Voices of Shemittah Farmers (Part I)
To those living outside of Israel, the knowledge of Shemittah is usually limited to those who do not work their land at all, and buy all their produce from Arabs or import it, or, on the other hand, those who accept the “heter mechira,” the heter given by Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, who was the chief rabbi of pre-state Israel.
However, there are many nuances regarding Shemittah that are informed both by the farmers’ understanding of halacha and, sometimes, also influenced by their philosophical-ideological approaches.
I interviewed four farmers from the former Gush Katif, all of whom are still in farming. They are in the minority, as following the destruction of the Katif communities in 2005, the Israeli government was, for the most part, not forthcoming, they say (and as has been documented) with appropriate locations and compensation for the farmers that would have enabled them to begin again. In addition, many of them were near retirement age when the uprooting took place.
Each of the four farmers I met keeps Shemittah in a different way, in some cases regarding the working of the land and in some cases regarding the produce they use. What they all share is their passion for farming, and their passion for Eretz Yisrael.
How do they manage now, with the challenges that the Shemittah year, once again, presents?
Eliyahu Saban
This past erev Rosh Hashanah, Eliyahu Saban turned off the main water valve that irrigates the vegetables he grows in thirty-five glorious dunams (about ten acres) of hothouses. Eliyahu, like the Tuckers, is not working his land during Shemittah.
“I keep the mitzva of ‘Shabbat l’Hashem,’ and the land rests,” he says.
Eliyahu’s farm is located in Be’er Ganim, in southern Israel, a village north of Ashkelon that was created for the residents of Moshav Gadid and eight other Gush Katif communities, though it also opened its doors to others as well. For twenty-three years, Eliyahu lived in Moshav Gadid in Gush Katif, where he was one of the growers of the famous bugless lettuce, which he continues to grow in Be’er Ganim.
“Today there is a huge market for bugless lettuce and even those who are not Torah-observant want to eat this kind of lettuce, because they know it is healthier, as there is such strict regulation regarding the use of pesticides,” says Eliyahu. “The Ministry of Agriculture checks the fields and, post-production, packages on supermarket shelves for pesticide residue. For this reason, the farmers are afraid to spray more than they should.”
How does Eliyahu spend all of his free time this year with no farming work keeping him busy?
“I am learning more Torah, and I go more slowly to work, which this year means upgrading things around the farm, like the water system, the screens, and other things that are not connected to the earth itself. I come home and I learn Torah again, as it says, ‘V’hagita bo yomam v’leilah’ – one must study during the day and night. I’m having a wonderful time.”
Financially, Eliyahu says, he is managing. “You have to [let the land lie fallow] with full emunah. I understand when people say it’s difficult. I say whoever keeps the Torah as it’s written by the Creator of the World, should do so sincerely, not because he thinks he will get [compensation] from the Ministry of Agriculture or from American donors. When I sat with the representative from the Ministry of Agriculture I told him, ‘I don’t want to know how much compensation I’ll get. Even if I don’t get one shekel, I’m going to let the land rest.’
“I tell my friends who are farmers: ‘If you do it for the money, don’t do Shemittah. Don’t you think the Creator knows what’s in your heart? You need to do it because this is what is written in the Torah.’ Every time I keep Shemittah – and this is the fifth Shemittah cycle I am not working the land – I see more and more blessing.”
But he does eat produce grown with the heter mechira. I ask him why.
“Because I think that if Rav Ovadya Yosef and other great rabbanim said we can eat heter mechira, who am I to not eat? I do Shemittah k’hilchata because I can, but that’s not a reason for me to not eat heter mechira.
If everyone observed Shemittah like he does, he says, “The State of Israel and the relevant offices – the Ministries of Agriculture and of Religious Affairs — would take it into account in advance, and import. One can also buy from Arab Israelis.
“Twenty years ago, Rabbi Rubin from Rehovot, who gives us a kashrut hechsher, sent me to Jordan but according to the map that he gave me, Amman is Eretz Yisrael, so I can’t grow there. And they took us to places that were almost on the Syrian border, by jeep with guards, and I said, ‘I’m not crazy, with all due respect, to go to the border of Syria to grow.’ So, he said, ‘Okay, find land belonging to Arabs within the State of Israel, who own their land.’ So, I found someone in Kfar Kassam, about 12 miles east of Tel Aviv, and my former partner and I built hothouses by him, and he raised crops for us, so we could sell to the haredi public.
“In Gush Katif, some say that the land may have been from ‘olei mitzraim,’ [from within the borders that were created by the Israelites who came from Egypt with Joshua and entered the land of Israel] but we kept it l’chumra, strictly, in order to provide vegetables to haredim who wanted it that way.”
And if everyone did that?
“So, they would eat less, be less spoiled, there would be less abundance. But because there is heter mechira we enjoy all the worlds, to keep Shemittah k’hilchata, and also to eat heter mechira. I don’t think I’m sinning, on the contrary, I don’t have to harm myself, and I should eat on Shabbat and enjoy oneg Shabbat, like one should. Since I am allowed to eat heter mechira, I do.
But why do I keep Shemittah [like I do]? Because I can, and I do it with love. If you keep Shemittah and you believe that’s what you’re supposed to do, then the Creator takes care of you and there will be blessing.”
A shorter version of this article appeared in Jewish Action, the quarterly magazine of the Orthodox Union (Spring 2022).
