Laws and Customs of the Land of Israel in Judaism

The laws and customs associated with the Land of Israel connect Jewish religious life to a particular land through commandments governing agriculture, produce, worship, and communal practice. Some are explicitly land-dependent, including tithes, the sabbatical year, and first fruits; other customs express attachment to the land and Jerusalem through prayer, pilgrimage, festivals, and life-cycle rituals.[1][2] Their significance is not limited to the regulation of farming. The sources also present them as expressing the land’s sanctity, gratitude for its produce, obligations toward people in need, and limits on human ownership.[1][7]

The Hebrew term mitzvot hateluyot ba’aretz means commandments dependent on the land. The Talmud contrasts these with mitzvot hateluyot ba-guf, commandments incumbent on a person: bodily obligations generally apply both in Israel and outside it, while land-dependent commandments apply within the halakhically defined Land of Israel. The Talmud’s discussion nevertheless identifies exceptions, including orlah and kilayim (the prohibition of diverse kinds), which also apply outside the land, and records a dispute about the prohibition on eating new grain before the omer offering.[3]

Land-related obligations have been grouped under Temple service and pilgrimage, agricultural produce, health and purity, Jewish civil and military government, and matters connected to the Sanhedrin, including the calendar, Jubilee, and legal penalties.[8] Maimonides’ Book of Seeds organizes agricultural commandments into seven areas: diverse kinds; gifts to the poor; priestly dues; tithes; second tithes and fourth-year fruit; first fruits and other priestly gifts; and sabbatical and Jubilee years. Its topics include field corners, gleanings, forgotten sheaves, land-rest obligations, and restrictions on agricultural work.[9]

The land’s religious importance also appears in practices that are not confined to farmers. Jewish prayer, weddings, burial customs, and festival observances preserve a recurring orientation toward Israel and Jerusalem. Thus, the subject encompasses both legal rules whose operation depends on place and a wider set of customs through which Jewish communities remember, honor, and hope for the land.[2]

The Torah’s agricultural laws are presented as applying in relation to the land and its produce. Their later organization in rabbinic literature gave them a defined legal framework: the Mishnah’s order Zera’im addresses agricultural commandments, and the Jerusalem Talmud discusses nine tractates in that order concerning land-based laws. These laws were central to Jewish community life in Israel and included tithes, first fruits, the sabbatical year, and leaving a field corner for the poor.[4][10]

The geographical reach of these commandments is a legal question, not a simple synonym for any one political boundary. Halakhic boundaries depend on specified geographic markers, with tithes, shemittah, and first fruits among the laws for which boundaries matter. Rabbinic agricultural boundaries are also distinguished from both the wider biblical borders promised to the patriarchs and the borders of particular periods of Jewish sovereignty.[4][11] Boundary descriptions appear in Tosefta Sheviit 4:11 and parallel texts and were copied in an ancient synagogue inscription at Rehov, south of modern Beth Shean. One description traces a boundary from modern Raphia—or Ascalon, under an alternative reading—north to Acre, then northeast through parts of southern Lebanon, the Golan, and Transjordan, before returning west near the southern Dead Sea.[11]

These traditional legal boundaries should not be treated as modern state borders or as a single uncomplicated line. Sources refer to different boundary traditions associated with the promise to Abraham, the kingdoms of Saul and David, and the Second Temple period; they also distinguish the boundaries relevant to agricultural commandments from broader biblical promised borders.[11][12] The term Eretz Israel therefore has religious, historical, and legal dimensions, and the specific rule under discussion determines which boundary account is relevant.[4][12]

An older reference account states that some land-specific laws were regarded under a strict reading of Mosaic law as no longer operative after the destruction of Jerusalem, while rabbis maintained certain distinctions through rabbinic enactments. It describes enactments intended to protect judicial administration and the economy of the Land, encourage settlement, and sustain local authority, including Palestinian authority over ordination and the announcement of the new moon based on witnesses.[8]

The same account describes measures intended to support the Land’s economy and cultivated areas: restricting export of necessities such as fruit, wine, oil, and firewood; requiring some goods to be sold directly to consumers; and restricting the raising of sheep and goats outside woods or barren areas to protect cultivated land. It says that a dwelling’s mezuzah became immediately obligatory in Palestine, rather than after an initial 30 days of tenancy as described for locations outside the Land. These are historically situated descriptions, not a statement that every rule is universally practiced in the same form today.[8]

The reference also records regional differences between Palestinian and Babylonian Jewish custom. Its examples include a Palestinian Torah-reading cycle completed over three or three-and-a-half years rather than one year, three shofar blasts announcing Shabbat on Friday afternoon in Palestine, and a minyan of seven for Kaddish and blessings there compared with ten elsewhere. These examples illustrate historical regional variation; they should not be read as a description of universal or current practice.[8]

