Shemittah has begun. Three farmers’ wives share stories of soul and sacrifice

Ilana Tvig from Moshav Azariah

My husband Doron is a third-generation farmer. Our livelihood is vegetable growing, mostly cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and melons. We also have an orchard and a vineyard.

Over the years, we always relied on heter mechirah — selling our land to a non-Jew and farming it as hired workers, then receiving it back at the end of shemittah —  similar to the way we sell chometz before Pesach. But last shemittah, we decided to observe the mitzvah fully, leaving it to lie fallow and making all the produce hefker, free for anyone to take. We’re keeping it this year, too.

Last shemittah, we didn’t prepare in advance. I only thought about keeping it fully in the sixth year; I wanted Doron to have a break — farming is hard, physical labor — and I thought this would be a nice opportunity for him to dedicate time to learning Torah. I thought of Shabbos, how we rest up from the week, and how wonderful it would be if Doron had an entire year to do that. I knew it wouldn’t be as romantic as it sounds — I had no idea how we’d support ourselves financially, or how Doron would fill his days the whole year — but I still pushed for it.

Doron gave it some serious thought. Ultimately, he decided we would rely on heter mechirah for some of our crops, since we’d just spent a lot of money building new greenhouses. We committed to keeping the full halachah in the open fields. The shemittah year started, and between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we planted 25,000 eggplant seedlings in the greenhouses.

But then we spoke to Keren Hashvi’is. It became clear that we couldn’t have it both ways, and we had to make a decision: either arrange a heter mechirah for all our property or observe every halachah. It was hard, but we decided not to rely on a heter mechirah at all, and to observe shemittah down to the last detail.

But what about our eggplants?

Anything planted after the beginning of the seventh year is assur for anyone to use. A whole committee of rabbanim came to our greenhouses. They stood around the eggplants in their hats and jackets in 120-degree temperatures, deliberating.

Eventually, they gave us their verdict: Don’t water the eggplants. In that heat, without water, they would all die in a few days.

Except that they didn’t. We don’t know how, but despite the heat and lack of water, the seedlings started sprouting. Within a few weeks they’d started blossoming. We were very worried, because we knew that very soon the eggplants would start growing. Would we be able to pass that test?

Doron decided to put poison in the irrigation system. Within a few hours, our beautiful seedlings had shriveled up and died. It was a huge nisayon, and the psychological toll was devastating. Our foreign workers walked around, heads hanging low in shock. They didn’t understand how we could deliberately destroy something we’d invested so much in.