The Jewish Calendar

The Jewish calendar is quite different from the non-Jewish calendar. For instance, the Jewish calendar is based on a lunar year, and the Julian calendar is based on a solar year. This difference makes it difficult to align the Jewish calendar with the Julian calendar. For example, we are now just a few months into the new Jewish year of 5784—which started in September—based upon the traditional rabbinic date for the creation of humanity.

Let us pause and look deeper at two holidays not included in the seven festivals of Israel found in Leviticus 23 but are especially helpful to consider during our North American Thanksgiving holiday.

The Sabbatical Year

God ordained a weekly day of rest—the Sabbath. In addition, He instituted a sabbatical year of rest every seven years. The Israelites were to leave the land fallow so it could rest during this seventh year. They were to refrain from planting crops and trust God to provide for them.

You shall sow your land for six years and gather in its yield, but on the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the needy of your people may eat; and whatever they leave the beast of the field may eat. You are to do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. (Exodus 23:10–11)

A second significant part of the sabbatical year was the forgiveness of loans. As we read later in Scripture:

At the end of every seven years you shall grant a remission of debts. This is the manner of remission: every creditor shall release what he has loaned to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed. (Deuteronomy 15:1–2)

The Israelites were also to show special mercy and grace toward the poor during the sabbatical year. They were to do so in a few different ways. First, the “successful” Israelite was commanded to help fellow Israelites who were impoverished by loaning them what was needed for their survival.

If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. (Deut 15:7–8)

Secondly, they were to release those who indentured themselves due to falling on hard times. As a result of poor health, bad crops, or whatever caused them to “lose the farm,” the only way they could survive was to become enslaved to one of their fellow countrymen.

If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free. When you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed. (Deuteronomy 15:12–13; see also 15:14–18)

The “release” of the sabbatical year meant the Israelites could not plant crops in their fields, collect payments on loans, and keep all of what they produced and stored for themselves rather than giving generously to the poor. At the heart of the “release” was the opportunity to trust God for all their needs.

Unfortunately, the Israelites rarely kept the sabbatical year, which became the basis for God’s judgment during the seventy years of captivity in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11).

Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete. (2 Chronicles 36:20–21)