angryjew

OK. Works like this. G-d has commanded us to let the land of Israel rest and lie fallow, so it gets to keep Shabbat every seven years. It is the seventh year, the shmittah year right now. So there’s a whole lotta mischief and annoying halachic (Jewish legal) issues that come with eating vegetables.

There are three choices for a person to ingest their daily foliage helpings - before one makes such a choice, if they care, they better ask the rabbi they follow because the whole thing is so technically complex and entangled you really need the personal guidance of one who knows of what he speaks- NOT ME:

1. heter mechira - where the land is sold to a non-Jew for the year and farmed as usual.  Many people think this is OK though the yeshiva world (from which my rebbe and most of my family draws their Torah) says it’sa bluff of a loophole and forget it. But their solution is to eat vegetables that come from-

2. Badatz.  That is the hechsher, kosher stamp, accepted by the Torah world for the most part except there is just one problem with that - most of the vegetables with said hechsher come from the Palestinians, which means, yes, these vegetables could likely be funding Hamas by the tithes the Muslims are required to give.  But my cousin asked her vegetable merchant about these issues, and he told her that most of the cucumbers, tomatoes, squash and other simple vegetables in Israel every year are sold to him by the Arabs because he has no other choice (and he is an individual who would rather NOT buy from Arabs).  They are the ones doing the cheap labor locally and hence these are easy to get.  Interestingly enough however, the more specialty vegetables like cherry tomatoes are only grown by Jews.  In any case, there is another option.

3. Otzar H’aaretz - which includes vegetables brought from the Arava (which isn’t considered the holy part of the holy land), or from greenhouses/places that aren’t actually the ground of Israel,  or k’dushas shvii’s - produce which has certain holiness for some reason (I’m really not clear on it and would welcome any input) that you are allowed to eat.

I say go for the third option.  Or just buy vitamins.

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