When Less Is More: The Shmita Episode

Hey there, my name is Rabbi Jen Gubitz, and I'm pumped to be joined by Rabbi Jodi Gordon as we welcome you to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times. Hey, Jodi.

Hey, friend. OMFG, it is still a really fabulous 4-letter word. Those 4 letters really do the trick, from OMFG, it's keshvan, To "OMFG, it's fall!" to "OMFG, pumpkin spice!" As rabbis, we have come to know that when the stories of our lives meet the stories of Jewish tradition, transformation, growth, something awesome happens.

Jodi and I are experts in the letters J and G, the month of October, squeezing 4 days of work into 3 days in the office, and finding joy. And we want to bring to you our conversations that express our love for Judaism and make it relevant in the world as we mine Jewish wisdom for strength and resilience in these unprecedented times. With a dose of humor. Because, as Odette Pollard says, "Laughter lets me relax. It's the equivalent of taking a deep breath, letting it out, and saying, 'This too will pass.'" That quote is usually attributed to a story about King Solomon about the transience of our lives. But in this attribution to Odette Pollard, which I came across randomly in a Google search. I was fascinated by her work, which relates to the theme of our episode today, burnout and shortages in Shmita. Odette Poller writes about working smarter, on regaining balance, and simplifying our lives.

So once again, it's taken us a bit of time to record together because this past month hasn't been simple or balanced because #HighHolidays. Let it be known that, OMG, we do miss you, all of those days in between. But it's finally Cheshvan, the Hebrew month sometimes referred to as Mar Cheshvan or Bitter Cheshvan because there are no Jewish holidays in this month.

Woo!

So there's a lot of swag, you know, stuff we all get, for a limited group of people that reads something like rabbis and/or Jewish professionals love Cheshvan. But before we revel in this month, Jodi, let's do a warm-up. What were your favorite things about the High Holy Days? Ready? Go!

I love High Holy Day music. I love the songs we only really hear once a year on the High Holy Days. And personal moment of joy, I get to do a little bit more of that singing in our congregation on the High Holy Days. So for me, that's, that's my high. What about you, Jen?

Gefilte fish. I love gefilte fish, so I bought myself some fresh, very expensive gefilte fish this year, and I learned that I actually prefer it when it comes from a jar.

Wait, but I have a question. Do you still eat it with horseradish even if it's not Passover?

I do not.

Ooh, interesting choice. Interesting choice.

I especially love the fishlets, which are little tiny tater tot gefilte fish.

That is something I'm not going to be able to unhear. I also, I do like gefilte fish, but it's hard. Okay, we're just— OMFG, we are so sorry for putting that in your ear now. My other favorite thing about the High Holy Days is, is it just that sense of, of like coming back in a reunion and of seeing people, which of course I think for most of us was weird in at least some way because of COVID But this year felt better than last year. It feels like we're creeping back toward a sense of the holidays as a time where we might gather with family or see a more expansive version of our community. So I like that.

I watched a lot of really great services this year. I got to hear Rabbi Sari Laufer speak, Emma Lutz's beautiful cantorial music, as well as Lucy Fishbein in Jersey. But actually, my favorite memory of the High Holy Days was when I asked my 7-and-a-half-year-old niece, Nola B., about Sukkot and what we do during Sukkot. And she said, "It's when you shake the leafy maraca." Well, she's so smart. She's very smart. She's very smart.

She's right. I'm with Nola B. I'm with Nola B.

Last episode, we talked about a holy havdakah, the reprieve and breath we got in the early days of summer, But we didn't yet focus on a critical juncture in our Jewish calendar, which is the holy Havdalah itself: Shmitah, the sabbatical year. Upon the shofar's call into this new Jewish year of 5782, we entered into the Shmitah year, which happens every 7th year. I did a lot of learning on Shmitah that I found from studying materials by Chazon, and here's what I learned. It's a year where the land gets Shabbat. No more reaping or planting. Where debts are released—hello, public service loan forgiveness—enslaved people are freed, and it involves a communal gathering called the hakel. And then every 49 years we get a Jubilee. But even Rambam, who helped to codify the Jewish calendar, cites that his own calculations are not conclusive. And so for that and other reasons, including that many of us live in the Diaspora, the Jewish world does not observe the Jubilee year. Also, it is on the Liberty Bell.

Shout out to Philadelphia! And yes, it is on the Liberty Bell, although it does use slightly different language because the Liberty Bell quotes the book of Leviticus saying, "And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land." But all of these aspects of Shemitah— it's a Shabbat for the land, it's a Shabbat or a rest from debt, of enslavement— To me, it's all about liberation. It is a release, a freeing, if you will.

