Nissan 5785, Issue no. 20
New at Torah VeHa'aretz Institute Visitors Center
Baruch Hashem, we have officially completed the installation of English at our Visitors' Center! Now all of our interactive games, films, halachic chat, and podcasts are up and running (properly!), and are fully available in English.
The experience at Torah VeHa'aretz Center includes a self-guided tour of the visitors' center (interactive museum) and the botanical Garden of Mitzvot, where visitors are invited to pick herbs for tea and besamim from the garden, while seeing how the land-dependent mitzvot are applied in practice. For large groups (preregistration mandatory), the visit includes a lecture or Cahoot! Competition, and a guided tour of the garden.
New in the garden: All of the five grains are at various stages of development! You can now see the differences between wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats in our plot dedicated to kilei zera'im, the prohibition of interplanting annuals.
Special guests from abroad come to learn and share
We had the privilege of hosting at our center Yosef Gillers, the founder and co-executive director of GrowTorah, an organization that manages Torah gardens in Yeshiva Day Schools across the US. Similar to the goals of Torah VeHa'aretz Institute, they aim to bring Torah to life for their students, helping strengthen their love of Torah and Eretz Yisrael. He brought with him Shani Mink, co-founder and executive director of the Jewish Farmer Network, connecting Jewish farmers throughout the United States, Noah Weinberg, of Gann Academy Farm, an outdoor classroom, connecting students to Jewish values through farming, and Rabbi Nathan Fein, an educator now living in Israel. All of them are passionate educators, aiming to connect others to Jewish values through agriculture.
Yosef Gillers: "Visiting the MTVH was a dream come true. I have wrestled with so many of these agricultural Torah concepts before and the seforim didn't explain it clearly enough for me. I needed to see the plants being grown k'halacha in the Gan Hamitzvot, and discuss with the expert agronomists and scholars here. Now I better understand these halachot and am excited to share with my team so that we can better teach the concepts."
Rabbi Nathan Fein: "I wanted to thank you for the great tour - the מרכז is truly an amazing place. I heard great things about it, but it was well beyond my expectations."
Rabbi Nathan Fein (left) and Yosef Gillers of GrowTorah (right)
We are looking forward to working together with our counterparts abroad to spread the light of the Torah of the Land of Israel to our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora.
Clip: From ancient fruit tree to the symbol of revival: the story of the date palm in the Land of Israel
Torah Veha'aretz Institute produced this fascinating film on the riveting history of the date palm in the Land of Israel, premiering at our TuBishevat conference. We present the film to you now, for the first time, with English captions.
English WhatsApp group: Rabbi, am I legal?
Throughout Adar, members of our English WhatsApp group sent photos from their gardens with kilei zera'im questions. We posted the questions over the past month. Here's a taste:
Join our WhatApp group: Mitzvot of the Land.
Article: The omer offering and the chadash prohibition in Israel and abroad
Rabbi Moshe Bloom, English Department Director
The upcoming mitzvah of sefirat ha'omer is an excellent opportunity to learn about a land-dependent mitzvah that we actually don't encounter in Israel often: chadash.
Around 15 years ago, when I was a sixth-year student in the Yerucham hesder yeshiva, I flew to my cousin's bar mitzvah in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. During the visit, I visited my grandfather in Brooklyn. There, kosher restaurants advertised kemach yashan. I remember calling my father, saying: "Dad, I recall that there's a mitzvah having to do with new and old grain, somehow connected to the omer sacrifice and sefirat ha'omer. But isn't it supposed to be a mitzvah hateluyah ba'aretz? How is it that I've never heard about it here in Israel, only in America? Isn't supposed to be the other way around?
Read more.
QA: Are we allowed to say birkat ha'ilanot on trees grafted in a forbidden fashion?
Answer / Rabbi Yoel Friedemann, Halachah Research Department
We say birkat ha'ilanot during the month of Nissan.
Not all trees are grafted. Generally, fig trees, pomegranate trees, and date palms are not grafted. While it is true that most trees are grafted, among those that are, most are grafted with the same species (min bemino), and this is permitted. Examples of trees that are grafted in a permissible way include: grapevines, olive trees, carob trees, and mango trees (among others).
An example of a tree that is almost certainly grafted in a prohibited fashion is the pear tree; 90% of pear trees in Israel today are grafted onto quince rootstocks. There are some fruit trees that are sometimes grafted onto forbidden rootstocks, such as plums, peaches (including nectarines), and apricots. Citrus fruit is grafted onto the same species or onto rootstocks that are safek mino (where it is uncertain whether it is the same species).
There is a dispute among the posekim whether one should say birkat ha’ilanot (and shehechiyanu) on fruits and trees grafted in a prohibited fashion, and it seems that in practice one should not make this blessing on such fruit/fruit trees, since safek berachot lehakel (we are lenient when there is a doubt regarding blessings; see Kaf HaChayim OC §226:11 and §225:26).
Bottom line: Optimally, recite the blessing on trees that are not generally grafted or that are grafted onto the same species. However, if you do not know whether the tree was grafted in a prohibited fashion, or for citrus trees—where in the worst case scenario the tree is grafted onto a tree that is safek mino—it seems that one can say birkat ha’ilanot.
See our compilation of laws and customs related to birkat ha'ilanot