In this Shmita year, we looked for a Lubavitcher farmer to interview and found him on a small yishuv with thirty families on the Egyptian border. * Meet Yaron Medalia, a shliach of the Rebbe on Moshav Kmehin who grows olives, and between putting t’fillin on with people and making house calls, he raises broccoli, kohlrabi and tomatoes, produces olive oil, grows wheat and produces whole wheat flour. * Beis Moshiach went down south to hear about Lubavitcher farming, Shmita, emuna, miracles, and shlichus on the moshav with the nearest religious community seventy kilometers away.
Kmehin is a secular moshav in the western Negev desert. The road to get to it is still unfinished. When you get to the end of the road you make a right turn, coming from Beer Sheva, and a left turn if coming from Eilat.
“We moved to the moshav when we married and were among the founders. In recent years, the moshav has grown with young families so that now we are about thirty families,” says Yaron.
“That’s fewer families than in an average apartment building in Tel Aviv,” I comment.
The closest city is Beer Sheva which is seventy kilometers away, to the north-east. The Medalia family is the only religious family in the area, and to them the entire story of Kmehin is foremost one of shlichus.
“You see how I look? That’s how I work, wearing black pants and a white shirt, and a hat. When people see me here, working like this, it changes their perspective on religious people.”
DRAWN TO THE DESERT
Yaron Medalia looks like a Chassidic farmer and has been farming for over twenty years. He grew up in Ramat HaSharon but was always drawn to nature.
“I moved around a lot in the Sinai, when it was still ours. I was always attracted to expanses and to the desert.”
He was drawn to the desert and the desert woke up a dormant spark in him.
“It’s a long story. I searched without knowing what I was searching for and in the end, I arrived,” he sums it up.
Yaron and his wife lived in Kmehin since they married and as the family began to grow, they moved to Netivot. Today, they live on the Netivot-Kmehin border. Most of the week, Yaron is in Kmehin and they spend Shabbos together on the moshav.
In recent years, Yaron founded “Meshek Medalia” and he focuses primarily on growing, manufacturing and marketing olive oil and whole wheat flour directly to customers around the country.
“We’ve recently changed our approach. Instead of growing large quantities for wholesalers and corporations, we produce less and invest in quality. We manufacture products ourselves and sell to groups of customers who are interested in high quality products. Thanks to the direct selling to customers, we cut out the wholesalers and retailers and are able to cut costs.”
On the map, Kmehin looks like a green dot on a gray-brown expanse. A primordial, dry, desert landscape extends the length of Highway 211. The nearest yishuv is Kadesh Barnea. There too, as in Kmehin, the main occupation is farming, growing all kinds of vegetables.
Yaron grows olives out of which he makes oil, and he grows wheat and makes whole wheat flour. In the summer he also grows kohlrabi, broccoli, and tomatoes.
“There are problems with water here,” he explains. “So we irrigate with salinated water. Salinated water is water whose salt content is higher than that of sweet water, but less than that of sea water. Salinated water is present as groundwater in the Negev region to the tune of tens of millions of cubic meters, and we use it to water our plants. It’s not good for everything but for certain things, like tomatoes, it makes them sweeter.”
HIS THIRD SHMITA
The rains that fell in the area in the last storm contributed to the proliferation of all sorts of bushes and wild growth.
“This is the hardest part about Shmita,” says Yaron. “Think of a painter who works on a masterpiece for seven years and then he sees someone come and scribble on it and he can do nothing about it but plan on how he will later work to erase the scribbles. It’s a test of emuna.”
This year is the third Shmita that Yaron has kept. The first was fourteen years ago.
“Shmita is a hard test for farmers but Hashem is merciful. He shows us that one who observes Shmita does not lose out; it’s incredible. This year, for example, everything looked fantastic. The rain fell and someone even said to me in shul, look at what blessing those who are working the land now are getting…. Then suddenly, the ruble dropped in value. 40% of the produce of the Negev is exported to Russia and whoever worked the land this year, sustained a serious blow. It was a catastrophe for exporters.”
