Ration Reality

Today marks Rosh Hashanah, New Years Day on the Hebrew calendar. It is a day of celebration and reflection. Being the only member of Ration Reality’s staff with any Jewish heritage (and who isn’t a screaming Mick), it’s my pleasure to wish you a Happy New Year, worldwide Jewry! Now this means that there’s just 3 more months to the real New Year!

In honor of this special holiday, Ration Reality is proud to offer a collection of news stories we’ve been saving with a decidedly Jewish flavor. Mazal Tov!!

Temple Emanu-EL, an Orthodox synagogue in Miami, FL, made headlines last week by engineering a very unusual e-Bay offering: Lifetime Front-Row Seats at Temple. That’s right; the “Best Seats in the Shul” were up for grabs. However the blue carpet treatment didn’t end there. Besides being able to mix it up with the Rabbi and Cantors, the winning bidder would also get his/her family name engraved in Seats 1 and 2 (Row 1, Section DD), free parking for life, as well as specially-made tallits and yarmulkes. Furthermore, these privileges could be passed on from generation to generation — just like a sense of entitlement or intense pressure to succeed. And just what value could one place on this mitzvah? Well, the bidding started at $1.8 million!

As of the auction’s close, no one was willing to pony up that kinda gelt and, therefore, the prize goes unredeemed. But, then, according to Rabbi Kliel Rose, it wasn’t really about the money. So what was the purpose of this gross commoditization of faith? It all comes down to publicity, apparently. The Conservative congregation, based in the largely hedonistic South Beach area of the city, has seen its ranks thin out over the years. The auction was seen as a way to bring the synagogue to the attention of a more religiously-disconnected, and likely younger, crowd of Jews. “The idea was really just to be edgy.”, said Rabbi Rose.

Sources: JTA Breaking News - Associated Press Online

In Israel, the law is The Law, and vice-versa. However, the Biblical legal traditions sometimes run counter to economic and social pressures of modern life. Case in point: under Mosaic Law, Jewish farmers in the land of Israel may tend his land in all ways necessary for harvest, uninterrupted, for 6 years. On the seventh year, known as Shemita (shmita), land owned by Jews becomes sacred, and must be left untended through the year–this means no sowing, irrigation, plowing or harvesting. Some of the finest, most productive farmland in the world is found in Israel. With the industrialization of society, subsistence cultivation in the Holy Land has shifted to high-yield, agri-dustrial farming to cover the burden of providing for the lawyer and shop foreman. Moreover, the highly-developed industrial countries of Western Europe and Asia have looked to Israel for relatively low-cost, high quality produce. Taking that 7th year off simply isn’t an option.More than a century ago, some clever Jews reasoned that Shemita observance required that Jewish land must be left fallow, but it didn’t say anything about Non-Jewish land. Therefore, in modern times, all Jewish-owned farms have been purchased by a game gentile (sometimes known as “Shmita Goy’) just before Rosh Hoshanah, the start of Shemita.

On the Hebrew calendar, this is a Shmita year. An Israeli Defense Force officer, Hemda Genam, was selected to symbolically “purchase” the land to be sold in 2 parcels. The lawyers and rabbi in charge of overseeing and certifying the sale drew up the papers and the first parcel (consisting of government-held farms) was transferred without a hitch. However, when the second contract was drawn for the sale of lands held by individuals, Genam wasn’t there to sign. He wasn’t reminded that he had to make the second purchase. By Monday evening, the tension was beginning to border on the ridiculous as the parties involved tried frantically to reach Genam, who eventually got the message and hastily signed the sale contract. (Good job, Genam–you almost fucked-up a whole year for hundreds of farmers, dude.) Overseeing Rabbi Ze’ev Weitman remarked, “Next shmita year I’ll sell all the land at once. If you split it up into two separate sales, people don’t take you seriously”

Sources: Jerusalem Post - Haaretz.com

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