The Deeper Reason for Heter Mehira

As we have seen in the last post, Rav Kook held that Shmita was essential in order to build a moral nation on the land of Israel. It is used as a type of regulotary system which refreshes a nation which is required to be involved in actions of nation building which often force it to ignore the pure values it stands for such as caring for the less fortunate. Shmitta is therefore an extreme picture of those values in order to give back a spark of that morality which will last the next 6 years.

How then could Rav Kook institute a “heter mechira” which basically destroys the whole concept of shmitta by providing a loophole by which we will not need to follow it?

First of all, Rav Kook clearly said heter mechira should ONLY be used when no other option is available for the nation at the time. It is only in time of extreme need.

That being said, Rav Kook saw the resurrection of am Israel starting in the land of Israel. In my opinion, he was looking at all of the new yishuvim building up and told himself: We have two choice. We can either follow shmitta which is supposed to help build a moral nation, and loose our national resurrection. Or, we can use this heter, which is halachically correct (at least according to him), and preserve the nation building. We will worry about re-inserting the ideals of shmitta once the nation will have been better built.

In a type of tragic writing, Rav Kook wrote a whole halachic book on shmitta and his heter called Shabbat Haaretz. In the introduction, he wrote about the ideals which shmitta stands for. Maybe he meant to tell us that only a nation which will end up returning to the values expressed in the introduction can afford to temporarily go around shmitta. more...