Agricultural law links the yield of the land to duties of allocation, restraint, and care. The Torah’s rules, as organized in rabbinic sources, include gifts to priests and Levites, tithes, produce for the poor, first fruits, restrictions on new trees and mixed kinds, and periodic rests for fields.[8][9] In the Jewish political tradition, land and property ultimately belong to God, and human use is subject to limits rather than being absolute ownership.[13]

Harvest rules reserve portions for people in need. Pe’ah is the corner of a field left unharvested; leket is fallen grain gathered during harvest; and shicheha is a sheaf forgotten in the field. The Torah also instructs farmers not to strip vineyards bare or collect every fallen fruit, leaving some for the poor and the stranger. Rabbinic and later legal sources discuss practical details of gleaning and access.[14] In a commentary on biblical Israel’s agricultural society, Rabbi Sacks connects these harvest gifts with the poor tithe and with the support of priests and Levites, who did not own land and served religious, educational, and judicial functions.[15]

Tithes follow a seven-year cycle. The first tithe, ma’aser rishon, goes to the Levites, who in turn separate a tenth for the priests. A second tithe, ma’aser sheni, is associated with years one, two, four, and five; in Temple times it was taken to Jerusalem and eaten there in ritual purity. In years three and six, the poor tithe, ma’aser ani, replaces the second tithe and is distributed locally to the Levite, stranger, orphan, and widow. No tithes are taken in the seventh year in the Jewish Encyclopedia’s account of the cycle.[15][16]

The Torah’s instructions for the second tithe provide for converting produce into money when the journey to the chosen place is too far or difficult, then spending that money there. Rabbi Sacks presents the Jerusalem visit as having religious and social dimensions: the Sages associated the stay with learning, while Maimonides explained that gathering there strengthened friendship and communal bonds. His account also emphasizes that the second tithe was not to be sold or stored for the next year and that food was given to the Levite, stranger, orphan, and widow.[15] The rules thus tie agricultural abundance to worship and shared social life rather than treating it as a wholly private resource.[1][15]

Five gifts are separated from produce: terumah gedolah, ma’aser rishon, and terumat ma’aser, which apply in each year; ma’aser sheni, assigned to years one, two, four, and five; and ma’aser ani, assigned to years three and six. Each gift has its own rules of amount, purpose, and eligible recipients. Terumah goes to a kohen, the first tithe to a Levite, and the poor tithe to a poor person. In Temple times, the owner took the second tithe—or its redemption value—to Jerusalem for consumption; current practice includes redeeming it, with some gifts not physically separated from the rest of the produce.[17]

Produce from the Land of Israel from which the required gifts have not been separated is called tevel and is forbidden to eat. Designating the gifts removes that status from the remaining produce, while the portions designated remain governed by their own rules. The five grain species, olives and olive oil, and grapes and wine are classified as subject to tithes by Torah law; other tree fruits, legumes, and vegetables are generally classified as subject by rabbinic law, although another view treats tree fruits and legumes as subject by Torah law.[17]

The first-fruits offering, bikkurim, joined the harvest to a declaration of collective memory. Maimonides describes it as an offering brought to the Temple from designated species and says the commandment applies when the Temple exists. The offering belongs to the priest; his account includes produce from the Land of Israel, Syria, and Transjordan.[18]

The traditional bikkurim pilgrimage was associated with Shavuot and the Seven Species: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. A farmer brought the first fruits to the priest with a recital recalling the ancestors’ enslavement in Egypt, their liberation, and their arrival in the land. The declaration linked the farmer’s own harvest with the people’s history and with gratitude for the land’s bounty.[19][20]

Accounts of the ritual describe farmers marking a ripening fig, grape cluster, or pomegranate as a first fruit, then traveling to Jerusalem in groups accompanied by a flute. One description includes a gold-horned ox at the head of a procession and artisans greeting the pilgrims in Jerusalem.[21]

The bikkurim theme has also been adapted in modern Israeli settings. Kibbutz harvest celebrations broadened the range of offerings beyond the traditional Seven Species to include other produce, livestock, and even babies born during the year, with songs, dancing, and processions of farm products and decorated agricultural equipment.[19] These celebrations retain harvest and communal themes while adapting the imagery to contemporary agricultural life.

