Snapshots of a fallow land and its faithful people

Photos: Menachem Kalish

Come back in two months’ time, and the northern Negev will be a burning, sun-baked expanse.

The heat will reflect off the brown earth the way asphalt shimmers on a hot afternoon, and the sky overhead will be a fierce gray.

Driving down Route 40 to the Egypt-Gaza border on a spring morning, the desert hasn’t yet moved in; all around is soft, undulating green. The knowledge that the vistas will disappear like a mirage is what gives them their fragile beauty.

As Be’er Sheva and Nachal Gerar flash past, like a tour of Avraham Avinu’s life, it’s easy to get lyrical about the scenery.

But under the surface of this postcard landscape, something truly poetic is happening.

The land is at rest.

For the first time in thousands of years, more than half of the Jewish-owned farmland in the country is observing shemittah. Not the parcels of land of a century ago when the proverbial swamps were drained. Not even the 300,000 dunams of arable land that lay empty seven years ago.

Despite the ongoing economic turmoil, over 600,000 dunams of prime agricultural real estate, which in normal years ship Grade A produce around the world, are lying fallow.

And like the onions that grow in this part of the world, there’s another layer to the story — the farmers themselves.

Something is stirring in the soul of this holy land. Farmers of all types — religious and secular — are embracing the hardest mitzvah there can be for a man of the earth.

In unprecedented numbers, they’re throwing financial caution to the wind, parking their tractors and letting their greenhouses grow wild.

Those men and their convictions have brought me to this corner of the Negev today, where people live under the surveillance blimps of the IDF, and the thump of mortar rounds going off in Gaza.

I’m here to discover what brings ever more farmers — some of whom don’t keep Shabbos — to put down their tools because the Torah says so. What type of faith is it that makes these practical, hard-bitten people do something so extraordinary? How do they live with the consequences?

Down by the Gaza border, and all over Israel, a new story of emunah is being written. It isn’t a story of open miracles, of shekels raining down into waiting bank accounts. It’s something more real — a messy, complex, human story of people struggling with debts, faith, and identity.

It’s the story of weather-beaten men who point to the heavens to explain what drives them, yet can’t bear to go near their land as it takes its yearlong rest.

Alon Gottlieb, Talmei Eliyahu

“Hashem talks to you through your business.”

Wake-Up Call

“Kol-mann, you know Steven Kol-mann who sells esrogim in London? I supply him.”

The speaker is Alon Gottlieb, a 40-something religious farmer who grows citrus and avocado for export, and one of the first things I learn while standing in his clementine orchard in Moshav Talmei Eliyahu is that the world really is a small place.

That’s because I do happen to know Mr. Colman — his son is my brother-in-law.

The unlikeliness of this particular encounter brings a shy smile to Alon’s face, and serves as a springboard to his own improbable journey.

“A few years ago, things began to go seriously wrong financially,” he says. “Everything that could go wrong, did.”

Originally from a farming family in the north of Israel, Gottlieb had moved to the Gaza border area in 2005 to join many of those who’d lost their homes in Gush Katif and wanted to start over nearby.

Two years later came shemittah, and Gottlieb — who belongs to the “chardal” or chareidi-leaning part of the national-religious world — followed the widespread practice in his community, which is to use the heter mechirah, a halachically controversial instrument, in which land is sold to non-Jews, thus permitting normal farming in shemittah.

“I did that for the first shemittah in 2007, and then again in 2014, but I wasn’t happy — there was no feeling of shemittah left,” he says. “I worked the same as any other year.”

The heter mechirah that Alon used for his avocado plantations wasn’t the only approach that didn’t feel right.

“I was exporting esrogim to America and England, and so to grow things in shemittah, I used Otzar Beis Din,” he continues, referring to the mainstream practice in which the beis din take control of a field, employing the farmer on the public’s behalf to grow the crop.

Although the latter is perfectly acceptable in the halachic sense, to Alon, it didn’t feel right.

“Esrogim need a lot of work, otherwise they won’t sell. I just felt like a Shabbos goy, working the fields like normal.”

Turning Point

It took a wake-up call for Alon Gottlieb to change direction.

Fifteen years after the Gush Katif refugees began plowing the desolate lands outside the Gaza Strip, the desert was literally blooming.

To the surprise of everyone — including local Arabs, whose agricultural returns had been poor — the sandy dunes in the area turned out to be perfect for growing everything from cherry tomatoes to oranges. Carrots and potatoes grown in this northwest corner of the Negev were taking Europe by storm.

With business booming, Alon — who was in a partnership with his father and brother — decided that he could afford his own packaging plant.

He gestures to the building, on the edge of the small moshav a few hundred meters away from our position in the clementine groves. “It was all ready, complete with the machinery. The fruit was harvested. All we needed in order to begin operating was a permit from the Agriculture Ministry.”

Then, disaster struck in the form of a torrential downpour — a rare occurrence in this desert region.

“The inspectors turned up and saw pools of water everywhere. That was the end of the story — no permit.”

It was only the first blow for the Gottlieb farm; others followed swiftly. Alon locked in a deal on his crop with a supplier, but after he’d harvested it, the firm wouldn’t honor it. It was another big loss.

“I got to the stage where I owed the bank a million shekels, and my checks were on the verge of bouncing. My father had to threaten to close his own account if they didn’t give me room to work things out.”

At that point, the penny dropped.

“I turned to Hashem and said, ‘I understand what’s going on here. Let’s make a deal; there’ll be no more games. Just get me out of this hole!’ ”