When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the LORD. (3) Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. (4) But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the LORD: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (5) You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. (6) But you may eat whatever the land during its sabbath will produce—you, your male and female slaves, the hired and bound laborers who live with you, (7) and your cattle and the beasts in your land may eat all its yield.
Talmud Sanhedrin 39a
a certain student came before Rabbi Abbahu and said to him: What is the reason for the mitzva of the Sabbatical Year? Rabbi Abbahu said to them: Now I will tell you something that is fit for the two of you.
אמר הקב"ה לישראל זרעו שש והשמיטו שבע כדי שתדעו שהארץ שלי
Rabbi Abbahu continued: The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to the Jewish people: Sow for six years, and withhold sowing during the seventh year, so that that you will know that the land is Mine.
“When you come into the land” (Leviticus 25.2) implies no conquest but the acquisition of a legacy. This may foster the illusion that the Land belongs to Israel permanently and unconditionally, to be inherited by their children to be tilled and cultivated, and to reap the fruits of their sweat and toil. To counter any such notion, God says, the land which I give to you, it is not a land given as an irreversible inheritance, but a pledge renewed on condition that you merit it. However, if you turn away from Me, I shall take it away from you and give it to others.” – Rabbi Moshe Alshich (16th Century)
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin – we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam, 1967
“Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.” – Dr. MLK, Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
אם היתה נטיעה בתוך ידך ויאמרו לך הרי לך המשיח. בוא ונטע את הנטיעה (ואח”כ צא והקביל).
Midrash Avot Derabbi Natan, Version B, Chapter 31
If you had a sapling in your hand and were told that the Messiah had come, first plant the sapling [and then go out to greet the Messiah].