By Rabbi Cantor Gershon Silins

It is probably naïve of me, but I don’t understand the desire to be a billionaire. When I have fantasies about having more money than I do now, I principally imagine not worrying about my old age and being able to fly business class. This is pretty small potatoes compared to the fantastic amounts that our economic system provides to its big winners, those who ascend into the higher realms of wealth.

Is it something about our system that encourages people to wish for nearly unimaginable wealth, and then to do whatever it is that leads them on that path? Abigail Disney, heir to the Walt Disney fortune, says, “I am of the belief that every billionaire who can’t live on $999 million is kind of a sociopath,” she told The Guardian. “Like, why? You know, over a billion dollars makes money so fast that it’s almost impossible to get rid of.” She added, “So by just sitting on your hands, you become more of a billionaire until you’re a double billionaire. It’s a strange way to live when you have objectively more money than a person can spend.” She previously called out those who are using their wealth to gain access to privilege and are only looking out for themselves. “As an American, I am grief-stricken at the havoc that moral and spiritual corrosion are capable of wreaking when they sink their teeth into a democracy,” She is clearly onto something, as recent political history demonstrates.

The structure of our economy makes some people unimaginably wealthy, sometimes by great effort, sometimes not. In some cases they do nothing at all to earn it and nothing at all to increase it. Others, most of us, make great efforts but never achieve anything beyond subsistence, much less wealth. And mostly we take this for granted.

The Torah begs to differ. The unrealistic, but admirable and surprising system that the Torah commands seems designed to limit the possibility of immense wealth. The system, which we encounter in this week’s reading, is based on “shemittah,” the agricultural restrictions of the seventh year, when the land is to lie fallow. The portion continues with the jubilee year, and limitations on sale of land and slaves.

Rashi, the medieval French biblical commentator who is so important to our understanding of the Hebrew Bible, asks: what does the sabbatical year for the land have to do with Mt. Sinai? These rules are completely dependent on the people Israel living in the land of Israel. So why, and logically how, could they be commanded in advance of their becoming relevant? If they didn’t yet have land, why command them concerning what to do with it? Rashi’s answer is informed by the rabbinic understanding that the entire Torah, written and oral, was given at Sinai. There can be no hierarchy of commandments because all were given by God to Moses at Sinai — they are all equally binding and equally significant, there are no “less important” mitzvot. The shemittah and Jubilee were commanded by God before the people were in the Land that the rules were about, because they were designed for a purpose that tradition would suggest is more than just about the land, but about the way people should live.

God describes the land as belonging to God, not to any human owner of it. What we would call the “owner” of the land is more like a tenant farmer, owing loyalty to the real landlord, God, following that Landlord’s directions as to how it will be used, and the Landlord can, and will, take it back if the rules aren’t scrupulously kept. And they exist for a reason: We read in Genesis Rabba, an early midrashic commentary, “The commandments were only given in order that God’s creations would be refined through observing them.” How, then, are we refined by the observance of the sabbatical year, when the land is to remain uncultivated one year of every seven years? And even more, how are we refined by the further regulation of the Jubilee, when every fifty years the land returns to its original tribal owner? The Torah says that the value of the land when it is sold is based on the number of harvests remaining towards the Jubilee. And the Torah makes it clear that it is God that sets the rules: “But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”

The Torah sets forth its system as one that will enable everyone to be satisfied, but not much more than that. Resting your farm for one of every seven years, and following a rule that takes everything you’ve done away from you every fifty years is not the way to become a billionaire. It is rather a way for society to prevent the amassing of land and the wealth that comes from it. It is a kind of leasehold, where the true owner is actually God.

The ethics implied by the Torah here seem intended not to increase wealth but to decrease poverty. And if you understand the land you “own” as truly belonging to God, not to you, you have a reason to honour the rules that protect others as well as yourself. Follow the Landlord’s rules and you will never become wealthy, but you and your neighbour, and the society you live in, will prosper. And in my view, that’s better than being a billionaire.

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