Stimulating Shmita: Revisiting Louis Newman’s "The Sanctity of the Seventh Year" Forty Years Later
Persistent URL
Author(s)
Krone, Adrienne M.
Allegheny College
Date Issued
December 2, 2025
Abstract
In the forty years since The Sanctity of the Seventh Year: A Study of Mishnah Tractate Shebiit was published, Louis Newman established himself as a prominent Jewish ethicist. The book’s subject, shmita, is a set of laws that provide the framework for the agricultural sabbatical year. Interestingly, in recent decades Jewish farmers, scholars, and thinkers are revisiting and revitalizing shmita as an aspirational Jewish model for environmental and economic justice. This article will build on Newman’s argument in The Sanctity of the Seventh Year as it argues that the transformative potential of shmita enticed both the Mishnah’s framers and Jewish farmers, scholars, and thinkers today in large part because their historical context was in tumult and the future felt uncertain. Shmita stimulates Jews in the moments when Jews feel less in control of their fate than usual and provides a pathway to help them begin to transform the world.
Journal
Journal of Jewish Ethics
Citation
Krone, Adrienne, "Stimulating Shmita: Revisiting Louis Newman’s the Sanctity of the Seventh Year Forty Years Later," Journal of Jewish Ethics 10, no. 1-2 (2025): 17–28, doi:10.5325/jjewiethi.10.1-2.0017. https://doi.org/10.5325/jjewiethi.10.1-2.0017.
Publisher
The Pennsylvania State University Press
Version of Article
Version of Record
DOI
10.5325/jjewiethi.10.1-2.0017
ISSN
2334-1777
2334-1785
Rights
Copyright © 2025 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Type of Publication
Journal Article
Subjects
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