Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. And the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest for the land, a sabbath for G-d…
You may be interestedAnd you shall count for yourselves seven sabbaths of years, seven times seven years… a total of forty-nine years…. And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all inhabitants thereof….
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Leviticus 25:3-10
The number “seven” figures prominently in our reckoning and experience of time. Most familiar, of course, is the seven-day work/rest cycle that comprises our week, in reenactment of the original Seven Days of Creation when “in six days, G-d made the heavens and the earth… and on the seventh day He rested.”[1]
Each Shabbat thus completes a full revolution time’s original cycle, following which we start anew from yom rishon, “the first day”—as “Sunday” is called in the Holy Tongue.
This is why many Jewish life-cycle observances are seven-day affairs. Two seven-day festivals[2] frame our year—Passover, which runs from the 15th to the 21st of Nissan, and Sukkot, occurring exactly six months later, on Tishrei 15-21. A marriage is celebrated for a full week of sheva berachot(“seven blessings”), and the death of a loved one, G-d forbid, is mourned for seven (shivah) days.[3] Thus the freedom of Passover, the joy of Sukkot, the bond of marriage and the coming to terms with loss are assimilated in all seven dimensions of created time.
Our years, too, follow the cycle of creation: six “workday” years are succeeded by a sabbatical year of shemittah (“suspension”). In the Land of Israel, all agricultural work is suspended on the seventh year and the land’s produce is declared free for the taking for all. Also suspended on the shemittah year are all private debts and the terms of servitude of indentured servants.
Finally, our sages describe the whole of human history as a seven-millennia “week,” consisting of 6,000 years of human labor in developing G-d’s world and a seventh millennium “that is wholly Shabbat and rest, for life everlasting” [4]- the era of Moshiach.[5]
The Kabbalists explain that the Seven Days of Creation embody the seven sefirot (divine attributes) which G-d emanated from Himself to define and characterize His relationship with our existence.[6] So seven is not only the elemental number of time, but of every created thing and of the created reality as a whole. This is especially true of the human being, who was created “in the image of G-d”[7] : the human character is comprised of seven drives (love, restraint, harmony, ambition, devotion, connection and receptiveness), mirroring the seven “attributes” which G-d assumed as creator of the universe.
Matter and Spirit
Each of the seven units of the “week” embodies the particular characteristics of its respective sefirah. But in more general terms, the cycle consists of two primary phases: “mundanity” (chol) and “holiness” (kedushah). Six days of mundane labor are followed by a day of spiritual rest; six years of working the earth, by a year of “suspension” and disinvolvement from the material; six millennia devoted to struggling with and developing the physical world, by a seventh millennium in which “the sole occupation of the entire world will be to know G-d.”[8]
The Torah’s word for “holy,” kedushah, literally means “removed” and “apart.” Its names for the seventh day, shabbat, and for the seventh year, shemittah, respectively mean “cessation” and “suspension.” For holiness requires complete disengagement from all material involvements. In order to experience the holiness and spirituality of Shabbat, we must cease all material labor; in order to touch base with the holiness of the land in the shemittah year, we must suspend all physical work upon its soil and all claims of ownership on its produce; in order to experience the divine goodness and perfection of our world in the age of Moshiach, we must first achieve a state in which “there is no jealousy and no competition”[9] over its material wealth.[10]
Yet despite their transcendent nature, the seventh day, year and millennium are constituent parts of the cycles of creation. Materiality and spirituality might differ greatly—to the point, even, of mutual exclusivity—yet both are part of “nature”: both are governed by the framework of laws which define the created reality.
Indeed, the very fact that “holiness” demands the cessation and suspension of all things mundane, indicates that it, too, has its limits. It means that just as there exists a physical nature which defines and delimits the scope of physical things and forces, so, too, does the realm of the spiritual have its “nature”—its own set of laws which define what it is and what it is not, where it can exist and where it cannot, and how, and in what manner, it can make itself felt beyond its inviolate boundaries. So while the concept of “transcendence” seems the antithesis of definition, transcendence is itself a definition, for it defines (and thus confines) itself as beyond and distinct from the material.
This offers insight into of a key passage in the Torah’s account of creation. In Genesis 2:2 we read:
“And G-d concluded on the seventh day the work that He had done.”
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This seems to contradict the second part of that very verse, which reads:
“And He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done.”
