A Land of Milk and Honey

The Promise and Hazards of Israeli Agrarian Utopianism

From Hadesh Vol. I, Issue No. 6 - Ecology

By: Dr. Jon Greenberg, Biblical and Talmudic Ethnobotanist, TorahFlora.org

The growth and dynamic creativity of Israel have promoted experimentation in the revival and reinterpretation of ancient and modern Jewish culture, agriculture, and religion. The resulting innovations carry new risks, benefits, and questions. Here, I will address some of these developments in the areas of holiday observance and the re-centering of agriculture and residence in Israel in our understanding of Jewishness. Tu b’Shvat began at the end of the fiscal year for the calculation of ma’aser (tithes) and bikkurim (first fruits) of tree fruits.¹ Its late-winter timing ensures that the previous year’s fruit crop is finished, and the new fruits have not yet formed, making it easy to identify the new crop for calculating its tithe.² After the destruction of the Second Temple, there was no opportunity to donate ma’aser or bikkurim, and Tu b’Shvat became a memorial for the Temple and the land of Israel. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tu b’Shvat acquired a new meaning as a celebration of Jewish agriculture in Israel. A huge Tu b’Shvat picnic for schoolchildren organized by the Israel Teachers’ Association in 1910 was a major event in this redefinition. Today, Tu b’Shvat is widely understood as a celebration of the land of Israel and its trees and fruits. Since the 1970s, activists have also attempted to enlist Tu b’Shvat for various causes, including environmentalism and feminism.

Tu b’Av (the fifteenth of Av) is midsummer’s day, halfway between Pesach and Sukkot. It began as a festival of national unity, a function that has recently returned in modern form. The earliest source for Tu b’Av is a Mishna.³ The Gemara⁴ explains the celebration of Tu b’Av with a list of events that occurred on this day. Notably, most of them promoted Jewish unity: The end of the ban on intermarriage between the tribes of Israel, the removal of the northern kingdom’s border guards who blocked festival visits to Jerusalem, and the end of the war against the tribe of Benjamin.⁵ It is also the time when olives begin to accumulate oil. The olive tree is unusual in that its fruit ripens within a two-week window in all of Israel’s highly diverse climatic regions. This fact and the olive’s connection to Tu b’Av made it a symbol of Jewish national unity. Following the Maccabean civil war, when Israel was in urgent need of reconciliation, the appeal of this symbolism was so strong that the olive-oil chanukiyah displaced an earlier symbol of Chanukah.⁶ Thus, the large menorah in front of the Knesset building can be understood as a sign of national unity.

The Talmud⁷ also relates that when intertribal marriage was forbidden, people who could not find a match within their own tribe would meet when women would dance in the vineyards on Tu b’Av and Yom Kippur to find a spouse. In recent years, this tradition has reappeared in the form of Tu b’Av mixers and other singles events. Since 2022, Neot Kedumim Biblical Gardens near Modi’in has hosted an annual Tu b’Av evening. About 300 people came this year dressed in white (as single women did when they danced in the ancient vineyards) for a moonlit walk and a harp concert.

Other revived or reconceived ancient holiday customs include the late twentieth-century popularization of visiting Jerusalem or praying at the Kotel on major festivals, in memory of the mitzvot of aliyah l’regel and re‘iyah (holiday pilgrimage to the Temple). Contemporary efforts to restore the religious and cultural status of Israeli agriculture also include attempts to revive the cultivation of frankincense used in the Temple incense⁸ and ancient Israelite varieties of grapes⁹ and dates.¹⁰

More broadly, we see the reinvigoration of the importance of the land, state, and residence in Israel as central to both Judaism and Jewishness. This is not only a consequence of the success of the Zionist movement. It also reflects the steady increase in the portion of the Jewish people living in Israel over the last 70 years. By 2020, about 46% of the world Jewish population was living in Israel, a larger share than that of any diaspora national community.¹¹ As Israelis become the majority of world Jewry, several longstanding assumptions may change.

First, the difference between Jews and Israelis, and therefore between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, will become less meaningful and more difficult to justify. This was demonstrated as early as the 1976 Entebbe airline hijacking, when terrorists separated all Jewish passengers from the others, regardless of citizenship, and as recently as the 2019 and 2023 Hamas calls for worldwide attacks on Jews.

