What is a Prozbul, and why is it so controversial?
The Prozbul is a notification and partial transfer of authority to a Rabbinic Court, concerning money which is owed to the person writing the Prozbul. The writer says that he will collect all moneys owed him under the Court’s authority. The practical effect is that it allows him to collect money even after the conclusion of the Shmittah, the Sabbatical year, during which debts to an individual are canceled.
It is this detail which has caused so much confusion, and even distortion, of the intent and impact of the Prozbul of Hillel the Elder. Many have claimed that Hillel followed his own moral conscience, and wrote a “work around” to a Biblical Law which was problematic. They have termed him a “rebel and reformer” who inspires efforts to change Jewish Law today. This, however, is entirely untrue, and is in fact the very opposite of all that Hillel stood for and acted upon.
First of all, many accounts do not mention the actual cause for the Prozbul, although it is explicitly detailed in the Mishnah. The Mishnah discusses the Prozbul in Chapter 10 of Tractate Shevi’is, the book of Mishnah devoted to the laws of the seven-year cycle. Mishnah 3, the first to discuss it, reads as follows:
A Prozbul is not put to rest by the seventh year. This is one of the enactments of Hillel the Elder. When he saw that people were refraining from lending to each other, and were violating the Torah prohibition “Guard yourself, lest there be something evil within your heart, [saying, ‘the seventh year is coming, the Sabbatical year, and you look evilly upon your destitute brother and do not give him,] etc.” — Hillel established the Prozbul.
From this Mishnah, we see that Hillel was not motivated by a desire for change. On the contrary, people were violating an explicit Torah prohibition, and therefore Hillel needed to act to ensure that people would continue to observe the Law.
This would be sufficient reason to inspire Hillel to find a way that people could observe both laws, even through a roundabout way. It would not, however, justify creating a “legal fiction” which in truth amounted to a violation of the Law itself. But if we study further, we learn another stunning detail: the prohibition which Hillel “circumvented” was not Torah Law at all, but was itself a Rabbinic ordinance!
In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Gittin 36:1, they ask precisely the question which bothers people today: “how could Hillel have enacted an ordinance which was against Torah Law?” Answers the sage Abbaye: “[this ordinance concerns only] Shemittah in our time.”
According to Rebbi, the author of the Mishnah, the law waiving all debts in the seventh year applied only during the time when the Jubilee was observed, which it is not today, and will not be again until Israel is truly reunited in its entire land and the Temple is rebuilt.
The impact of this Talmudic discussion is very clear: at any time when the waiving of debts in the seventh year is a Torah obligation, Hillel’s enactment has no effect whatsoever. This is made explicit by Maimonides, Laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee 9:16:
“And the Prozbul is of no avail except for the Sabbatical of debts in our day, which is of Rabbinic origin. But for the Sabbatical of the Torah, the Prozbul is of no avail.”
It was our Sages who enacted a Rabbinic ordinance that the law be observed even today, in order that the laws concerning the Sabbatical of debts should not be forgotten. But since the ordinance was itself Rabbinic in nature, it was entirely within Hillel’s authority to construct a Rabbinic enactment exempting a person from the requirements of this law. Why would he do so? In order to prevent people from violating the Torah prohibition against refraining from lending to those less fortunate. He created a methodology for circumventing a Rabbinic decree — in order to ensure that the Torah itself was properly observed. Far from changing Torah, he acted to preserve it.
Yaakov Menken