Of Cockatiels and Washing Clothes

Before Rosh Hashanah, I thought that Shemittah would mostly affect me in the kitchen. I made sure that I understood what to do with my carrot peelings and leftover salads, and discussed with my husband what kind of Shemittah produce we would buy (more on that topic in a moment).

My kids spent an afternoon doing a pre-Shemittah craft activity - I opened up an old cracker-box and they painted the inside. We wrote 'Shemittah' on it, and then I taped it up into a box shape again, with the painted side on the outside. We lined it with a plastic bag and - voila! Our special Shemittah bin, for us to put our holy vegetables and fruit into. Actually, we made two. Since Shemittah produce is holy, you are not allowed to do anything to destroy it or make it disgusting - even the peels and even the leftovers. Instead, you have to leave holy Shemittah produce to rot before throwing it out, so we put it into a separate 'Shemittah Bin' (some people say that it should have a more respectful name than Shemittah Bin. Shemittah Receptacle? Shemitta-cle? Suggestions welcome, please!). But if you put your fresh peelings in with your two-day-old, partially-rotted-but-not-yet-fully-rotten-so-you-can't-yet-throw-them-out peelings, then you are making your fresh peelings disgusting. So your fresh peelings need to go into a different bin. And, possibly, the next day's ones might need yet another bin before you can empty the first bin (so far we've managed fine with two).

So, I was totally ready (ha! Or so I thought) for Shemittah In The Kitchen. I didn't realise though just how much Shemittah would affect me outside the kitchen.
First: the day after Rosh Hashanah (well, the day after Shabbat), instead of pouring the bucket of dirty water that I just used to wash the floor out over the roses, I had to pour it down the drain. Because I can't water the roses beyond what is needed to keep them alive.

Then: I went to turn on the washing machine, and realised that our washing machine drains directly into our garden. Well, this wasn't a surprise, I knew this before, but I had not realised that this had Shemittah implications. Cue phone call number two to the rabbi: If our washing machine drains into the garden, is that as though we are watering the garden during Shemittah? (His answer, as it turns out, was that we should put a stone or tile beneath the stream of water so that it doesn't run directly into the ground.*)

And the next day, my son discovered that his cockatiel had died during the night. He was very upset, and the only thing that would do was to give the cockatiel a full burial in the garden. We put the bird inside a small cardboard box and got ready to dig a grave, when - wait!
"It's Shemittah! We can't bury anything during Shemittah!" said my daughter. Hmm. I suppose that when the cockatiel decomposes, it will fertilise the ground. Perhaps that IS a Shemittah issue. Phone call number three brought permission to bury the pet, as long as it's clear that we aren't digging for agricultural purposes.


I wonder what's going to come up next?


*Any halachic opinions mentioned here are only the answers given to me in our situation, or are my own way of explaining my understanding of the halachos of Shemittah. They should not be treated as a general halachic ruling, nor as a substitute for learning the rules from your own rabbi or a respected halachic work.