Shabbat Shalom!In Parshat Behar, God teaches Moses at Mount Sinai the laws about selling homes, farms, and even people to others, whether they are Jews or not. In the portion of Behar we read today, God tells Moses that every 7 years, the Jewish farmers should stop working in their fields and simply “take a year off.” This is known as shemita. After 7 cycles of this pattern, people celebrate a giant celebration year (known as yovel or Jubilee) in which all land purchased in the last 49 years is returned to the original owner from the beginning of the period. God's point here is to tell us that the land ultimately belongs to God. There is no true human owner of the land. But there may be some exceptions. In April 2013, I was in Boston with my mother on a business trip. During a tour of the city, our guide pointed out that half of Boston was swampland and the other part was hills. In 1631, just a year after Boston was founded and named, Bostonians began filling the swamp with dirt and rocks dug from the hills. By 1890 they were finished and the Bostonian land is like this to this day. In this situation, it could be said that the original creators of the earth were the inhabitants of Boston. This could mean that Bostonians are exempt from Yovel rules, as the land is returned to the land's original owner. No one owned the land before them. They created it and later claimed it. The land is therefore theirs. However, as you may have guessed, Yovel is not observed today, and has only been observed in the land of Israel. If we looked at Yovel today, here in America, what would happen? Would a small restaurant claim to own the land on which a large building, such as the Sears Tower, currently stands? Right from... half of the document... by Amy J. Kramer, it is suggested that the first Yom Kippur occurred while Moses implored the Israelites on Mount Sinai, asking God for forgiveness. The fact that the first Yom Kippur, the main holiday Jewish, it happened unscheduled, on the 19th of Elul and not the 10th of Tishrei, it is a sign that we can all have our own little “Yom Kippurs”. In fact, Yom Kippur is so important that what is taught then should be practiced every day. According to Hebcal.com, the first Yom Kippur occurred approximately on September 3, 1141 BC. This occurred before the end of the first Yovel, on September 14, 1134 BC, although no one would imagine that the gap between the creation of the holiest holiday in the Jewish world and the creation of the law observed only nine times is only seven years. .Seven years. Which brings us back to shemita. Shabbat Shalom.