If the work of creation was concluded on the seventh day, then the seventh day was one of the days of creation; but if the seventh day is the day on which G-d rested “from all the work that He had done,” there were only six days of creation, and a seventh day of Shabbat—cessation from work.
Our sages explain: “What was the world lacking? Rest. When Shabbat came, rest came.”[11]
Rest—transcendence and spirituality—is itself a creation. Though removed from the nature of the material, it is part of a greater “nature”—the nature of the created reality, which includes the realm of the spiritual as well as the realm of the material.
Eight
If the “seven” defines the natural reality, “eight” represents that which is higher than nature, the “circumference” that encompasses the circle of creation.[12]
“Seven” includes both matter and spirit, both mundanity and holiness, both involvement and transcendence, but as separate, distinct components of the cycle of creation; the “seventh dimension” will exert its influence on the other six, but only in a “transcendent” way—as a “spiritual,” “other-worldly” reality that will never be truly internalized and integrated within the system. In contrast, “eight” represents the introduction of a reality that is beyond all nature and definition, including the definition “transcendence.” This “eighth dimension” (if we can call it a “dimension”) has no limitations at all: it transcends and pervades, being beyond nature yet also fully present within it, being equally beyond matter and spirit and equally within them.
So the covenant of circumcision, which binds the Jew to G-d in a bond that supersedes all nature and convention even as it pervades every nook and cranny of life, is entered into on the eighth day of life. The Sanctuary,[13]whose role was to make the infinite reality of G-d an “indwelling” presence in the physical world, was inaugurated “on the eighth day”[14] following a seven-day “training” period. The festival of Shemini Atzeret (“Eighth Day of Retention”), whose function is to “internalize” the transcendent “encompassing light” of the sukkah, occurs on the “eighth day” that follows Sukkot’s seven days.[15]
Seven shemittah cycles are followed by a “jubilee” year characterized by “liberty” (i.e. freedom from all bounds) rather than just “suspension.” And the messianic seventh millennium of history will be followed by the supra-historical “World to Come” (Olam HaBa), in which the divine reality will unite with the created reality in ways that we cannot even speculate upon in a world in which “finite” and “infinite” are mutually exclusive. In the words of the Talmud, “All prophets prophesied only regarding the days of Moshiach; regarding the World to Come, ‘No eye can behold it, O G-d, save Yours.’”[16]
Fifty
The “eights” in our lives come in two forms: eight and fifty.
For example, the two seven-day festivals, Sukkot and Passover, each culminate in an Atzeret—a one-day “festival of retention” whose function is to internalize the festival’s achievements. But while the Atzeret of Sukkot immediately follows the festival, in effect constituting its “eighth day,” the Atzeret of Passover is the festival of Shavuot, observed fifty days after Passover, culminating a 49 (7×7) – day “counting of the Omer.”
For each of the seven components of the natural system has a “natural system” of its own—its own seven-phased cycle of immanence and transcendence, making a total of 49 elements and phases in the cycle of nature.[17] “Fifty” is an “eight” which follows a thoroughly detailed development of the seven dimensions of nature in all its 49 sub-dimensions. Shavuot, the Atzeret of Passover, is such an “eight”: our exodus from Egypt marked the onset of a 49-day process in which we refined and perfected the 49 drives and impulses of our souls, thereby liberating ourselves from the “forty-nine gates of impurity” into which we sunk in the course of our enslavement to the most debased society in the history of mankind and entering into the “forty-nine gates of understanding” of awareness of and commitment to G-d. This 49-day process (re-experienced each year with our seven-week “Counting of the Omer”) culminated in the revelation at Sinai on Shavuot, when we were granted the Torah—the divine 50th dimension which supersedes and integrates all 49 dimensions of creation.
Another “fifty” is yovel, the “Jubilee” year. Seven seven-year shemittah cycles, each culminating in a year of “suspension” and transcendence of the material, are followed by a fiftieth year of “liberty” in which all servants, including those who had sold themselves for lifetime labor, were set free, and all ancestral lands that had been sold reverted to their original owners. The Jubilee year represents a state of true freedom in which, rather than just “suspending” the earthliness of the land, we free it of all the restraints of materiality.
