Wondering

"In Kangra, in the north-west of India," I read recently in my continuing search for the elusive concept of home, "where the Mitakshara system is in force, ancestral property is held in common by a man and his descendants as co-sharers. Any one of them can demand partition at any time.

"The Mitakshara system distinguishes, in fact, the self-acquired property over which a man has full rights of ownership from the ancestral one, over which heirs have rights from the moment of their conception.

"In other words, the members of the senior generation are trustees rather than absolute owners of the joint property. They have no right to sell or to give away the joint capital to the detriment of the other shareholders." (The 'Casser Maison' Ritual : Constructing the Self by Emptying the Home, Jean-Sébastien Marcoux Journal of Material Culture 2001 6: 213)

Now, let's imagine this: All natural resources are, by definition, ancestral property and thus joint capital. No one dares to claim that they made them, or self-acquired them (at least, not fairly). No one can claim exclusive rights to them, either for themselves or for a small, well-heeled cadre of stakeholders. No one can claim a greater share of the rights to and use of water, land, air, minerals. These are the commons.

And what if we pushed this just a bit farther? That not only are all those present today equal shareholders of the commons, but they are all nascent trustees for the next generation who will justly lay claim to the commons?

And what if we were to say that any degradation of joint capital (not just the sale or divestment of the commons but its ruin, pollution and the like) to the detriment of present and future shareholders were illegal?

And what if we did not actually make this a law but have this be something that was even more powerful than law, that is, a social taboo?

Such, it seems to me, is what the concept of nahalah, sacred inheritance, in the Torah is all about. That the land is inalienable, a possession in and of the commons because it is owned only by God. It may and should be used by us to provide us a life of bounty and goodness. We can temporarily divide it up for private use, but only with some stipulations.

We must leave part of the field and its harvest for all who are hungry.

We must leave the land fallow and, as it were, ownerless every seventh year. Everyone has an equal right that year to glean across the entire field, not as a dispensation against trespassing but as co-owners of this gift, this joint inheritance, from God.

We must relinquish and return the land to its original tribal stewards every 50 years, to restore equity, break any encroaching denial or circumvention of the commons, and live out the lessons of nahalah.

If we could live with that as our model, as an ideal even if not as a workable plan, what would the world, our economy, our farms, our cities, our closets, our appetites look like today?