Leveling the Playing Field
May 21, 2005

The front page of this past Sunday’s New York Times carried an article that speaks profoundly about American society. It described the class divisions in our nation. The authors report that despite expectations and hopes, class differences in America are not narrowing but widening. I don’t know if the authors had been reading the torah portion for this week and were motivated by its message, but it is precisely the gap between rich and poor that is addressed in the torah portion, Behar. In a verse that includes the words inscribed on our Liberty Bell, a visionary idea is introduced of an economically equitable society. These are its words: “And you shall hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty through out the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, and you shall go back each person to his property and each person to his clan.”

What is being spoken about here? Often in an agrarian society, which is the kind described in the torah, a farmer had to borrow money before he could begin his planting, he needed to borrow in order to secure seeds for sowing, implements for plowing and harvesting, animals for work and means to pay his laborers. After the harvest was gathered, the borrower was expected to repay his debt. However, even before the advent of the credit card, it was easy to sink into indebtedness. Sometimes, just as happens today, a drought or blight results in a poor crop yield leaving the farmer without cash to pay his creditors. But there was no such thing as declaring bankruptcy in biblical times. To repay his creditors, the farmer had to sell his land.

In order to keep Israelite society from slowly devolving into a small landed class and a large landless class that was so common in the Middle East, the torah came up with a unique and visionary piece of legislation. Every fiftieth or jubilee year, in a ceremony begun with the blowing of the shofar on Yom Kippur, land that was sold reverted to its original owners. The family forced by economic factors to sell off its land could return to it and farm its fields once again.

Clearly, the revolutionary concept of a family regaining its ancestral land without payment is aimed at insuring economic justice. It is part of a far reaching plan that includes another revolutionary idea spelled out elsewhere in the torah. That idea is that every seventh year, called the Sabbatical year, all debts were cancelled. The Sabbatical year acted as a statute of limitations for the liabilities of the poor, and enabled them to start anew, without fear that past monetary obligations would spell a life sentence to poverty. In the Bible, impoverishment and landlessness were not meant to be a permanent state. The Jubilee and Sabbatical year provided hope for the future for everyone who had fallen on hard times and misfortune.

If one didn’t know better, one would say that the Bible is preaching socialism. It is not. Judaism believes in private property and in the right to accumulate wealth. Nonetheless, the torah does present a concept of how wealth should be equitably distributed that requires our attention. It has a message for our nation. For as the New York Times documents, despite the impression of boundless opportunity for personal betterment, the United States is unevenly divided by class – with the have’s gaining and the have not’s standing in place or losing ground. David Levine is both an economist and mobility researcher. He reports in the Times that being born into the elite in the United Sates gives a person a constellation of privileges that very few people in other parts of the world ever experience. On the other hand, being born poor in the Untied States saddles a person with disadvantages that are unlike anything that exists in Western Europe, Canada and Japan, countries to which we should be comparing ourselves.

As if to illustrate the class differences spoken about in the New York Times report, the very next morning Newsday carried an article about a generous offer a Manhattan real estate attorney made to the Montauk fire department. He offered it two homes on which to hone their firefighting skills. He allowed them to burn the houses down so that the volunteer firemen could train in controlling the blaze and in rescue operations.

It all started two years ago when the lawyer bought a magnificent hill top property. The problem was that it came with an unimpressive home – at least in his eyes. So he allowed the fire department to burn it down so that he could build a more luxurious one in its place. But his new house with a 180 degree view of the ocean was somewhat obstructed by the roof line of a nearby residence. So this gentleman bought that home – which was only five years old – for two million dollars, and then donated it to the volunteer firemen to once again practice their techniques as it burned to the ground. One emergency medical technician training on the site said, “This is some country we live in. So many people can’t afford to buy a house and we’re burning down a perfectly nice one.”

If that medical technician spoke Yiddish, he could have summed up the whole situation in two words, iz past nish, we shouldn’t do such things. The torah agrees. It envisions a society where riches would be more evenly enjoyed. Through the idea of the jubilee year mandating the return of property and Sabbatical year requiring the cancellation of debts, the torah tried to advance economic opportunities for all citizens.

I am not suggesting that these specific laws are a panacea for our times. Economic and social conditions today are far more complicated than they were when the torah was written. What I am suggesting is that the torah is raising questions we should be asking ourselves. How can we make our society more fair? How can we create equal opportunities for all Americans? How can we narrow the gap between one segment of society that has homes to burn and another segment that has a home only its dreams?

A few years ago, a book was written called the Stakeholder’s Society that, like the torah, attempts to answer those questions. The author suggests that every United States citizen should be guaranteed, as a fundamental right, a check for $80,000 on his or her 21st birthday. It would be a way of providing each American with a jump start in getting ahead. I am not certain that this is the modern counterpart of the torah’s jubilee year but it is a bold attempt to establish economic balance in our society just as the jubilee sought to do in its day.

But why should we care about a fair distribution of wealth? Why should we care about economic justice? Because Judaism teaches us an important overriding value. Despite Woody Guthrie’s beautiful song, this land is neither your land nor my land. Today’s torah portion states, key lee ha’aretz. The earth is the Lord’s. And we should share its bounty among all the earth’s inhabitants in as equitable a manner as we can conceive of. If we do so, the torah promises us the greatest blessings one could want for any society – the blessing of a shared prosperity, peace with our neighbors and above all, the presence of God in our midst.

Shabbat shalom