I feel like the Liberty Bell quote would be supportive of No Pants Subway Ride Day in New York City, something that is totally freeing.

I mean, here is where I would also, I would quote the wisdom of our friend and Jewish musician Julie Silver, who I believe is who taught me that when one takes off their bra at the end of a long workday, they should write the blessing they should recite the blessing for Matir Asurim, to God who frees the captive. And so, you know, I think that's also very liberating. I would go with that. But joking aside, one of the main themes of Shemitah that I think relates to our modern-day experience is also about wealth distribution. So during the Shemitah, as it's described in Torah, we're not supposed to plant or reap. We are allowed to eat whatever grows on the land that was planted in prior years, as are the needy, the enslaved, and so forth. But when I think about letting debts and enslaved people be released, there's so much potential there. Like, if we actually did that, it could break cycles of generational poverty, predatory loans, unethical servitude, not to mention giving the land, our earth, a chance to rest. Now, this already happens in a lot of agricultural spaces that rotate how they plant crops, but Shmita also has this amazing psycho-spiritual dimension that I think changes our perspectives. So the concept of Shemitah is part of Torah's vision for a just society, right? The Shabbat for the land, and that also extends to the humans who toil over it. And Torah is pretty unequivocal in this regard. Rest is actually built into the plan. It's not an afterthought. In fact, I would argue rest is in fact the whole point.

Part of the practice of Shemitah, too, is faith that God will provide, that there would be enough in the years prior to sustain people through the Shemitah year. It's an interesting perspective because these days how crops do it all is clearly due to climate change, which is humanity's fault, or particular areas of humanity, like major corporations and large population centers. Climate change advocacy is urgent and not something we can take a break from, and its urgency actually goes hand in hand with the value of observing Shmita. I'm not sure, though, if I have enough faith in humanity to make it happen.

So we have this idea of Shabbat, it's built into Shmita, and then we also get that, that English word that we might have a little bit more familiarity with, sabbatical, and this whole ethos of release. And side note, apparently it's recorded in both the Midrash and the Palestinian Talmud that there was an ancient river in Media that flowed for 7— for 6 days, excuse me, and rested on the 7th. So maybe the river took a sabbatical. But these days when we hear the word sabbatical, we mostly think of how it relates to academia. And in fact, fun fact, the earliest mention of an academic sabbatical year is in 1880 from, drum roll please, Harvard.

You pack your car for a year and get out of Dodge. I need to work on my accent.

Oh, Jen, your Boston accent is terrible.

It was really bad. Yeah, I know. I try. I can't even. I'm guessing that most higher education institutions started off with religious ties. Which is how we went from Leviticus to taking breaks from teaching. I did some research and read a paper by Bai Kang and Michael T. Miller, "An Overview of Sabbatical in Higher Education," and the discussion around academic sabbaticals actually roots itself in agrarian language, noting during a sabbatical, quote, "The professor plows and tills himself, but is not expected to produce a crop of students that year." After Harvard, Cornell, and Wellesley College followed suit.

I think it's worth noting that, of course, the professor plows and tills himself. But the academic sabbatical does not yet imagine women in that role. But what's so interesting is that this academic sabbatical, not only is it not just a vacation, I would say it's not a vacation at all. Because the academic is still expected to produce work and articles.

To do research and to publish. My brother-in-law is an economics professor at William Mary, and from what I've gleaned about his sabbatical time, it's mostly a reprieve, as that quote mentioned, from the tedious work of managing students and classwork. But during that time, he gets a lot of research and writing done, and sometimes he takes his family to cool places to do it.

In its original intent, before it became an academic sabbatical, and frankly before in the context of our rabbinic lives, Jen, where where we and our colleagues sometimes get to take a sabbatical once every 7th year, Shmita, or the sabbatical year, is meant to be more than a nap or a break or a quick vacation. It's this— it's meant to be, I think, a total reorientation toward a life that's shaped by the spaces in between, about regenerating. And this is something I think we've both learned from our friend and teacher, Dr. Betsy Stone. Shmita is about lying fallow.

Loosen, loosen, baby. You don't have to carry the weight of the world in your muscles and bones. Let go, let go, let go.

