Debt Cancellation for a Sabbath Year
Jacob Feinspan is a former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center. He coordinates grassroots organizing and advocacy at American Jewish World Service (www.ajws.org), an international development organization motivated by Judaism’s imperative to pursue justice, and sits on the board of the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than seventy-five organizations dedicated to cancellation of debts that cripple impoverished nations around the world.
Earlier this week, I attended the same prayer breakfast that Ben blogged about, focused on debt cancellation for impoverished countries around the world and calling on Congress to pass the Jubilee Act. Every year, the world’s poorest nations spend billions of dollars on debt service, money that would be better spent invested in education or health care for their people.
This week’s event is part of a year-long national mobilization calling for a Sabbath Year. The effort, organized by the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than seventy-five organizations dedicated to the cancellation of debts that cripple impoverished nations around the world, is inspired by biblical texts.
In the Torah we find a liberating and just vision of community life governed by cycles of seven or Sabbath cycles—the Sabbath Day, the Sabbath Year, and the Jubilee Year. These cycles are a powerful reminder of God’s intent that all creatures enjoy fullness of life and partake in the abundance of God’s world. Just as Shabbat is a palace in time for weekly individual spiritual renewal, so too was the Sabbath Year a time for communal renewal—to fortify the land and renew interpersonal relationships. In biblical times, the Israelites were forbidden from planting or harvesting every seventh year in order to allow the land to replenish itself. For the people living on the land, it was also a time of replenishment: every seventh year debts were cancelled.
The Marshall Plan of its time, this seven-year cycle of debt cancellation was a structural mechanism designed to address one of the biggest ethical challenges of all time—the cycle of intergenerational poverty. By canceling debts every seven years, and returning lands to their ancestral owners every fiftieth year— the Jubilee Year—the Torah instituted an economy where wealth was redistributed regularly. By living out the Torah’s words, our ancestors prevented the rich from accumulating yet more wealth at the expense of the poor. (For more about the Sabbath year click here.)
Our ancestors’ actions inspired the worldwide Jubilee movement to lift the excruciating burden of debt that continues to siphon resources from impoverished countries that should be used for health care, education, and clean water. Today, we have the opportunity to bring justice to generations of our own descendants by calling on Congress to pass the Jubilee Act, a bill that would cancel the debts of 67 of the world’s most impoverished countries so that they can reach the Millennium Development Goals. I hope you’ll join me in taking action.