Second, the status of several mitzvot and customs may change dramatically. The Torah predicates several mitzvot on the Jewish people’s residence in their land. Among these is the mitzvah of challah,¹² reserving part of each batch of bread that we bake for a Kohen.¹³ For many centuries, this Torah obligation has not applied, because most Jews lived outside of Israel, but the practice of taking challah has been preserved as a custom, with the Kohen’s portion burned to prevent its forbidden consumption by non-Kohanim.

There is some debate over whether challah will once again become a Torah obligation when the majority of Jews are Israeli. Many poskim hold that this can only happen if each tribe of Israel has been restored to its ancestral lands, an unlikely prospect. Even highly Zionistic rabbis are generally cautious about the revival of challah as a Torah obligation, perhaps out of reluctance to return significant status and authority to the Kohanim.

The ability to reconceive both Jewishness and Judaism is one of the great accomplishments of modern Israel. However, it carries both promise and hazards. Certainly the social, political, economic, and military strength and critical mass of Jewish population continue to promote confidence, experimentation, and creativity in adapting Jewish life for this new reality. In many ways, Israeli Jewry is arguably more robust today than it has been anywhere since Temple times. The examples of Tu b’Av and Tu b’Shvat, holidays with few halachic requirements, show how an opportunity for flexibility attracts innovation and experimentation. The agrarian ideal has a messianic dimension as well, with the renewed attention to challah, terumah, and ma’aser raising the profile of a potential Third Temple economy administered by a resurgent priesthood.

Nor is the agrarian ideal limited to Israel’s explicitly religious sector. Ben Gurion spoke for much of the nation when he cautioned against an economic development strategy that would lead to a primarily urban society. Despite the widespread economic shift from agriculture to advanced technology, love of the land and concern with its natural history and conservation remain strong in Israel.

The appeal of helping to usher in the messianic age is powerful, and our history cautions us to appraise new claimants and movements skeptically. However, faith in a future messianic age and hope for its arrival are not simply erratic fringe impulses.

They are core Jewish beliefs, codified in the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles and ubiquitous since antiquity in our liturgy, history, and national aspirations. The challenge today is to sift wisely through our many options for those that will best help the nation of Israel to survive, flourish, and be a kiddush haShem for many years ahead.

1. Mishna Rosh HaShanah 1:1

2. For a fascinating discussion of the dispute between Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai over the date of this “New Year of the Trees” and its basis in natural history and halachah, see HaReuveni, Nogah. 1980. Nature in Our Biblical Heritage. Neot Kedumim, Kiryat Ono, Israel. Pp. 103-121.

3. Mishna Taanit 4:1

4. Taanit 30b-31a

5. Judges 19-21

6. Greenberg, Jon. 2008. The olive tree, the post-Chanukah period, and Jewish unity. https://torahflora.org/2008/08/the-olive-tree-the-post-chanukah-period-and-jewish-unity/

7. Mishna Taanit 4:1. The account in Judges of the end of the war against Benjamin (Judges 21:19-22) suggests that the custom of women to dance in the vineyards on festive occasions existed even before that time.

8. Stub, Sara Toth. 2019. Bringing Biblical plants back to Israel. Tablet Magazine. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/biblical-plants-israel

9. Drori, Elyashiv, et al. 2017. Collection and characterization of grapevine genetic resources (Vitis vinifera) in the Holy Land, towards the renewal of ancient winemaking practices. Nature Scientific Reports 7:44463. DOI: 10.1038/srep44463

10. Sauter, Megan. 2021. New fruit from old seeds. Bible History Daily. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/new-fruit-from-old-seeds/?mqsc=E4124854&dk=ZE05D0ZF0&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDWeek%20in%20Review%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=12-26-20_Week_in_Review

11. Hackett, Conrad, et al. 2025. How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020. Pew Research Center. Doi: 10.58904/fj71-ny112

12. Numbers 15: 17-21

13. Today, adult Kohanim are often not sufficiently tahor to eat challah, so it is traditionally burned. Although this is not typically done, a child Kohen or one who has immersed in a mikveh the same day may accept and eat challah. See Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 322:5.