Shmita--As Only The New York Times Can Report It

No surprises here from Mr. Erlanger:

As Farmers and Fields Rest, a Land Grows Restless
By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM, Oct. 7 — As Israel’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables.

In the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malahi, a man held a scroll of the Torah, which mandates shmita, a kind of sabbatical for the land which occurs every seven years.

Rabbis are pitted against one another, the state and the religious authorities are in conflict, the Israeli Supreme Court is involved, the devout are confused and the cost of produce is rising.

And a country in love with flowers and proud of “making the desert bloom,” in its own disputatious way, is letting much of its land go to seed.

Odd that Erlanger did not develop this angle:

But for many especially observant Jews, this is a dodge too far. They insist their produce must be grown by non-Jews on non-Jewish land.

No developing the story of how Palestinian Arabs are cooperating by selling their produce to Israel. No sense to reporting on that.

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