WHY FARMERS IN ISRAEL STOP WORKING FOR A FULL YEAR (Understanding Shmitah)

did you grow up religious you should see those branches they were like curving down and we got a missile in the tank ouch you have contracts and everything you had to break everything did you get to keep the missile okay good morning from the south of israel so we're actually not far from the gaza border today we're going to be meeting a farmer an israeli farmer who has made a massive sacrifice and he has stopped working for a full year just letting the fields rest and letting himself rest we're going to find out why and how he does this very nice so we we're here today to talk to you about your life and your farming and why you've stopped for one year oh and the year is a very holy years is the shmita here what is shmita shmita is a every seventh year and it's miserable from the torah that you have to let the all all your fields without plowing it or playing any anything new so the torah commands you to make the field rest yes okay so hashem we did it this year we started right after rosh hashanah prepared everything before put everything away and we started the year is this your first time doing this this is my first time because i lived in the united states for 30 years so oh wow just made diarrhea eight years ago and this is my first time with my father i love shalom and he he kept two schmittas before he passed away but he was also a farmer yes very nice okay we're in the united states did you live for 30 years i lived in ormond beach florida and were you a farmer there uh i wasn't the farmer there but i had the greenhouses in my house i had a big house so what were you doing in florida i had a company called the joe pool inc it's a manufacturing of a heat transfer for t-shirts we print on the paper oh sure and then people that have machines they print on them right right okay yeah okay so do you have a field here yeah we have a field here okay so what what do you usually grow sweet white peppers you know the little peppers okay cherry tomatoes we grow hot peppers wine tomatoes cucumbers parsley cilantro wow cabbages broccoli a lot of stuff yeah how much land do you have we have 68 dunams which is how many acres oh it's about 28 acres okay 28 acres and here you can see all the irrigation is set up we pulled around from the field and we parked it here for the year so you you have to take out the irrigation yeah because you're not allowed to water the field in shmitah yeah we're not allowed to water the field we're not allowed to plow plant spray anything you know just let the land rest for the whole year and after a smita you start plowing again and planting it takes about a two and a half months to produce new fruits so it's not only a year schmitta it's actually this year with the leap years we're looking at about here in three months right because you can't just set things up uh immediately yeah so by the time you plow by the time you plow the land and plant a new a new place take the plants time to grow for like you know different timing for let's say cucumbers like about 30 days to start producing zucchini is about 45 days you know you can see everything dry inside just the way we left it can we go inside yeah we're going to go inside okay what's what field is this like what would this usually be this one we did some kind of arab cucumber it's called the fabulous we plant here and we plant eggplant and leeks leak a lot of licks you have here yeah and here we have the x-plane as you see we come to the screen house it's all screen so the bugs will not come in and as you see here is there everything's dead from the place of the sweet white pepper plants you can see little little dry peppers right here but everything is dead now now everything is dead uh waiting for the right after the season uh the process we're gonna clear everything up pull the pipes take the plastic on the ground and start flowering again we go in with the tractor and chop the the all the sand make it always going to be like white we have like a beach beach sand kind of that's how we so everything will be clean and we run make new roads put irrigation system and start playing right and praying to hashem hashem we did our part now it's yours so does this make any sense to you like as uh as a farmer what does this do to your field this does it damage the field when you wait a year and you don't work it at all or does it actually feel what what's the process like actually really i mean first of all is the blessing of hashem it's it's there when you keep the mitzvah you see that the year after hashem promises you more than ever like we had in the year before also the year before smita you get a blessing because see this paper here we picked every one meter we picked a box something that never happened here in this field we're growing already four years this sweet white peppers and every you know five six meters we will fill up a box i'm gonna give you more production so he can hold you for the for the shmita here and for the eighth year till we start so you see here every minute really that my worker the thailand he stays here and it feels like fills up the box you should see those branches they were like curving down you see how much fruit even left after wow that loaded loaded everywhere he touched there is fruits all the branches fruit fruit fruit fruit fruit fruits why does hashem why does god want you to make your field rest because first of all it's a vision of the torah and when hashem say so you make the mitzvah not because your logic tells you uh you you gotta make the visible because maybe it's gonna you benefit something or something no you