A report from the liberal pew: The Jewish year this year happens to be a Schmittah year, a sabbatical year. According to the Bible, the land is supposed to stay fallow every seventh year. The land needs to rest. It’s not our land. In the Land of Israel, we are supposed to rely on the leftover, wild crop. Green, the vision is utopian, utterly impracticable. This was what Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky talked about for Rosh Hashana at  Anschei Chesed. With its own radical implications but in its own quiet way, he took the opportunity to talk about economic inequality, land ownership, and environmental sustainability, i.e. all the things that make unbearable our entire modern way of life. The talk was global in its perspective even as the rockets and rubble this summer Gaza and Israel, indeed, the entire question of Israel and Palestine hung over every word. Maybe it was just me and I’m reading too much into the talk. But here’s what I heard. The land needs to rest. It’s not our land. It’s no man’s land. About Gaza and the poisoning of the discourse about Israel and Zionism, Rabbi Kalmanofsky stated very clearly that it would be what he called rabbinic malpractice not to talk about them. For that, the congregation will have to wait until Yom Kippur. The talk last Thursday was meant, I think, to lay the groundwork for that discussion on a broader basis of what’s fair and what’s right, on peace and economic justice.