Shemittah (also spelled shemitah or shmita) is the seventh year in the agricultural cycle. In the Land of Israel, the land is to rest and agricultural work is restricted; produce that grows during the year has special status and is made available for use rather than treated as ordinary private commercial property.[22][23] Restrictions include sowing, pruning, harvesting, and grape gathering, while legal sources distinguish Torah-level prohibitions from additional rabbinic restrictions and discuss exceptions for preventing damage or preserving plants.[5]

The year’s produce is described as ownerless or available to all and as having sanctity that affects how it may be used. Certain plants growing during the year are subject to the rabbinic prohibition of sefichin, with exceptions. Shemittah produce is also subject to restrictions on commercial trade, waste, export, and uses unlike the produce’s customary use, and it is exempt from terumot and maasrot. These descriptions summarize rules and do not constitute a comprehensive ruling for every crop or circumstance.[5]

Shemittah also includes debt remission. The agricultural rest and the release of debts are related parts of the sabbatical cycle, but they are not identical in timing: one historical account distinguishes land release beginning with the seventh year from monetary debt release at the cycle’s end. Sources connect debt release with relief for poor borrowers and the wider aim of protecting vulnerable people.[24] Prozbul, instituted during the Second Temple period, is a legal document that prevents a debt from being canceled, preserving lending while allowing poor people access to interest-free loans before the sabbatical year.[22]

The agricultural release also changes how ownership and access are understood. The Torah’s seventh-year yield is described as available to the household, workers, resident strangers, and animals; other accounts emphasize that produce is made freely accessible and should not be wasted or sold as ordinary goods.[24][25] Interpretations connect the rule to acknowledging that the land is not ultimately human property, allowing natural resources to recover, and caring for people in need.[25] Daniel Elazar places shemittah and periodic fallowing within the broader value of yishuv ha’aretz, understood as settling and developing the land while protecting its environmental quality; he discusses it alongside bal tashkhit, the prohibition against wanton destruction.[7]

The Jubilee year, yovel, is associated with the completion of seven sabbatical cycles. The sources describe it as including another fallow year, release of Hebrew servants, and return of hereditary land to its original family or heirs, subject to exceptions. The land was understood as belonging to God, and Jubilee’s return of property was intended to prevent lasting concentration or major changes in land tenure. Rules also address redeeming sold property and exceptions for houses in walled cities.[24][26]

Jubilee’s historical observance and calculation are matters of rabbinic discussion. The Jewish Encyclopedia says it was not observed unless all the tribes were in the Land and that it was no longer observed in the Second Temple period; it also reports that rabbinic authorities maintained shemittah after the exile through a rabbinic enactment. The sources record disagreement over whether Jubilee is a separate fiftieth year after seven sabbatical cycles or coincides with the seventh sabbatical year, as well as differences in calculations of the shemittah cycle.[24] Another account says Jubilee has not been observed for at least two millennia and connects its applicability to the presence of all twelve tribes in Israel.[27]

The Jubilee principle is also presented as a theological limit on ownership. Rabbi Sacks explains the land’s rest through soil conservation and connects it to the biblical warning that the land would make up for missed sabbatical years during the people’s exile. His account cites the rationale that the land belongs to God and its inhabitants are temporary residents.[28] These interpretations place periodic rest, debt release, and land return within a common framework: the land and its produce are entrusted to human use, not possessed without limits.[28][13]

The laws of orlah regulate fruit from newly planted trees. Leviticus prohibits eating fruit during the tree’s first three years, sets aside fourth-year fruit for celebration before God, and permits use from the fifth year.[29] Maimonides describes orlah as prohibiting both eating and benefit from the fruit during those first three years. He states that definite orlah fruit is forbidden in the Diaspora while a doubtful case is permitted, describing that Diaspora rule as a tradition transmitted to Moses.[30]

The fourth-year fruit is known as neta reva’i. It is sacred and was traditionally eaten in Jerusalem under specified conditions or redeemed onto money. Maimonides states that the law applies in the Land of Israel whether or not the Temple stands, while sources record differences among authorities about its application outside the land.[30][29] Tu BiShvat, the fifteenth of Shevat, became a date used to determine the agricultural year for fruit and tithes, including which year’s rules apply to a tree’s produce.[31]

Tu BiShvat’s customs developed over time. A feast of fruits is described as a medieval custom; in sixteenth-century Safed, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria and his students instituted a Tu BiShvat seder that gave symbolic meaning to fruits and trees of the Land of Israel.[31] A related account describes a seder modeled on the Passover seder, with readings from the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature and eating the Seven Species alongside other fruits.[32] The holiday’s traditional agricultural-calendar role was connected to fruit tithes and the start of a new fruit-bearing cycle, rather than originally being a tree-planting festival.[31]