highest level of keeping the mitzvah is doing it because hashem says so right so there's no logical explanation it's just doing what god wants you to do exactly but but more than that hashems you know we know that we let the the the field rest for one year the field gets really boosted with a nutritious and when you fee when you plow that then the year after it's mama helps the the field that's why the the torah tells us always let's if i see i did the pepper this year i'm gonna take the pepper move into the tomatoes and bring the tomatoes here then it's a it's a changing of seeds that gives the the nutrition back into the earth because when you flow all these all these become food all this whatever you see here it becomes nutrition to the to the plants so when you change when you change fields and but beside the point hashem gives the bracha that in the sixth year when you when seventh year when you rest you baruch hashem will be will have a beautiful production the year after so this is irrigation yeah how long does it take to uh to put these in and then how long does it take to take them out it takes a couple days to take them out depends how big is the field right but to put them up also you have to just open them up and line them up so it's easy or hard yes you already have the you see you have already the water the water source in each pipe you see every every meter and 80 centimeters you have the uh already set you just open it hook up the with the connection here okay we threw the pipe to the irrigation pipes and you're there it takes couple you know couple two three days did you grow up religious no really brother my father was younger shabbos we did this friday night okay and when i went to united states i wasn't keeping shabbos and you know how old were you when you went to united states i was 25 24 after the army i served in the army i fought the lebanon war and after that i got injured in the war and what kind of i worked a couple years with my father what kind of injury did you have we got a missile in the tank ouch yeah sagar missile so what what kind of injury did you get i got uh half of my bus left in lebanon half of your back was left in lebanon no my butt oh okay but are you okay now yeah okay so you after the army you decided to be to judge no after the army i worked with my father another two years because i was always since i was a kid i was helping my father in the farm what kind of farmer was he everything all vegetable farmer all the peppers eggplant the cucumbers and tomatoes and whatever you want okay lettuce green beans so eventually why did you decide to leave uh you know israel and go to the united states well we i asked my father to go for like a month vacation after work so hard so he said go enjoy it and come back and it took 30 years till i come back wow and when you went to the united states you felt like you were losing your judaism uh no in the beginning you know we weren't religious but to the town that we were living in really the town was no he had only reformed conservative i remember one time we went to kippur we wanted to get a show so we came in and they said you bought tickets i said what tickets she got to pay to get in so you left see you later even though i wasn't religious but you know basic uh from home you know yom kippur you're gonna start handling money yeah you don't need a ticket to talk to god right exactly so so basically so you went to synagogue and they turned you away so you left and then how long was it before you started going to synagogue again so that's when the slayer came to town he came to town him and his wife and they were young with the little daughter what's their name and honey and the ormond beach florida okay and uh we started they started inviting us for dinner shoppers dinner and and then we opened armenian in the home of the rabbi and then we took a small office we made the shirt out of it and so that's where we started you know we started coming back coming to torah torah classes and and brought back the kids and the wife and the whole thing you know we came back so you got married to an american girl yes okay and when you moved back to israel from the united states eight years ago yeah so and you went right into farming no in the first couple years i brought back you know a little bit of what i was doing there are some machines and tortoises going to go here in israel but didn't work it's not the same and five years ago this i decided to go back into farming and i started right here behind the house we had the other fields you know this one is uh the closest one and i started right here in this uh screen house and i started the green beans and and we grew so beautiful here you grew up on this land yes right here that's beautiful isn't it what's the feeling like when when your father worked this land and now you're working this land you can see if you can see in your camera right there is a gaza you see the gaza strip oh that's gaza those buildings down there that's building down there okay oh this is gaza okay we grew up here they were coming to work with us the arabs yeah they are we learn here to speak with them in arabic i speak arabic fluently know because can you say something in arabic give halachans okay so i grew up here as a kid i remember my father you know he tell me hop on the tractor when i was eight years old and drive down and open one of the opening you know we have uh back there was no computers we have computers that opens the water in sections you know opens close open close fertilize everything automatically so you don't have to do it you don't have to set it up back then we used to go every time open