A number of people have asked me about the Shemitah year lately, and so in this article I will attempt to provide some answers. According to Orthodox Judaism, the current 7 year Shemitah cycle will end and a new 7 year Shemitah cycle will begin when Rosh Hashanah arrives on the evening of September 25th. But that assumes that they have been calculating the Shemitah cycles correctly.
There are some that believe that this is not actually a Shemitah year at all. There are others that believe that a Shemitah year should begin on the first day of the Biblical year and not on Rosh Hashanah. And then there is the debate between those that believe a full Jubilee cycle is 49 years long and those that believe a full Jubilee cycle is 50 years long.
As you can see, researching this topic can quickly become extremely complicated. So let me start off by reviewing some of the basics. This is what Wikipedia has to say about how the Shemitah year is observed in the land of Israel today…
