Rosh Hashanah 9 – A Jubilee year

There is a Jubilee year at the end of every seventh Shmita year (every 49 years). What day does it start on? - First of Tishrei, which thus becomes the New Year for the Jubilee. Jewish slaves must be set free; any land bought in the last 49 years goes back to its ancestral owners; this is also a Shmita year when nobody works the land. The sign of all of this is the blowing of the Shofar at the end of Yom Kippur. Therefore, for the ten days between the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, slaves cannot go home yet, but they are already not slaves. Instead, they eat and drink and sit with their crowns (or turbans, a sign of a free man), and their masters now serve them.

There is another opinion, however, that the Jubilee year starts after Yom Kippur, and not in any way before – which results in no feast for the slaves. It also results in the fact that the Jubilee year is the fiftieth year, following the Shmita, as opposed to coinciding with the last Shmita year.

There is an idea of taking some time away from the regular minutes or days and adding it to the sanctified time. Some derive it from the laws of Shmita – which are extended both before and after the actual year. Others use Yom Kippur as a trendsetting example: since the Torah mentioned the affliction as starting on the ninth, the day before Yom Kippur, this teaches to add a little from the day before to the Yom Kippur itself. Others, however, say that overeating before Yom Kippur is considered an affliction and is thus a mitzvah.

Art: Peasants feasting and dancing by (after) David The Younger Teniers, 1660