chamets on Peseach

Re'eh 5780-2020

“Changing and Updating Jewish Law”
(updated and revised from parashat Re’eh 5762-2002)

In parashat Re’eh, we learn of the practice known as shmitat k’safim, of forgiving debts in the seventh year of the Sabbatical cycle. However, because of a proclamation by Hillel the Elder known as Pruzbul , the law of forgiving the debts has hardly ever been practiced. How was Hillel able to cancel a law of the Torah through, what seem to be, legal devices and loopholes?