Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Re’eh, in which we are promised with more blessings and curses according to our obedience to God’s law. We are also reminded how, where, and when we may consume the flesh of another living thing, and commanded to observe specific laws in the Land of Israel. 

The word “re’eh” means “see” and the late 11th century Spanish grammarian Ibn Ezra comments on this that the phrasing at the beginning of the parasha indicates that Moses is speaking to each individual person among the Israelites and the mixed multitudes. All of the laws given in this Torah portion are repeats of laws given before, mostly in Leviticus, and Moses wants to be sure everyone is really listening this time before the people enter the Holy Land without him and have to start implementing the laws on their own. This is like the final review session before the final exam. 

One law in particular from Parashat Re’eh happens to be extremely relevant this week. Deuteronomy 15:1 says, "Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts." Just Wednesday, President Biden announced his plan to forgive some student debt, up to $10,000 for anyone with an income under $125,000, and an additional possible $10,000 for Pell Grant recipients. While there surely could have been more and better debt remission in this country for this shemittah year, this is certainly a good start. Shemittah technically only applies to Jewish debtors and within the Land of Israel, but the laws of shemittah reflect Jewish values of justice, equity, our relationship to the land from which all our sustenance comes, and our relationship with the Divine from which all our blessings flow, and so are concepts we as Jews should advocate for in every land and for every person. 

Twelfth century French commentator Chizkuni suggests that the reason chapter 15 begins with this commandment is to follow up on the commandments at the end of chapter 14 regarding the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers: “This is basically what the shemittah legislation is also about,” he says. It is an act of equity over equality, of resetting the balances in society to inhibit wealth hoarding and poverty disparity. He also explains that the following verse of the parasha suggests that it is ok to continue to hold debts over non-Jews, because “the gentile debtor, who is allowed to grow crops during that year and sell them, and is therefore able to repay his debts, him you may exact repayment from during that year.” Again, there is a clear concern for equity. This is the same idea for giving Pell Grant scholars, who come from low-income families, twice as much loan forgiveness as those who did not necessitate need-based financial aid to get into school in the first place. 

I come from a middle class family, where money was often tight and I often felt underprivileged compared to my wealthier peers in my shoreline CT hometown, but we were comfortable enough and my parents encouraged me to go to the school I wanted and to follow my dreams. My undergrad college offered some financial aid my first year, but did not continue it. I didn’t lose a scholarship due to my own academic endeavors or on-campus behaviors that I was aware of. They simply decided that now that I had committed to their institution I would have to figure out how to pay on my own. I don’t know if that is common at other schools, but it’s something I saw a lot at my poorly-endowed private college. My parents helped as much as they could, but mostly we took out lots of loans. My parents signed off on all the loans, and honestly I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them until I graduated and the bills started coming to me. I worked an on-campus job through school, where the cap from the school was 10 hours a week, and I worked 70 hour weeks through the summers to make up for it, but that still basically only covered books and food (thankfully, as a liberal arts student I didn’t have to buy those hundred dollar texts books I hear from other students at bigger universities). I went to college knowing that I wanted to go to rabbinical school after, so it’s not like that was a secondary decision in the face of my debt. It was always part of the plan, that I hadn’t really considered the cost of. In grad school, I continued to rack up more debt, and my undergrad loans continued to accrue interest, and by the time I was ordained, I owed nearly twice what I had initially borrowed, despite my best efforts to pay off minimum monthly payments as often as I could, though some semesters I took the in-school deferment on all loans. During the pandemic, I was lucky that my income was minimally affected, and I was able to continue making my payments that now went straight to the principal, and I saw more progress on my debt repayment in that one year than I had in the prior ten years that I had been trying to pay off those loans, thanks to the interest freeze. My in-laws eventually helped me pay off the rest. Without their help, it would have taken me at least another 10-15 years to repay it, assuming there were never further debt relief plans like the one that just passed and that the 6% interest rate came back in January. I was so incredibly lucky, and that is just not a situation most people will find themselves in. The student loan business in this country is predatory lending and it needs serious intervention. Biden’s plan from this week is honestly the tip of the iceberg. 

By way of closing, I want to return to Chizkuni’s commentary on the fact that the shemittah debt relief only applies to Jews (and implictly, only in the Holy Land). There’s been lots of talk throughout the Jewish world this year about ways to honor shemittah in the diaspora, and as the Jewish year comes to a close and as midterms approach, I am seeing more people talking about debt relief now than ever before, and I’m realizing what a shonda - a disgrace - it really is that our Jewish institutions have not been more vocal on this issue. Jewish organizations devote time to all sorts of important advocacy issues, but wealth inequality (or economic apartheid as I heard one preacher call it yesterday on a call with clergy about high holy day sermons) is at the root of so much else. Equitable debt relief would be an incredible step forward toward true equality in all other areas of life. Chizkuni explains why that clause in the mitzvah is really about accessibility and equity, and now as a people that no longer live in sequestered communities, that no longer depend on our own crops, it’s time to reimagine what the essence of the law is rather than the letter of the law. Who are the people now more able to pay off their debts (or to pay a higher tax bracket to help the federal social welfare system)? Who are the people now who have had their incomes halted (by mass incarceration, by the pandemic, by prejudiced hiring practices), and need the debt remission in order to move forward and be contributing members of society? So often, this country is more concerned with “consequences” for other people’s choices, that we are blind to how enforcing those consequences drag down the whole society. A rising tide lifts us all. 

May we be lifted, may we lift each other, and may we see that our liberation is all bound together. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.