Jubilee and the Passing on of Generational Wealth

Judaism for the Thinking Person

In this teaching, I note how there are two sorts of social legislation that emerge out of the Holiness Code of Leviticus (as well as other places): the kind that is aspirational --invitations to become a holy people through holiness of giving, holiness of speech, holiness of conduct, holiness of caring-- and the kind that is deeply uncomfortable structural change -- i.e. so aspirational that you really want to just leave it "in heaven" as an unreachable ideal. An excellent example of the latter is the Jubilee Year, or Jubilee Reset, when not only does the Land receive extra ecological dispensation (terrifying for an agrarian culture), and not only are most debts forgiven (also terrifying to the economic system), but the Biblical basis of capital, the Land itself, is returned to an original apportionment. I compare the Jubilee Reset of capital once every 50 years to the Estate Tax, a way to prevent generational wealth from accumulating so far that the society cannot overcome the class divisions it creates of structural poor and structural privilege. In America, the Estate Tax is easy skirted with comically massive loopholes, while the generationally wealthy claim through propaganda that it should be eliminated because it is somehow targeted at farms, rather than the real problem of generational inherited wealth. Leviticus ends warning of societal collapse if we leave the Jubilee as an ideal rather than practical policy. What would society look like if we actually had a law that one cannot leave more than 50 million dollars to each child?