This week’s Bible portion, Behar, includes the rules for the Jubilee Year. As we read in this passage, the Torah commands that two laws take effect every fifty years. All Israelite slaves would be freed, and all lands would be redistributed back to their original tribal owners. In other words, anyone who had sold his land since the last jubilee regains full ownership of the land at the jubilee.
At first glance, this seems unfair to the purchaser of the land. Why should this person have to surrender land that was legally purchased? To solve this problem, the Bible lays out a system for purchasing land according to the years of the jubilee.
When land is sold, the price is calculated based on the amount of time that the land will be owned by the purchaser – until the next jubilee. Essentially, all land purchases in Israel are to be leases rather than actual purchases. According to the Jewish sages, even if one were to attempt to sell land permanently, the transaction would be invalid. The land is forever owned by the family to whom it was allotted after the original conquest of the land. However, even if these guidelines were not followed, the land would still return to its original owner. No financial recompense would be made to the purchaser of the land. The original owner gets the land back free of charge.
At first glance, the redistribution of land to its original owners appears to be consistent with socialist policies of redistribution of wealth familiar to us in modern times. Certain individuals’ ability to build empires by continually acquiring more land is obviously curtailed. At the same time, the impoverished who have lost everything get a fresh start.
A closer look reveals that the jubilee system differs from modern redistributionist policies in several important ways.
One of the main complaints against policies that call for a redistribution of wealth is that it is not fair. It is hard to make a living to then be forced to support someone who is too lazy to work. Indeed, it is unfair.
On the other hand, proponents of redistribution argue that without redistribution, there is scarcely a chance for the poorer elements in society to get on their feet. Once they have no significant assets and are at the mercy of the wealthy, there is no way out.
The jubilee system solves both of these concerns. The 20th-century French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel, in his Ethics of Redistribution, points out that the Biblical jubilee system does not advocate a redistribution of product or profit. Rather, it is a redistribution of resources. As such, the injustice of taking profit from those who worked for it and giving to those who did not is absent. On the other hand, by redistributing valuable resources – land – every citizen is given a fair chance to make the most of his assets and begin to build independent wealth.
Let’s consider a person who would see his ancestral family plot of land in an agrarian society such as Biblical Israel. He probably experienced some kind of financial hardship that led him to sell this land that was passed down to him through the generations, leading back to the original distribution of the land in the days of Joshua. Upon the arrival of the jubilee year, he regains ownership and control of his land. He gets a fresh start.
Free of charge, he is now able to work the land, mortgage it, and sell it until the following jubilee year; he can use this valuable asset to generate wealth.
The Bible believes in fairness and freedom. In admittedly very simplistic terms, modern socialism advocates fairness at the expense of freedom. Unbridled free market capitalism advocates freedom at the expense of fairness. The Bible’s economic system treats all citizens as equals while rewarding those who worked hard with the full fruits of their labor.
But there is more to these laws than economics. Allow me to explain.
Throughout centuries of persecution, one of the most common restrictions placed on Jews in the lands of exile was the prohibition from owning land. Even today, there are Arab countries that forbid Jews from owning land. To own land is to be a full citizen—to be free. Land ownership is critical to national identification. To be forbidden from owning land is to be excluded—to be forever a foreigner.
The rules of land ownership and the jubilee teach us a profound lesson. All Jews are landowners forever. There are no serfs. In fact, each and every Jew alive today has a plot of land that actually belongs to him by patrimonial birthright. If the laws of jubilee were in effect today, the land owned by my family would return to us. It has always been ours.
Throughout the centuries of our exile, the same Jews who were being denied rights of land ownership in the lands of the dispersion were, at the same time, owners of land in Israel forever.
Seen this way, the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel is not only a religious or historical connection. Wherever we are, it remains our birthright and our literal home.
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