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‘You shall truly tithe all the produce of your seed, which the field brings forth year by year.’ (Deut. 14: 22)
Four years ago we decided to turn the patch of lawn in our front garden into an allotment. I’ve never been over fond of lawn for no good reason, and the waiting list for allotments in our area is long. So we dug up the grass, got in some good topsoil and manure and compost, and started planting out squash and corn and tomatoes and giant Russian sunflowers. The front garden is south-facing and amiable to growing fruit and veg. Since that first year we have expanded to grow (at various times of year) grapes and artichokes, borage, thyme, oregano, basil, parsley, marjoram, cucumbers, pumpkins, blackberries, lettuce, mange tout, peppers, beans, tomatillos, mint, camomile, horseradish, lemon verbena, Brussels sprouts, onions, garlic, carrots, leeks, potatoes and strawberries along side the odd flower or two.
Of course, we are not really self-sufficient in these items – though if we restricted ourselves to eating seasonally we could be quite self-sufficient in a few of them – nevertheless we have learned a huge amount about the life cycle of edible plants in the British Isles. We grow almost everything from seed, using a table in the bay window in our front room as a makeshift greenhouse and planting out as the months progress. Altogether the process has been a most satisfying one – even when the first year’s tomatoes died of blight, or the annual struggle with powdery mildew on the squash, or the failed attempts at growing okra and melon.
Each year since we began our small experiment with a kitchen garden, I have become more and more acutely aware of the precariousness of it all. And we have it easy. First, if my carrots fail or succumb to carrot fly or turn out too small or generally not enough germinate to keep us in carrots for more than a day and half, then I can march down to the local corner shop or the local supermarket or even the local farmers’ market and buy carrots – large, healthy, organic carrots. Growing them is just a whim or, at best, a pedagogical exercise for my children. Second, when I want to start to grow carrots, I need only walk as far as my local garden centre 5 minutes down the road and purchase a packet of carrot seed, organic or conventional, carrot fly resistant or not, orange or purple as the fancy takes me. I do not have to harvest seed, keep it safe from rodents and mildew all winter and then hope that it germinates before hovering over it for weeks or months to protect it from disease or animals.
Yet in growing carrots and squash and potatoes and tomatoes and all the other fruit and veg, I have become attuned to something quite different: to the slight (not to mention dramatic) changes in weather, to heat, to rain, to wind in ways that I never experienced before. I am protective of our produce, even to the point that it is put on someone’s plate. I simply cannot bear to see it wasted. Suddenly, I cook only what we really need for that meal. I force my children to eat all their vegetables. I give out whatever is ripe to strangers who pass by and show an interest in the garden. I share with my neighbours.
And every time we celebrate a harvest festival, I feel the burning need to bring my produce to the shul and place it on the bimah and offer a tithe to God. Of course, by and large, I do not bring my produce to shul (barring one year when the pumpkins were calling out to be a bimah decoration in place of cut flowers). But when we read, as we do in parashat Re’eh about our duty to tithe the yields of our fields and then to take that tithing to God’s designated place in order to eat it so that we should ‘learn to revere the Eternal your God forever’, something important finally has awakened in me. I have a yield to tithe, but no designated spot at which to consume it. Moreover, the agricultural base of so much of Jewish practice is so far removed from the way in which contemporary Jews lead their lives that the notion of harvest festivals or tithes of produce have become distant footnotes in Jewish theology.
Yet the next section of Re’eh, the discussion of the shemitah year in which slaves are freed (along with its counterpart the Jubilee year discussed in Leviticus 25), resonates to modern readers. The idea of freeing slaves, remission of debts, eradication of poverty: these ideas capture the imagination and hold out hope of a different way of structuring society to those of us caught in economic recession, whose consciousnesses are plagued by third world debt and poverty. But to miss the link the between the shemitah and the tithe of yields is to miss the biblical vision for society. Debt remission, freedom from slavery, freedom from poverty: these things are possible only in a world where food is abundant.
We in the wealthy West are accustomed to abundant food. No matter what our income level we can see that food is readily available. Every supermarket in the country is stocked to overflowing. Only when we try our hand at growing our own can we begin to understand how miraculous that is. The process of growing food for human consumption is precarious at best. Our ancient Israelite ancestors knew that intimately. They collected seed and germinated them and grew them into seedlings and cared for them and when they were ready to harvest and eat, they celebrated with the God who enabled such fruitfulness. We rarely stop to celebrate with God after a shopping trip to Sainsbury’s or Waitrose, but try growing your own and watch how not just your relationship to food or your neighbours changes, but your relationship to God as well.
Rabbi Deborah Kahn-Harris
August 2009
Click on link to see previous Divrei Torah: http://www.lbc.ac.uk/content/blogcategory/429/142/
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