The holiday of Shavuoth is fast approaching – a festival which was celebrated in the Old Testament days to mark the wheat harvest. Specifically, the tribes of Israel were mandated to take the first sheaves of the harvest and bring them as a sacrificial offering to the Temple in Jerusalem. The term for this offering … Read More »
green wheat
Farike Season
The season for producing farike has officially opened here in the lower Galilee. If you see puffs of smoke in the middle of agricultural fields, like we saw yesterday, it’s a pretty sure sign that someone is making farike. For those of you who haven’t heard me go on (and on, and on) about this … Read More »
Farike
On the last day of Passover, which this year coincided with Easter Monday, I got the call. Friends of my friend Balkees – farmers in the village of Mashhad, just outside Nazareth – were making farike and we were invited to join. Farike – for the unfamiliar – is wheat, harvested when the kernels are … Read More »
Through the Grainfields
I recently received a question from a reader of my blog which was particularly timely. He referred to a passage from the Book of Matthew that goes something like: At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. … Read More »