Tree planting later became a modern Israeli practice associated with the date. Modern celebrations also include ecological awareness and planting trees, extending the older themes of fruit, land, and cultivation into contemporary public customs.[31]

Jewish prayer preserves a regular orientation toward the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple. The Land is described as having special sanctity in Jewish tradition, with the Temple as a central reason for that status. The terms aliyah and yeridah respectively mean “ascending” to the Land of Israel and “descending” from it.[2] The Amidah, recited three times daily, includes prayers for return to the Land and for the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple.[2]

Jewish custom also directs prayer toward the Land of Israel. Citing Berakhot 30a, the Jewish Agency lesson says that a person praying outside the land should turn their heart toward it, even mentally when physical orientation is not possible.[2] The custom makes the land a focal point of prayer for communities both within and beyond it. Rabbi Sacks presents a related interpretation attributed to Nahmanides: all commandments are intrinsically connected with the Land, so observing even tefillin, kosher dietary law, or Shabbat in the Diaspora is not identical to observing them in Israel. This is a theological interpretation attributed to Nahmanides, rather than a formulation shared identically by all authorities.[33]

Pilgrimage and first fruits connect religious observance to the agricultural calendar. The three pilgrimage festivals—Pesach, Shavuot, and Succot—are associated with the agricultural year, while bikkurim brought farmers to Jerusalem with a harvest offering and a declaration recalling the people’s history.[20] The second tithe likewise required a Jerusalem visit in the relevant years, where it was consumed in ritual purity; the practice has been interpreted as combining religious learning with social connection among people gathered in the city.[15]

The Land and Jerusalem also appear in customs outside formal prayer. In one Jewish wedding custom, the groom recites Psalm 137:5–6, recalling Jerusalem, before breaking a glass. The phrase “If I forget thee, Jerusalem” makes remembrance of the city part of the ceremony. “Next year in Jerusalem” also concludes both the Yom Kippur Ne’ilah service and the Passover seder.[2]

Burial customs express an enduring connection to the land as well. Jewish tradition includes seeking burial in Eretz Israel and connects the practice with Jacob and Joseph, who died in Egypt but asked to be buried in the land. A related custom places a handful of soil from the Land of Israel in the grave of a Jew buried elsewhere.[2] These practices, like prayer and festival words, make attachment to the Land visible in Jewish life beyond agricultural law.

The laws associated with land repeatedly connect possession with responsibility. Land and property are described in the Jewish political tradition as belonging ultimately to God, while people’s use of them is constrained by obligations to others and by rules governing the land itself.[13] Harvest gifts and tithes set limits on what an owner may retain and distribute resources among priests, Levites, the poor, strangers, widows, and orphans.[14][16] Sabbatical produce and debt release extend access to workers, resident strangers, and animals and provide relief to debtors.[24]

The agricultural rules include duties toward people working in or living near a field. They include allowing workers to eat from its produce and not muzzling an ox while it works, as well as gleaning and field-corner rules that leave a share of the harvest for the poor and the stranger.[14][13] The first-fruits declaration joins gratitude for the harvest with recollection of the people’s liberation and arrival in the land. The AJC interprets the ritual as teaching that the fruits of achievement should not be kept only for oneself.[20][34]

The same limits extend to neighboring property and environmental quality. Elazar describes the protection of sunlight and ventilation as interests recognized through broad interpretations of property restrictions when construction on one property would interfere with a neighbor’s access. He presents these as duties of neighborly conduct within the Jewish political tradition.[13] The value of yishuv ha’aretz in his account includes both settling and developing the land and protecting its environmental quality, with sabbatical laws, fallowing, and bal tashkhit placed within that wider concern.[7]

Shemittah and Jubilee have also been explained in ecological terms. The sabbatical year lets land rest, while the Jubilee cycle repeats that rest and returns hereditary land. Rabbi Sacks connects the land’s rest with soil conservation and the idea that people are temporary residents on land belonging to God.[28] These interpretations place agricultural restraint alongside social provision: practices that limit extraction and ownership are presented as serving both the land’s continued well-being and the needs of vulnerable members of society.[24][28]

The modern return of Jewish agriculture in Israel made shemittah a practical issue for farmers and communities. Many Jews in the Diaspora had not been farmers for centuries, and the establishment of the State of Israel made the sabbatical year a direct concern for renewed agricultural settlement.[6] The core challenge is how to observe a year of rest while maintaining agricultural livelihoods and supplying produce.[22][6]

One approach is heter mechira, a temporary sale of Jewish-owned agricultural land to a non-Jew for the sabbatical year. The leniency was first instituted by rabbinical courts in the late nineteenth century; the arrangement permits cultivation according to its proponents, while critics object to its validity.[22][5] It became associated with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and has been treated by its supporters as a temporary or emergency measure rather than an abandonment of shemittah.[6]

