Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the highly influential Sephardi rabbi, publicly backed a controversial land sale of 2 million dunams Tuesday to meet the religious law of shmita, obliging farmers to let land lie fallow for a year, a requirement that begins next week under the Jewish calendar.

Traditionally agricultural land is sold symbolically to non-Jews for the period during which cultivation is forbidden - which Jewish law calls the sabbatical year. The Jewish New Year, which begins Wednesday, marks the beginning of a sabbatical year. The nominal sale is meant to allow farmers to keep on cultivating agricultural land throughout the sabbatical year as the land technically is not theirs.

Yosef, former Sephardi chief rabbi and spiritual leader of the Shas party, hosted in his Jerusalem home the symbolic sale of 2 million dunams (approximately 500,000 acres) of Jewish-owned land to an Arab man from Abu Gosh near the capital.