“If I can experience the Shabbos, I can understand
what the earth is experiencing.

Why it needs to rest and heal and regenerate.”
YITZHAK GLASMAN
William and Malya Levin run the Alliance Community Reboot in Salem County, New Jersey.

It’s also perfectly OK for farmers to not take shmita literally, as they aren’t
actually required to by law. Halachic custom states that shmita only applies
to Jews in Israel.

“As Jewish farmers in North America, we have zero obligation,” said Shani
Mink, the executive director of the Jewish Farmer Network, which helps
Jewish farmers across the United States.

So then, according to Mink, the question becomes, what can we learn
from shmita by observing it in spirit?
William and Malya Levin, who run the Alliance Community Reboot, a
nonprofi t farming community in Salem County, New Jersey, took over their
land aft er years of conventional farmers using pesticides and herbicides on
it. But the Levins wanted to go organic, so they needed to detoxify the fi elds.

To get an organic certifi cation from the United States Department of
Agriculture, the husband-and-wife team had to uphold a requirement of
abstinence from synthetic substances for 36 months. It was essentially three
years of shmita, they said.

“It was recuperating,” Malya Levin added.

Photo by Ahron Moeller
Th ree years into its organic farming life, the Alliance Community Reboot,
or ACRe, is using the actual shmita year to cultivate another shmita-inspired
eff ort. Th e Levins are turning a grant from Salem County into a model farm
on a portion of their South Jersey property. Th ey plan to use the model farm
for educational tours.

“Launching during the shmita year is appropriate,” Malya Levin said.

“Taking a breath from commercial enterprise, showing why we do what we
do.” Yitzhak Glasman, who operates the Shalem Farm in Doylestown, is taking
on a similar eff ort.

Glasman described his Bucks County land as “destroyed” when he took it
over a year ago. So now, he’s in the process of “regenerating” it for farming
use. Th e farmer explained that shmita doesn’t apply to him because he doesn’t
live in Israel. But he still believes in using its concepts to “manage and heal
the land.”
Glasman also said that, “If I can experience the Shabbos, I can understand
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