and go close right when you open something in the evening you have to go you know at night in the dark to go close right it was different kind of farming and we have to take we didn't have a drip irrigation system we had pipe system you know it's like a metal pipe with a sprinkler on the side and you have to carry it over the plane and put it here and come back take another one it was forever to to open you so my father's and my mother they came from morocco and that's the the problem here here was no tree you have to see whatever you see all this greenery was nothing here or my parents come here in in 54. so they build it themselves so the yeah they built the whole thing i mean the home of the whole area they built the plant trains the first job that they gave them is to plant trees and you can see the trees all along the roads those my my parents did when they came here in 54 because the place was just sand desert desert mamash right and they brought him here with the pickup truck and told them you staying here and they see you know just a group of people 80 families they brought here even at 80 back then there was maybe 50 families and they started growing you know after a few years they started growing potatoes right here right in this field potato and they start the peanuts then the salt peppers zucchini pep you know tomatoes and all that stuff right mama's from nothing do you think that any of your children are going to continue in this path of being farmers i hope i hope really we have a young 14 years old now okay he's your son he's my son and hopefully he's gonna stay here you know even my my brothers we are nine in the family nobody wanted to stay here only you only me even though i was living there but i always had my my heart was in the farm really always taken care of and see what my parents need and and try to help from there but my mother told me come back your father is passed away and we need somebody to continue the farm and you're the only one nobody wants to come back to the farm is your mother still around yeah my mother she's now in the club mordon oh okay because uh uh older people club they they sit together they play games yeah you know yeah they keep them busy okay what kind of trees are these this is an apple tree okay you can see we have some apple fruits here yeah oh they look nice you have mango trees here those are mango trees and is that the pear tree over there okay we have uh beautiful production and we've got the lemon tree right here oh that's the lemon that's the lemon tree and we have the elixir here oh wow we picked this side already you can see here here i have one here here beautiful so i want to ask you something yeah um on a regular day when it's not shemitah and you are working what time do you have to get up every day we get up five five o'clock in the morning go to school start uh you pray first yeah first oven the mean time i give the jobs to the thailand is what to do you know to start when i finish you know i come back i ate something and i run to the field and see what uh they accomplished give him some other jobs and towards the evening you know we go we work with like tonight in the summer we walk through 12 o'clock take a rest from 12 to four and then go back from four to seven eight okay so we can you know avoid the stuff when the sun is really beating on us yeah we it can't work even in the screen house so the air is like it doesn't move and everything you sweat there you sweat a bottle of water every every half an hour and in the winter you just work all day the winter the wash right here okay and do you wear this hat this acidic hat on the field every day no no only you schmidt yeah okay so only sweet a year white you don't see me like that uh i usually you know work rows you know overall not overall but you know work share the workplace with the puppet you know big pockets so you can put stuff yeah and in shmita what do you do like the whole year you have you know vacation what do you do really we had a great time this year and we went to united states for uh to uh to visit our kids we have a son who lives in cleveland ohio and i have a daughter in florida where we live in the same community we went there to visit we had a beautiful mountain about yeah four weeks then i went to england uh to uh for the kerala sweet to speak about the shmitah right for ten days and now we're fixing to go to brazil brazil yeah what's in brazil there is a community is there that we're going to speak about shmitah from karuna right so i want to ask you about that so the big question this is burning in my mind is you're a farmer yeah you're a farmer you're doing work every year and then all of a sudden you're stopping how do you survive how do you make a living how do you pay your bills we have an organization called karen schwis swiss that helps us they they give us like four times a year money okay they come in regular basis every week to see if what you need you know if you need some extra if you need and they are there for us all the time why are they doing this because they it's a good organization to start a long time ago and they're doing it to to have more farmers to help farmers that to keep the shmitah so they want to encourage people to keep this meet up because if you know that you have help and also the the ministry of agriculture agriculture helps you also with some money and beside that you know you can you see america's money come from friends of the united states they want to be a part of the shmitah they send you money suddenly uh a home that you had in florida then he taught you it's uh you gonna lose it hashem revives that and you get the money