The arrangement has remained controversial. Some religious authorities support it as a way to sustain agriculture, while others reject its validity or object on the grounds that selling land to a non-Jew is prohibited. The sources do not establish universal acceptance of the dispensation; communities differ over its validity and over other methods for obtaining produce.[22][5]

Other approaches include otzar bet din, in which a rabbinical court supervises produce, and yevul nochri, produce brought into Israel from other countries. In the otzar bet din model, farmers gather produce as agents of a court, which sets compensation and distribution intended to cover costs rather than generate profit. Another arrangement describes produce grown under rabbinical-court supervision beginning in the sixth year of the cycle.[22][5] Additional methods include early sowing and hydroponic or soil-less cultivation.[6]

The exact land and ownership to which shemittah applies are also subjects of halakhic definition. Sources describe differences in the treatment of land cultivated by non-Jews and exclude parts of the south and west Negev from the relevant boundaries under the approach they present.[5] These descriptions concern religious-legal boundaries, not modern political borders.[11] Practical rulings also distinguish Torah-level agricultural labors from rabbinic restrictions and discuss exceptions for work necessary to prevent damage or preserve plants, such as watering crops that would otherwise be harmed.[5]

Current arrangements for tithes also differ from their Temple-era forms. Second tithe is redeemed rather than carried to Jerusalem for consumption, and some gifts are not physically separated from the rest of the produce in contemporary practice.[17] The laws therefore remain part of religious life and agricultural administration, while their implementation reflects the absence of the Temple and the practical conditions of modern farming.[17][18]

The laws and customs of the Land of Israel bring together place, worship, agriculture, and social obligation. Their agricultural rules make religious practice visible in the handling of land and produce: farmers leave portions for the poor and allocate gifts to priests and Levites.[14][16] They also bring first fruits in gratitude and periodically suspend cultivation.[20][24] The seven-year cycle links fieldwork to debt relief and shared access, while Jubilee expresses a further limit on permanent ownership through the return of hereditary land.[24][26]

The customs also keep Israel and Jerusalem present in Jewish life beyond the fields. Prayer is directed toward the Land; the Amidah asks for return and restoration; the wedding glass is accompanied by remembrance of Jerusalem; and festival words look toward “Next year in Jerusalem.”[2] Pilgrimage and first-fruits traditions connect the agricultural year to the people’s history and to communal gathering in Jerusalem.[15][20]

Taken together, these practices frame the land as sacred and productive, but not simply as an object of unrestricted private use. The sources emphasize stewardship, gratitude, provision for vulnerable people, and the environmental value of allowing land to rest.[1][7] Their continuing significance lies both in the specific commandments that govern produce and in the wider pattern of Jewish attachment, memory, and responsibility associated with Eretz Israel.[1][35]

The principal disagreements concern the scope of land-dependent commandments, their application outside the Land, and the practical means of observing them. The Talmud’s general distinction between obligations of the person and obligations of the land is qualified by exceptions such as orlah and kilayim, and by a recorded dispute about new grain before the omer offering outside Israel.[3] Maimonides’ account likewise distinguishes definite and doubtful cases of orlah in the Diaspora and records differences among authorities regarding fourth-year fruit outside the Land.[30]

Territorial scope is defined through halakhic traditions and may differ according to the commandment and the boundary source being used. Traditional legal definitions should not be equated with current political borders, and sources report several biblical and historical boundary traditions rather than one universal line.[4][12] Authorities also differ over how certain produce is classified: one view treats tree fruits and legumes as subject to tithes by Torah law, while the stated general classification treats them as rabbinic obligations.[17]

Shemittah observance has its own disputes. Heter mechira is a prominent example: some authorities accept the temporary sale as a way to permit cultivation, while others reject its validity or object to selling land to a non-Jew. Other approaches—including court-supervised produce and soil-less cultivation—are also used, but the sources do not establish one universally accepted method.[22][5] Sources likewise report differing positions on the application of shemittah rules to land cultivated by non-Jews.[5]

Jubilee’s calculation and historical force are debated in rabbinic accounts. Sources report a disagreement over whether the Jubilee year is separate from the seventh sabbatical year or coincides with it, as well as different calculations of the sabbatical cycle. They also describe the tradition that Jubilee required all the tribes to be in the Land and was not observed in the Second Temple period.[24][27] Interpretations of Leviticus 25:23 concerning land sales to non-Jews are disputed among rabbinic authorities and should not be reduced to one uncontested political conclusion.[35]