Lectures on the Talmud – Shemitah

Rabbi Shagar was known as an outstanding Torah scholar and as an original, groundbreaking thinker whose work touches every realm of Torah. His lectures on the laws of Shemitah, collected in this book, express his unique approach to the study of Gemara. Through a study of the verses of the Torah, the sources of the Sages and the words of the Rishonim and Acharonim, Rabbi Shagar deals with some of the fundamental issues underlying Shemitah: the meaning of the release of the land, the release of debts and the Jubilee, and the relationship between them; the status of Shemitah in our time; the nature of the prozbul enactment and of the heter mechira, and more. From these discussions emerge deep and meaningful insights about holiness and social repair, about utopia and reality, and about the ways of Torah study and halakhic decision-making.

This work is the first in a series in which Rabbi Shagar’s Talmud lectures are to be published. For more than thirty years Rabbi Shagar devoted most of his time to studying and teaching Gemara. As in other fields, here too he brought his unique language and paved new paths in content and in ways of learning. His lectures combine classic yeshiva scholarship with insights and methods from academic Talmud research and cultural studies, and through their richness and sharpness beats a striving for existential meaning and a search for God.