Addition to the Rosh Hashanah Seder Akhilat haSimanim for the Shmitah Year, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

Contributor(s):

David Seidenberg and neohasid.org

Shared on:

31 December 2019 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Symbolic Foods, Seder Akhilat haSimanim, the Shmitah Year (Earth's Shabbat)

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., ecoḥasid

Many people eat special foods as part of a mini-seder at the beginning of the Rosh Hashanah meal and invoke blessings for the year as they eat them. For the Shmitah year, you can add figs to your Rosh Hashanah seder (apples and honey, or apples, dates, beets, etc.) and recite this kavvanah (intention):

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	In the year of Shmitah, the sabbatical year, our ancestors would let the land rest from their plows, receiving and eating whatever grew and ripened by itself from the land. And fig trees were especially prized in Shmitah, because they would ripen little by little over many months, always providing food. And some say that the fig was the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and that Shmitah is our time to receive the knowledge from Eden in the right way and the right time, when all is ripened toward understanding.
	May it be Your will YHVH our God and God of our ancestors that during this year of Shmitah, as the world ripens for us little by little, always turning again toward us to nourish and sustain us, that we may turn to receive in gratitude what is offered so freely and lovingly, so that we may turn and ripen in justice and love toward this world and all its creatures.
	(Eat the fig!)

For a full Shmita Rosh Hashanah seder, see also R. Nina Beth Cardin’s seder at: The Sova Project.

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“Addition to the Rosh Hashanah Seder Akhilat haSimanim for the Shmitah Year, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

David Seidenberg

Rabbi David Seidenberg, founder of NeoHasid.org, teaches text and music, Jewish thought and spirituality, in their own right and in relation to ecology and the environment. With smikhah (ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he has taught at over 100 synagogues, communities, retreats and conferences across North America (and a few in Europe and Israel). Rabbi Seidenberg's teaching empowers learners to become creators of Judaism through deep study and communion with texts and tradition. Areas of specialty include Kabbalah and Ḥasidut, Talmud, davenning, evolution and cosmology, sustainability, Maimonides, Buber, and more. Rabbi Seidenberg has published widely on ecology and Judaism and is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

neohasid.org

NeoHasid.org was created by Rabbi David Seidenberg to help folks integrate ḥasidic song, learning, and nusaḥ into their davenning and communities and to explore embodied Torah. It evolved to focus on eco-Torah and to share liturgy that honors our relationship with the Earth and/or expresses gender parity.

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Works of related interest:

Additions to the Rosh haShanah Seder Akhilat haSimanim, from Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

Image: Black Eyed Peas by Sanjay ach (License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

🗍 סדר אכילת הסמנים | Seder Akhilat haSimanim: The “Symbolic Foods of Life” Seder for Rosh Hashanah by R’ R. Karpov, Ph.D.

"Shmita sign." A resident of Holon, Israel, announcing the fruits on the trees in his backyard are hefker (ownerless property) during the year of Shmita, and that anyone can enter and harvest them.
עברית: תושב חולון מודיע כי הפירות על העצים בחצרו הם הפקר לרגל שנת שמיטה. (credit: Drork, Public Domain.)

הָרַחֲמָן עַל שְׁנַת הַשְׁמִיטָה | A Haraḥaman for the Shmitah Year in the Birkat haMazon, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

📖 סדר אכילת הסמנים | Seder Akhilat haSimanim for Rosh Hashanah 5881, by Ḥayyim Obadyah (2020)

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בַּעָל חוֹבֵנוּ | Ba’al Ḥoveinu, a piyut for Seliḥot on the advent of the Shmitah year by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

"Candlelight" (credit: apdk, license: CC BY)

לִשְׁמֹר הַשָּׁנָה שֶׁל שְׁמִטָּה | Candlelighting for Rosh haShanah, Shabbat, and Yom Tov during the Shmitah Year, by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Additions to Piyyutim on the High Holidays for the Shemitah Year, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid.org)

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17