This year, we’ve also had the special merit to be ambassadors for shemittah
Ilana Toweg, as told to Yosef Herz
MYname is Ilana Toweg, and my husband Doron and I are the proud owners of a large, sprawling farm in Moshav Azarya, a small settlement in central Israel. We’re on the cusp of completing our second shemittah. What a journey it has been!
We kept our first shemittah eight years ago, in 5775; until then we had relied on heter mechirah. That first year presented a huge challenge, exacerbated by the fact that we hadn’t fully come around to the decision until we were already precipitously close to shemittah.
In fact, the week after Rosh Hashanah, Doron planted some 20,000 pounds of eggplant in our greenhouses, under the impression that it was permissible to do so. We had a million-shekel contract with Sabra Foods to provide them with eggplants, and so this was a considerable part of our business. But when we told the rabbanim of Keren Hashviis about it, they told us that planting in greenhouses was indeed forbidden during shemittah, and that the eggplants had to be destroyed.
Doron bravely complied and stopped watering the eggplants, waiting for nature to take its course. To our astonishment, they kept on growing, and after three weeks of dehydration they even started to sprout. When the rabbanim came back to check on the eggplants, they told us we would have to poison the plants. It was an extraordinary challenge for Doron, whose every instinct screamed in protest, but he faithfully withstood the test, and we went on to complete our first shemittah year.
Create a free account to keep reading.