Thus our experience of time (which defines practically everything we do and achieve) comes in various forms and configurations. There are times and situations in which we live our lives completely within the natural cycle of “seven.” There are times and circumstances in which we relate to the supra-natural “eighth” dimension, but only in a general, abstract way. Finally, there are times and circumstances in which we access an “eight” that is a “fifty”—an “eight” that is experienced in all particulars and sub-particulars of our existence.[18]
Three States of Jubilee
The shemitta/yovel cycle itself comes in three different forms, as dictated by the variant spiritual climates of different epochs in our history.
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The Torah instructs that the Jubilee year is to be proclaimed “throughout the land and to all inhabitants thereof.”[19] The Talmud interprets this as a stipulation that the special laws of the 50th year are enacted only when the land of Israel is fully populated by the Jewish people.[20] The only period in our history when this was the case was from the year 2503 from creation (1258 BCE), when the Jewish people under Joshua completed their conquest and settlement of the Holy Land, until they were driven from it by Babylon’s armies 836 years later, with the destruction of the First Temple in the year 3339 (422 bce).
Seventy-six years later, with the partial return of the Jewish people to their land under Ezra (six years after the building of the Second Temple) the yovel count resumed—but this time only for the sake of calculating and implementing the sabbatical year seven times in each 50-year period. Since much of the Holy Land was not resettled, and a large part of the Jewish nation remained in exile, the Jubilee year could not be observed. Nevertheless, a fiftieth year was counted following each seven shemittah-cycles,
“so that the sabbatical years should fall at their proper time.”[21]
In other words, after the seventh sabbatical year, on year 49, of Ezra’s count, the next seven-year cycle could not begin until after a theoretical Jubilee was proclaimed; thus, the next sabbatical year came eight years later (on year 57), not seven years later (on year 56).
Upon the Second Temple’s destruction in the year 3829 from creation (69 CE), this yovel count also ceased. The sabbatical year continues to be observed every seventh year (5754 (1994) was a shemittah year); but because we are in a state of galut (exile), deprived of the divine presence that manifested itself in the Holy Temple, we lack even the “theoretical” Jubilee of the Second Temple Era. Today (as was the case in the period between the two Temples), our seven-year cycles run consecutively, without the half-century landmark of yovel.
Applied to the “miniature universe” that is man and the 49 chambers of his soul, these three eras represent three levels in our quest towards self-refinement and self-perfection.
The ideal model, which defined the lives of our ancestors in the First Temple Era, is one of seven shemittah-cycles which yield a 50th Jubilee year. On the individual level, this means that a person’s struggles to “suspend” and transcend the negative in himself are experienced as stages in the process of the complete transformation and liberation of his soul.
A lesser state was that of the Second Temple Era, which represented a intermediate state between galut and redemption. While a large segment of the Jewish people lived in the Holy Land, for much of these 420 years they were under the dominion of other nations. And while the Holy Temple facilitated G-d’s presence in their lives, it was a lesser expression of the divine reality than the First Temple.[22]
Thus, the shemittah-cycles were not of the caliber to produce a full-fledged “liberation.” Nevertheless, they were permeated by the vision of perfection that the Jubilee year represents, as expressed by the fact that while the yovel was not actually observed, it set and defined the shemittah-cycles.
But in the more than nineteen centuries since the Holy Temple’s destruction, we have been fully engulfed in galut: ours is an existence that obscures all but the faintest glimmer of purpose and direction. Our lives are, by and large, consumed by the struggle with evil; not only are our efforts at self-improvement confined to the narrow, seven-phased cycle of nature—we lack even the vision to see and appreciate their place within the context of a liberating Jubilee.
Today, our lives are a seemingly endless chain of shemittah-cycles, with nary a Jubilee in sight. Yet this “blind” struggle will yield the final and ultimate Redemption, when
“Moshiach will arise and restore the sovereignty of David to it former glory and power, build the Holy Temple and gather the dispersed of Israel. In his days, all the laws will be restored: we will offer the sacrifices, and enact the Sabbatical and Jubilee years as commanded by the Torah.” [23]
Then, our cycles of seven will yield the ultimate “eight”—the all-embracing perfection of the World to Come.
Based on an address by the Rebbe, Purim 5726 (1966), and on various other occasions[24]
Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber
passoverShabbosBechukoseiVayikraSevenEightkabbalahShmittahsefirotSukkotBeharspiritual and materialtranscendence
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