Loosen, loosen, baby. And lying fallow doesn't come naturally to a lot of us, but it's about letting go of our need to control time and space and land and people Instead, if we do that, that big sacred amazing pause, we just see what happens. And so Shmita, I think, is also about letting our hands and our bodies do nothing so that maybe our hearts and our souls can heal. I talked about this a little here in Great Barrington, Massachusetts during Rosh Hashanah, and there was a story I told as part of teaching a little bit about Shmita about a man who comes upon his friend in the woods one day, and his friend is sawing away at a tree.

The friend was struggling, heaving his saw back and forth, barely creating sawdust, let alone making much headway in cutting down this tree.

"Friend," the man says, "you have to stop.

Your saw is dull." The man replied, "I have no time to stop. I have to keep going. I need to get the tree down so I can finish chopping it up for firewood. Winter's almost here.

There's just no time." And so the man keeps at it, sawing back and forth and back and forth. And again, his friend tries to intervene, saying, "Friend, you have to stop. Your saw is dull." But still he keeps on sawing away. 10 minutes passes, and then an hour, and then a whole day. And the man tries again, saying to his friend, "Friend, you have to stop. Your saw is dull." It's been a day already and you're not much further along than when you started. You have to stop, sharpen your saw, take a break, and then come back. You'll get it done much faster.

This time the friend listened. He brought the saw to the whetstone, running it across until it gleamed, newly sharpened, ready for the task at hand. He could scarcely remember the saw ever looking this sharp before. He sat for a moment, drank a coffee— I hope cold brew— and went back to the tree.

Months later, as these two friends sit in front of a roaring fire, crackling with the wood from that tree, now dry and seasoned, he turns to his friend and says, "Thank you. You were right. I had to stop.

My saw was dull." When I heard this story in your sermon, Jodi, it resonated so much for me because our saws are dull. The Torah is pretty serious about observing Shmita, and there are punishments for neglecting it, right? What happens when our saws are dull and we don't take a moment to lie fallow and pause? In the Torah, Shmita was designed for an agrarian society, so I wonder what it would look like for us today to practice Shmita in our urban or suburban lives. What if we took it seriously such that we cannot neglect it? Because our saws are dull. Jodi, since we're neither farmers nor professors, although I did just get an AeroGarden, so I'm kind of an inside farmer right now. Mostly it involves 17 hours of very bright light.

Jen, you could be a farmer in those clothes.

But mostly we're not. So how do we make Shmita a practice this year?

I mean, I'm thinking about this constantly for a number of reasons. So two quick stories to answer the question. One is that I took a vacation day on Tuesday to attach it to my standing day off, which is Monday, and had this sort of like, oh my God, and also like, duh moment with myself on Monday night when I was like, I'm in such a good mood. Why am I in such a good mood? And I realized it's because It was my second night in a row where the next day wasn't a work day, and that's not my, that's not my standard.

Um, so it's most people's. Most people have two days off in a row, right, if they are off Saturday and Sunday.

So yeah, news flash, for news flash, like, a lot of rabbis don't have that. And, and, you know, that's a reality we signed up for. But in thinking about how to make this a Shemitah year, I am thinking about like what I can stop doing. And it's right. And like, we all know the ways in which that's hard and everyone's version of why that's hard is different. Mine is, you know, because even like, should I take a day off from my work? Like, it turns out my children eat food every day. Like they still have to wear clean clothing. Like, right. It's, there's that. But the more serious answer to the question is that I am taking a sabbatical this year to mark having been here in my congregation for actually now more than 7 years. And so this incredibly generous way that our synagogue lives out the Jewish values of Torah is that, that we, the rabbis of the synagogue, get 3 months off. So not a full year, but let's be realistic here, for a sabbatical. And my husband and I have just started planning it. And so the thing that I'm thinking about, not just saying like, yay, sabbatical, because it's not a vacation, is that what I want to do with that time is I want to live as a Jewish civilian. To me, that's how I imagine that time being regenerative and recuperative. So we're actually going to go and live in Israel for a few months and do life there. And my goal is, you know, I want to accept invitations to other people's Shabbat dinners. So if we have any listeners in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and you want to invite me and my family for Shabbat dinner sometime between next March and June, we're there. I want to go to synagogues where other people lead the services and I just sit there, and maybe I hear a beautiful new melody, or maybe I learn something, but maybe I don't, right? Maybe I just sit there and then I go home. But I— so for me, like, my Shemitah practice for this year is moving toward, um, a taste of civilian lifestyle.

