The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them:
'When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its
harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. He
is to wave the sheaf before the LORD so it will be accepted on your
behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath... You must
not eat any bread, or roasted or new grain, until the very day you bring
this offering to your God. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the
generations to come, wherever you live. From the day after the Sabbath,
the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full
weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath,
and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD.'"
-Leviticus 23:9-11, 14-16
Driving
across the Jezreel Valley these days, you can't miss the biblical
echoes of the landscape. On Pesach we are to eat only cereal products
made from the last year's harvest, baked with no leavening – and at the
same time we are to clean out completely any remnants of any grain
products from the old supply. At Pesach we begin the wheat harvest,
bringing an offering of the first sheaf on the day after the first day
of the holiday (that is the rabbinical understanding of "Sabbath" in the
above passage). Before the calendar was set, leap months (to compensate
for the fact that the lunar year is shorter than the solar year) were
added by observation – if it appeared that the wheat would not start to
ripen by Pesach, a second month of Adar was added to delay Pesach.
During the next seven weeks after that first offering we count off
the days as the wheat ripens – as it is indeed doing right now in the
broad fields of the Jezreel Valley and the expanses of the northern
Negev. The "counting of the Omer (sheaf offering)" for 49 days is
traditionally a time of mourning, when weddings are not held. The
traditional explanations are not very satisfying, but the
anthropological/agricultural reason seems clear: as the grain ripens it
is very vulnerable. One late-season hailstorm can destroy a whole year's
crop. So we walk on eggs around God, keeping a low profile, not letting
ourselves act too happy or carefree, praying that we and the crop make
it unscathed until the harvest ends at Shavuot.
The beautiful fields of grain glowing in the spring sunshine can be a
little deceiving in their expanse – Israel actually imports the 96% of
its grain supply, mostly from Russia, the Ukraine, and the US. Today,
the variety of tasty and interesting breads, even in the supermarket, is
almost overwhelming – and new boutique bakeries keep springing up, on
every urban block. Sourdough, multigrain, with sun-dried tomatoes and
sunflower seeds, with olives, with nigella seeds – you name it, you can
find it (even if it costs you $5 a loaf); and today, bread-baking
workshops with master bakers are a popular activity for the middle
class. For all that, bread remains basic. Every child growing up here
has learned to bake challah in kindergarten, and pita over the campfire
is de rigueur on youth group outings. And the iconic "standard bread"
remains a fixture of Israeli culture: a two-pound oblong loaf (not baked
in a loaf pan), with a shiny, chewy crust and a dense texture,
available in "white" or "black" (= unseeded rye); piled up, unwrapped,
in plastic crates, in any neighborhood grocery. As a vestige of our
socialist past, the standard loaf is price-controlled, selling for about
90 cents. No one should have to go without bread.
The grain we grow here is, at this point in our history, of more
symbolic significance than economic; still, that symbolic connection
between Torah, land, and lunch is worth a lot.
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