Shemittah, the sabbatical year, is one of those practices that is barely noticed, let alone observed by many Jews, something considered a relic of a bygone agragrian age. But three years ago a group of some 30 people on a Jewish retreat in Snowdonia started to look in depth at the ideas behind it and what relevance it might hold today. Out of that gathering has sprung a new organisation, Miknaf Ha’aretz, whose mission is to build an “earth-based, radical, diasporist Jewish community in the UK”.
Its name, meaning “the ends of the earth’, comes from a verse in Isaiah, “From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise...
” The Bretslov Chasidic glossed this as referring to the melodies that the land emits, part of a universal chorus in celebration of Creation. The choice of name is a clue to the character of the group. A century ago radical Jewish alternatives tended to be secular in nature.
Think of the East End anarchists who staged Yom Kippur balls. But for the spiritual side of Judaism is an important source of inspiration. Learning to tend the land at a farm camp Its founders Sara Moon and Samson Hart, who are in their 30s, both grew up in the same Jewish synagogue, Hale in South Manchester, and have since relocated to Devon.
She enjoyed a strong Jewish education, preferring to go to King David High School in the north of Manchester rather than the local grammar school and spent time on kibbutz during a gap year in Israel with Habonim. She felt “very passio.