Torah of Israel: Making Shemita Alive and Relevant in Israel

Join us for our Sunday morning learning program following morning minyan. Sessions will be led by a rabbi or a prominent friend of BJ, who will teach a monthly Torah class live. Each class will touch on a different topic that has been carefully chosen by the teacher to create an opportunity for enrichment and learning. This month, Rabbi Yediya Sinclair will give a shiur (teaching), “From Avoiding to Embracing: Old-New Initiatives to Make Shemita Alive and Relevant in Israel.” 

Shemita is one of the biggest and most fascinating ideas in Judaism. It asks us to let the earth rest, take a time out from our insatiable desires for more stuff, enable people sunk in debt to turn a new page, and all of us to pause, take a deep breath and get a life. In this session, we will explore how shemita became what it is today, and some of the fascinating directions for renewing the social and environmental dimensions of shemita that are emerging in Israel and beyond.

Rabbi Yedidya (Julian) Sinclair is an economist, writer and rabbi. He began his career as an economist advising the UK government, was Vice President and Senior Economist at Energiya Global, an Israeli solar developer, and works as an independent consultant on development projects in Africa. Yedidya was Senior Rabbinic Advisor for Hazon, and Campus Rabbi at Cambridge University, where he also taught Jewish Studies in the Divinity School. He holds degrees from Oxford and Harvard Universities and lives with his family in Jerusalem where he enjoys tour guiding in his spare time. His book, The Sabbath of the Land, will be published by Maggid Books in February.