you sell it and you get them you know get the money that you dream of all kind of miracles happen to us mamas every week every few weeks something has happened money come from here manipulate this guy dear taxes from united states boom boom friends give you send you you don't understand from there but i we had my wife told me yesterday i wish he was also next year of the year cares for you and he put whatever you need and more than that he gives you even the vacation he didn't take away from us this year he gave us best specifications my son called me before president you come in you and the kids and all the family to me don't worry about nothing i give you money to spend i buy you clothes whatever you need you're coming to me we went there we had the beautiful pesach then we went to my daughter in florida it was amazing they took care of us really whatever we needed and baruch hashem everything was played by hashem wow so so you're saying that strangers like karnash vs this organization they don't know you really that you don't like from before no relationship they're coming and they're paying you not just paying me they come to convince you before shmita to keep smita not me me i me me it wasn't the question for smitha you were gonna do it there is other farmers that they you know they keep shabbat and everything but they go with that you know it was a termite so there's a there's a process where one can sell the field to someone who's not jewish and then if you do that then in legal halachic terms the field is no longer yours and then you can work the field but that's not the highest level of schmidt to the highest level is just stopping to work exactly so i understand there are so many farmers who are not even religious but they want to take on this commandment of god i'm telling you there is a guy here next to us you have 1800 dunams 150 employees okay and he shut down a month and a half we decided a month and a half because jonah the guy from kerala sweet convinced him and then the the rabbani from karasv came to visit this guy and and suddenly he said you know what i will keep shmita so he stopped the whole thing and he stopped the whole thing you understand this guy is working with supermarkets and you have contracts and everything you had to break everything but to keep shmita but you know what today he see the blessing today everybody they go this year the prices are you you pick it cost you more to pick than to get money from the production people are really you know whoever grew this year they say i'm stupid and it gives me that wow that's much they say that like that being that we're in very close proximity to gaza do you ever have missiles we have we had missiles but uh we land on this farm ever we had one right behind the house landing right there by the greenhouse were you home when it happened yeah what was that like boom but uh that's it it goes into the sand did you get to keep the missile uh no the army can't pick up yeah what a shame so joseph invited us into his house we're sitting in the kitchen we're just having some drinks and refreshments 30 years ago before you were religious somebody would tell you one day you're going to be a farmer and you're going to be working every year making your produce and then one day you're going to stop everything because god told you to stop working the field you're just going to take a rest for a year could you have imagined something like that well it's hard to imagine but really you know when you the hardest part is when you before shmita you know you don't know what's going to happen you know you expecting uh yeah when you go into the shmitah we have couple bills opens and you have to pay and you have the whole year payments and farming payments and stuff like that and you you ask yourself how is it gonna happen but uh faith and confidence faith and confidence in god you see that everything is falling one after other you can see the the blessing of hashem happening so would you encourage other farmers to do the same thing for sure there's nothing like keeping the shmitah it's a it's a special mitzvah it's a missile that happens once in seven years and this year hashem is a we reached 51 percent of all the land of israel the capismita since the hurban of betamina never happened something like that we never reached that point so there's an issue we break the 51 percent of everybody i mean the whole uh 51 the whole end of israel of keepishmita this is a big accomplishment and let me tell you something when i speak to farmers now they all want to keep the next meeting they see how we having a vacation we enjoy ourselves we're not working hard and we're getting some help from kennedy's feet and from friends and so forth and so forth and you can see mama's there they're jealous they want the next tweet that they want to keep and i want to give you a bracha there's not a shame that you should be everything you do should be a man you should have a healthy life amen happy life amen you're married yes you and your wife and all your children are the same always have happiness health brahman everything you do always will be just what you want if even more better and should kick in as we're speaking asap with panasonic happiness and everything you wish for you and your family i mean thank you so much and welcome all the blessings to you thank you thank you thank you very much you really inspired us today beautiful yes so good luck with everything thank you and uh we're looking forward to coming back again okay come back when everything is green okay so we can test the fruits right from the vine will do thank you thank you very much take care see you