When Yaron speaks about miracles in Shmita he is specifically referring to the pampered welcome he got the first time he observed it. He worked in exporting flowers at that time.
“I had a friend who kept Shmita ‘by mistake.’ He had set up a hothouse in the year prior to Shmita in order to use it during the Shmita year, but for various reasons he was unable to make use of the hothouse. At the end of the year he said to me, ‘I have no mazal with this hothouse. Do you want it?’ I jumped at the opportunity, because setting up a hothouse is a time-consuming process and this hothouse had already been made ready before Shmita.”
Right after Rosh HaShana, Yaron, together with his workers, threw themselves into working the hothouse. He decided to plant gypsophila, a type of small flower that is used for decoration. The hothouse was not large, less than five dunam, and by Yom Kippur they were able to finish all the planting.
“When the market season began, we discovered something astonishing. Most of the flowers were intended for export. When the flowers of other growers arrived at their destinations abroad, the boxes were opened and all the leaves were found to be broken and crumbling. Some sort of defect caused all the gypsophila that had been planted in Eretz Yisroel during Shmita to have broken leaves. They simply crumbled when touched and turned to dust. Consequently, there was a big shortage and the price went up accordingly.
“Our flowers were the only ones that did not suffer from this bizarre problem. The profit we made that year was greater than all the profit we made on everything else combined.
“The losses we sustained due to not working during Shmita were covered by that little hothouse. We saw the fulfillment of the verse, ‘and I will command My blessing to you.”
However, despite the miracle of the first Shmita, Yaron says you don’t always see the miracles immediately. Shmita for the Jewish farmer in Eretz Yisroel is still a major test of faith, as opposed to a miracle-telling fest.
HEROES
“It’s really not simple,” says Yaron. “The Midrash calls those who observe Shmita, ‘giborei ko’ach – powerful men, heroes, those who do His will.’ If the verse, ‘and I will command my blessing to you’ was that obvious, it wouldn’t be a big deal. If every farmer earned double in the sixth year, it would be like a paid vacation and not an act of strength or heroism. The heroism consists in believing in this blessing even when you don’t see it immediately. Hashem may leave the double payment for the end of the year, or the following year.”
How do you manage financially in a year without work?
“The verse says, ‘and if you will say, what will we eat in the seventh year, we will not sow and we will not gather in our produce!’ There are those who question what will they eat in the seventh year and they continue planting as usual with the heter mechira. Then there are those who observe Shmita, and when the money is used up they come to Hashem and ask, ‘What do we eat?’ Then Hashem finds solutions. He is very creative in this regard.
“In the last Shmita, for example, we shifted our business to marketing whole wheat flour that does not need sifting. In recent years we’ve been growing wheat and grinding it. This aspect of our business developed only because of the Shmita year.
“Aside from that, you need to know how to prepare for Shmita. Someone who grows vegetables and does not prepare properly, can lose two seasons. Generally, the planning begins a few years earlier and even from the end of the previous Shmita. I plan out the planting and picking a few years in advance. When you come prepared, you limit the damages.”
Kmehin is a yishuv located in an active farming region. During Shmita, Yaron’s workers go to friends around the country and Yaron works alone, or more accurately put, he checks alone. Every morning he goes out to the fields to check them.
“I am constantly checking to see that the trees are alive and that the irrigation system is working.” As he checks, he usually hears the hum of work being done in neighboring fields while his fields remain quiet.
“It once bothered me to see everyone working. I would hear the tractors and see the laden wagons passing by and it would hurt. Now I am used to it and I am happy to have the privilege of observing the mitzva of Shmita.”
JUST LIKE SHABBOS
I’m sure you get into conversations with your farmer neighbors. What do you say to them?
“It’s just like Shabbos. Go and explain to someone who has a store open on Shabbos that if he closes it he won’t lose any money. In that sense, farming is even more of a challenge than running a store since it is constant, and not working on Shabbos can cause damage to growing things. But we believe that one who keeps it, won’t lose out by doing so.
