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This Land Is Your Land
Ilana Kurshan
Six years we work the land. We sow and plant,
And water, prune, and tend and pick and reap
The farmer rises early, ere the dawn
And falls, each night, to sweet and tired sleep.
Six years we gather, spend, lay waste, acquire,
Our hard-won crops are ours to eat or sell,
The cash we earn is ours to save or spend,
Or give to those who fare not quite as well.
Six years, God says, the land is ours to work,
And so we do, with toil and with sweat.
We think we are the masters, always were--
How easy, when so busy, to forget—
The land was God’s before the land was ours.
And like God rested on the seventh day,
We give the land the seventh year to rest
Keep shut the shed. The hoe and plow can stay.
Whatever grows will grow that seventh year,
The farmer doesn’t plant the seeds or till,
The crops that grow belong to all to take,
And anyone may come and eat their fill.
The butterflies drink nectar and the birds
Build nests between the branches, and below,
The land lies fallow, yielding what it yields,
In summer sun, the wild berries grow.
Each seventh year, we stay our hands, let go--
This land is Your land, God’s. And now we know.
*
The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.
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