What about you? I love that. I'm really glad that your congregation is fulfilling that commitment. And to all of our lay leaders in congregations around the country, should this ever come up in contract negotiations with your clergy, think about this episode and give them a sabbatical. Yes. So for me, so first of all, I invented the hashtag #leshavebasofa, which is the commandment to rest on the couch after the High Holy Days. And so I have a lot of thoughts about rest. It's something I take seriously. I happen to need a lot of sleep. So trying to stick with sleep hygiene is actually a way that I want to pursue śmita. To that end, I took Facebook off my phone recently because at night I was doomscrolling and it was hurting my inner life. And I have a role, a volunteer role as a moderator in a professional group that was also taking up a lot of space in my inner life. So I'm trying to focus more on things I love to do. In lieu of things that I think are just ways to pass the time. I'm also participating in something called Brit Chazon. It's a learning experience in partnership between Chazon and our temple where you choose different ways that you can change behaviors to acknowledge Shemitah. And they offer 6 options, including transitioning to a plant-rich diet, reducing energy use, reducing food waste, reducing household waste, get growing/buy local, or buy less stuff. So since I'm married to a vegetarian, every night we already eat vegetables 5 ways. So I chose buy less stuff. Hazon sends out a tip sheet with ways to do this, encouraging secondhand purchasing, getting it from friends, or buying one really nice item instead of lots of Old Navy. So far, if I'm honest, it's not going that well because I have a little bit of a Nordstrom Rack problem as I try to find tunics. That fit me in ways that I feel good about. But the effort and intention is certainly there.

I love that. I mean, I am not yet participating in the buy less stuff movement. Maybe I should. But one thing I am thinking about in terms of Shmita is I think when a lot of people talk about work-life balance or, you know, self-care and all of those great little buzzwords, We often talk about like, how do you say no more? And I might have even said that 5 minutes ago in my first answer, so too bad for 5 minutes ago me. But actually, I think it's about like knowing what your unique role is in the world. And I think something I have been asking myself more recently is like, before I say yes to something, is not only am I like the right person to do this, but am I the only person who can do this? And if I'm not the only person who can do this, as a person who is often doing lots of things, I try to like to decide if it feels okay to just say no for that reason, right? It turns out when you're a rabbi, you have some, like, unique talents or unique things you can do for people that, like, not everyone can do. But there are some things that actually other people can do and maybe other people should do. So trying to figure out, like, a way of stepping back that's about, like, stepping forward more wholeheartedly when it's time, if that makes sense.

For example, I know how to run an industrial dishwasher. Do I need to do that? Perhaps not. Could I if no one else can?

Yes. I, I learned this lesson actually around a meal train, um, and it's a, it's a lesson I learned because I, I do love to cook. I, in my like sort of personal life, you know, I'm the first person to offer to make a meal for a friend. And there was like a moment of a blurred line recently where having done the funeral for a particular person, having led shiva for the particular person, I was about to sign up for the meal train, and I had this moment of saying, like, this is actually— if I take up this space, I am preventing someone else who this is their only way of offering care to the bereaved from doing it. I don't need to cook the meal. Somebody else can cook the meal. And so that's one way I'm thinking about it.

My friend Emily Goodstein quotes this often by saying, saying no to others is saying yes to yourself. And really realizing that there are a lot of situations, unless we happen to be an expert only in the world brain surgeon, which we're both great people, but that's not our skill set. We are not that. It's OK to share the load, share the burden, share the road.

I want to go back to one thing you said before we talk about the other thing we wanted to talk about today, which is, um, and I think this is true not just for Jewish professionals who might wind up with a sabbatical, or for anyone who has a sabbatical, but let's just say it loud and proud: family leave, sick leave, time that one takes away from work because of a need to care for themselves or an ailing parent or a new child, that is not vacation, and it's also not sabbatical.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

So the other thing we were hoping to talk about today I think is related to Shmita because I think it's, it's sort of like an outgrowth of what happens when we don't give it a rest, when our systems are overused, and we run into shortages. So So we joke, we have all these great examples of like, the world is having a shortage of bucatini, cardamom, vans, apparently minivans. There is a real shortage of those types of cars.

Yeah, because of chips, not Doritos. If there were a Doritos shortage, I would be devastated.

But the real shortage that I think is related to like the lack of Shmita, the lack of sabbatical and rest in our lives, is actually a shortage of energy, of patience, of a human resource, right? So we've been reading about the shortage of bus drivers, of teachers, of service industry staff. I mean, I think every industry that I can think of is experiencing a staffing shortage. And a lot of this is of course because of the pandemic and that sort of existential exhaustion that people are experiencing. But I also think it's because people are finally and deservedly demanding a different type of work environment. They're demanding fair wages and respect from employers.

