As I discussed in my last post, there is a new movement afoot aiming to re-understand biblical agricultural laws and find their application for modern day Jews living outside the land of Israel. Some of these laws like peah (leaving the corners of your field for the poor), shichechah (leaving sheathes forgotten during the harvest for poor) and leket (leaving dropped harvest for the poor) only make sense when one has poor neighbors who can glean from one’s harvest. Others like shmittah (every seven years renouncing all debts and letting the land lie fallow) and yovel (redistributing land to all people every forty nine years) only apply in the land of Israel. Modern North American Jews who live in a different social reality have a choice: they can either write off these laws as meaningless, or they can interpret them to mean something different from the original law.
Peah is one law agricultural law that has begun to be reclaimed by some Jewish groups in America. Jewish farmers at Adamah leave one corner of their field ceremonially un-harvested and give a portion of their harvest to a local food pantry. Others have taken the law and applied it to their salary, taking a portion of their income each month and donating it to fight hunger. People have similarly understood the laws of leket, shichechah, and ma’aser, donating portions of their wages to relevant charitable causes. One of my friends has found a very interesting way to connect with the laws concerning peah. He has decided to grow out his peyos (chassidic looking side curls on the corners of his head) as a reminder that his thoughts should be directed to G!d’s service, just as the corners of one’s field are devoted to the poor. All of these interpretations are interesting ways to find relevance in seemingly meaningless laws.