“There are those who don’t personally work on Shabbos but their workers continue working as usual. You try explaining to the farmers that Shabbos is like Shmita. I explain to them that it’s like a large barrel with six faucets. If you add a seventh faucet, you won’t get any more than what the barrel contains.
“I once had roses which are delicate flowers whose harvesting takes place twice each day so the blooms won’t be too closed or too open. Came Rosh HaShana and I informed the Thai workers that they have a two-day vacation. They wanted to take a vacation on the day after Rosh HaShana so, on their own, they decided to pick the flowers on Yom Tov so they wouldn’t have to work the following day. In addition, the worker in charge did some work on the fertilizer bins and left a pipe open. When I showed up the day after Rosh HaShana, I realized they had harvested the flowers on Yom Tov. Then I saw the damage that occurred in the bins; I made a calculation and saw it matched shekel for shekel, i.e. whatever I had earned by harvesting on Yom Tov was offset by the fertilizer that had gone to waste.
“This is what we constantly tell the farmers around us. If you observe Shmita, you don’t lose out.”
Is observing Shmita today for an Israeli farmer in the modern era an easy or difficult test?
“It’s a nisayon but not a nisayon of what will we eat. Every branch of agriculture is based on ups and downs. There could be a cold spell, a war, or collapse of a currency and a year of labor can go down the drain. It can also be the opposite and with one blessed harvest you can cover years of labor.”
GAMBLING OR BELIEF IN HASHEM?
So then farming is a sort of like playing the financial markets?
“More than that; I would say it’s like gambling or horse racing. There are no guarantees. It’s an area more than any other where you sense that it all depends on Hashem’s kindness. So yes, taking off a year as a planned vacation is a test. But if you believe in the Creator, then you know it’s the only way to parnasa.”
Let’s leave the financial end for a moment. Someone who is used to working hard from early in the morning is suddenly not laboring for an entire year. What does this do to him? How does it affect him emotionally?
“It’s like Shabbos. It changes your life. A person who keeps Shabbos – his entire life is changed. It doesn’t appear suddenly, by surprise, boom – here’s Shabbos. He prepares for it all week. On Sunday already he sets up his week knowing that on Shabbos he won’t be working. The same is true for Shmita. For someone who observes Shmita, the six years are different; he lives a different life. The six years are a preparation for the Shmita year.”
These days, Yaron uses most of his time for his second role, that of disseminator of the wellsprings at the yishuv and among farmers in the area.
“Our main role lies in their seeing a religious person working in the fields and orchards. Often, when people see me, they stop me and ask what holiday it is. Some of them ask in all innocence, thinking they overlooked something, while others ask in a snarky way. Those who live in this area are kibbutznikim who are very far from a religious way of life. Many of them don’t personally know a religious person; their information is solely from television and other media.
“We make house calls and talk to people. We talk a lot about Judaism, about Moshiach, about Torah and mitzvos. I am on excellent terms with the members of all the kibbutzim in the area. These are guys whose every other word is anti-religious.
“I was once in touch with a colleague who came to take tomatoes to distribute to needy families. They sent a truck with a religious driver. When the guys here saw him, they were in shock.
“The district rav, R’ Souissa, is a Lubavitcher and he is also in touch with farmers in the area, both in his role as the person in charge of kashrus and as a Lubavitcher Chassid. A farmer recently said to me, ‘I see Rav Souissa and I see you and I see the religious people on TV. You are not like those people at all.’”
Yaron markets his merchandise through local representatives in various communities.
“People who recognize quality become our loyal customers. It begins with the olive harvest, then the grinding and the packing. The Arabs, for example, harvest the olives when they are still green and therefore their oil is greener and sharper. It has the taste of under-ripeness.”
Today, Yaron doesn’t advertise at all. His customer base expands by word of mouth. For Pesach, he gets the hechsher of Rabbi Y. Y. Yaroslavsky that the oil was manufactured with all the chumros and hiddurim observed by Anash.
“We have reps in communities who handle the orders and we market our products through them.”