Locust swarms reach Israel, Jordan from Egypt
DEBKAfile March 4, 2013, 8:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israel’s Agriculture Ministry has set up a hot line for helping farmers manage the destruction wrought by swarms of locusts which Monday flew in from Egypt where they devastated crops. The swarm consists of an estimated 30 million insects. The first were seen in the Negev Kadesh Barnea area. The UN FAO sent out prior warnings to Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Sightings should be phoned in to the Tel Aviv locust hot line at 03-968-1500.
Der Haisherik iz arup.
ReplyDeleteI thought shomer-shmita farms are exempt...no????
Never heard that, but I imagine the majority of farms are not shmitta observant.
ReplyDeleteSure. Yeshivisha urban legend. In the 50s (can't recall it it was for the shmita of תשיב or תשיט) Rav Mendelzohn of Qomemiyus consulted with the Chazon Ish and his Moshav rejected Rav Kooks Heter Mekhira and really let their fields lie fallow for shvi'is.
ReplyDeleteAnyway the year following shmita there was a locust plague that destroyed the crops of all the Negev Moshavim and Kibutzim surrounding . But in itself not a single locust descended.
Read a variation on this (bubbeh?) mayseh on the wiki shmita page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita
Haredi Jews tell stories of groups of Israeli Jews who kept the Shmitta and experienced remarkable agricultural events which they describe as representative of miracles in fulfillment of the Biblical promise of bounty. One famous story is told about the then-two-year-old village of Komemiyut during the 1952 Shmittah. The village was one of the few who refrained from working the land that year. At the end of the Shmittah, farmers searching for seed to plant found only wormy, inferior seed that had been rotting for years in an abandoned shed. Rabbi Binyamin Mendelson advised them to sow this seed anyway, saying "The Almighty who causes wheat to sprout from good seed will bless your inferior seed as well," even though it was three months after neighboring villages had planted their fields. They did. That year the fall rains came late, the day after the Komemiyut seed was sown. As a result, the neighboring villages had a meager harvest, while the village of Komemiyut, who sowed from the old store, had a bumper crop.[18]
A veritable מי שאמר לשמן וידליק הוא יאמר לחומץ וידליק mayseh
Errata...the above paragraph was missing the word Qomemiyus in two places:
ReplyDeleteAnyway the year following shmita there was a locust plague that destroyed the crops of all the Negev Moshavim and Kibutzim surrounding Qomemiyus. But in Qomemiyus itself not a single locust descended.
But in Qomemiyus itself not a single locust descended.
ReplyDeletePerhaps because there was nothing there for them to eat?