The demands of the work environment and particular styles of working that we have endured for, frankly, generations are, I think, detrimental to our health. And we learned in the pandemic how much we can get done virtually or in other ways. And we also learned what might not be important or essential or a priority to do. Or that doing more, more, more, more, more, more, while it may be best for the bottom line of an institution or a business, it's not necessarily the best for an organization's employees.

Well, the eternal question is, why do so many of us continue to work in this way? And why don't we take breaks? What are we afraid of? I mean, I think, you know, the obvious answer is we're afraid that our work, our work won't be there. When we're done. But here's the thing, I think it will be.

It will. I know that I worry, as someone working in a lot of contexts right now, including a Jewish learning startup for couples, that someone else will get to it before I do. So if I take a break, I'll lose the race. And I've come to realize that this is because of a scarcity mindset, sort of that ancient sense of the crops won't last through the Shmita year. And I'm often afraid that if 'If I take a breath, the work will disappear. However, I realize that I'm more likely surrounded by an abundance of opportunities. And even if I take a breath and something doesn't work out, there will be more opportunities to come.' This is true.

I want to cross-stitch that for you to hang in your office. But this brings us back to the amazing person you interest introduced us to earlier in the episode, Odette Poller. And Odette Poller and a lot of other scholars like her are talking about ways of working smarter and more strategically, more collaboratively, most of the ways that aren't actually modeled in the DNA of our society. You know, we, we talked a little bit earlier about Shmitah being about lying fallow, right, about like simply stopping. And I think that there is this built-in idea kind of encoded in our society that lying fallow is being lazy, or it's that you lack purpose. But actually, like, to stop would be a really purposeful absence that might allow for growth.

I learned from you, Jodi, in your sermon, and also from reading sermons by Rabbis Dusty Class and Leah Citron-Nelson, who spoke about Shemitah, the High Holy Days, about an author, Jenny Odell, who in her book, How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy explains the urgency to rest, but also the societal pressures at play.

I love this book. Everyone should read a book called How to Do Nothing. And in this book she writes, beyond self-care and the ability to really listen, the practice of doing nothing has something broader to offer us: an antidote to the rhetoric of growth. In the context of health and ecology, things that grow unchecked are often considered parasitic or cancerous. Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative. Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we don't tend to see maintenance as being productive in the same way.

So it's hard. There are societal reasons we don't rest. There are personal reasons we don't rest. There's fear. There's competition. There's lots of different things weighing down on us. But Judaism reminds us that from the dawn of creation, even God took a break, and therefore, so can we. So as you navigate what that looks like in your own life, if anyone gives you trouble for it, blame it on Rabbi Jen Gubitz. And Jodi Gordon. We're happy to write you a permission slip. Yes. Or like just hand them the Torah. That seems easier. The weight of centuries will certainly convince them. And so we want to offer you a blessing for Shemitah, however you choose to accept this mission, which may be to just do nothing, and that's acceptable. My friends Aki and Noah, who work at Gan Academy in Waltham, posted a blessing today that I love. Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Asher Kidshanu B'Mitzvotav V'tivanu L'Shev BaSofah. Blessed are You, Source of Creative Restfulness, my translation, for the commandment of laying on the couch. Amen. Amen.

And if I can extend that sense of blessing with a mashup of blessings that we find on the amazing ritualwell.org. The first half written by Carol Kaplan, Marci Epstein, Idelle Hammond-Sass, and Rav Michal Wol, and the final piece by Rabbi Nati Passow. Blessed are you, Adonai our God, sovereign of the universe, who makes us holy by observing Shmita. With blessing we rest the land, renewing our connection to the earth and each other. With gratitude we share our abundance and are fulfilled. With strength, we mend our relationships and obligations, releasing all from bondage.

May we be able to release those feelings of being owed something, and in doing so, liberate our family members, friends, and neighbors to reconnect and restore the bonds to bring us closer together.

Loosen, loosen, baby, you don't have to to carry the weight of the world in your muscles and bones. Let go, let go, let go. Loosen, loosen, baby. You don't have to carry the weight of the world in your muscles and bones. Let go, let go, let go. Holy breath and holy name, will you ease, will you ease this pain? Holy breath and holy name, will you ease, Will you ease this pain?

Loose and loose. This episode of the OMFG podcast was brought to you by Rabbis Jen Gubitz and Jodi Gordon. Shout out to our awesome producer, Jesse Ulrich, straight out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.