More on Tzedakah

Our integrated unit on tzedakah continued today with a look at some of the laws of shemittah, the sabbatical year, which serves as the backdrop for the Torah's disucssion of the laws of tzedakah.

Using Jigsaw as our guide, we learned about the following:

• How often shemittah takes place
• Guidelines of shemittah - letting the land lie fallow
• Tosefer shevi'it - preliminary 30-day period added to the regular shemittah year
• Prozbul - document that guarantees the fidelity of loans made in the shemittah year that would otherwise be cancelled. (We'll have a hands-on activity tomorrow that simulates an actual writing of the prozbul).

We also studied another profile of a great ba'al tzedakah, Rabbi Tarfon, who the students previously "met" in our Mishna studies.