Books

Basic Terms

Sabbatical year and Jubilee in Kabbalah

The question of what Sabbatical and Jubilee have to do with Mount Sinai points to a root formula: everything that was given relates to its ability to be fulfilled in reality. It speaks about a state in which a person can actually live a certain social, moral, and conscious order, a state that requires authority over one’s values and sovereignty in relation to them. Yet this sovereignty is not ownership, because everything belongs to the Creator. The land itself is not owned but given as a deposit, and remaining on it depends on alignment with its values. When there is no accuracy with those values, there is removal from it. This is not symbolic; it is presented as a real condition.

Within this, there is a clash of values that brings a need to review belief, precepts, and the meaning of Israel, while others also re-evaluate what they hold. Through this process, a person is brought to clarify the purpose of their being. That clarification is expressed in the Jubilee, where each one returns to the place they originally held, pointing to a root in the world of Atzilut.

Torah and Shechinah are described as feminine because their role is to prepare a vessel that can relate to the will of the Creator. The feminine aspect is the capacity to perceive, not to control, and only through that capacity can there be a relation to the Creator.

Sabbatical and Jubilee are not about a single day but about a full cycle of living. It is a year that expresses a complete cycle of light, where a person lives without ownership over anything except their relation to the Creator. The whole system supports a state in which there is no enslavement, neither to others nor to the will to receive for oneself. Ownership itself is seen as a form of bondage. In this cycle, there is a possibility for freedom for all spirits, where what remains is the attitude toward the Creator and alignment with that relationship.