose. It just is like a child. And then there's an external connection which you earn, lose, grow or fade depending on however you treat it. There's a part of our Judaism, and this is true in any relationship, but there is a part of our Judaism that can be lost to a degree because there is a deeper part of our Judaism that ain't going away. Our psychological human selves fluctuate and change based on our environment or based on how we shape it. But then there's a deeper part of us. And if we can align these two parts of ourselves, we can get the best of both worlds. There's something beautiful about a relationship that isn't merit-based. It just is because that's just the way I was born. That's just who I am. That's just who we are. We're just connected no matter what. There's something beautiful about that. There is a certain stability that comes with that. But it's hard to take responsibility for it and it could become deeply impersonal. It's not always motivating. It's not always mine. And Sometimes you want to hear your spouse say, "I'm not just married to you, but I actually love you. I actually want this. I'm actually interested. I've actually feel like I've earned a connection with you. Even though I know the connection was there inherently all along, there's something beautiful about something that is earned because, you know, it could be lost. There's beauty to both relationships. And when we align them, I I just I I don't know if I have the words to describe it, but I want you to imagine it yourself. I want you to experience if you think about this for a moment. If you woke up tomorrow morning and felt this alignment in your relationship with God, with your soul, knowing that you're connected and feeling that you've earned the experience of this connection at the same time, you felt this alignment. What would you notice about yourself that might be different? How would you feel different? What would you think differently? How would you walk into sh differently? How would you put on fill in differently? How would you look at another soul differently? This alignment is just so important and I don't know if I have the language to present it. But the reason why I'm mentioning it is because this is what the two schmita are, the two sabbaticals are. The first sbatical you show up at the land before you even work you just be which is what sbatical is. You just rest. You just experience connection. Sobatical's over and now you have to work for six years to experience connection again because now you have to integrate that connection into your identity. You now you have to earn it for six years. We work we serve we work the land. Edic teachings explain that working the land is a euphemism. It's literal as well. I'm not I'm not negating the literal interpretation here. But there is psychological euphemistic meaning, homalytic meaning. Working the land is like prayer because the way you bridge these two sabbaticals. The inherent connection and the earned connection. The way you align them is by working the land. The way you align them is through prayer. Davvening. Davening is tila. means connection because you're connecting two very different ends and you're aligning them together. Working the land means you're taking the earth, you're softening up so you can make it more fertile and you sew. You put seeds. You take that potential seed of incredible connection and you put it in the right environment in a fertile environment that has the potential to produce growth and that's what doing is that's what prayer is. Um in a shul with other people around there's an environment of growth. The language we spoke about last week how language creates reality. The language of dominant creates an environment of growth. Environment where we could talk about what the soul really wants to experience to experience that growth. And when we do, we come to the land. We just exist in our most deepest sense of connection. And we say, I'm now going to articulate this through deting so I can integrate this connection into into me into who I really am so that it's personally meaningful, not just true. And now after six years of working, I can finally rest again and inherent and and feel the sabbatical of the lamb, feel the ultimate connection. This is why explains that it's really represents a a reflection of what we're going to experience in the messianic era, ultimate alignment. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.