Down (South) on the farm: Bringing southern produce up to Jerusalem

Right after I got off the bus, I heard two explosions and saw a mushroom cloud of gray smoke rising in the not-so-far distance above Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the Jerusalem part of the story…

A quaint, sprawling farmers’ market – right in the middle of Jerusalem’s First Station “culture, culinary, and entertainment” center. That’s what I happened upon one Tuesday afternoon last month, roaming around town with my daughter.

Three rows of tables topped with colorful plastic and cardboard boxes filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, with a farmer and his wife at the end of the aisle, weighing the produce for happy and curious customers, who have been coming weekly in ever greater numbers as more people hear about this farm shuk.

The people farming at the border

The jolly man behind the scale was Yosef Amar, a farmer from a moshav in the Gaza border area. Sporting a long, white, double-pointed beard, he was wearing jeans, a button-down, colored shirt and tzitzit, a black kapuchon coat, and a shoulder bag, and was sporting a Range USA baseball cap. If he had been in an earlier time and place – 1905 Anatevka, Ukraine, for example – he could have easily been Tevye the milkman.

But this Israeli native was not fiddling on the Anatevka roof – he was farming on the Mivtahim moshav, where he was born 63 years ago and farmed with his father.

AMAR’S PARENTS, Shalom and Frecha, emigrated from Morocco in 1956, not long before the Northeast African Muslim country granted citizenship to its Jews and restricted their travel abroad. 

“My father was encouraged to make aliyah to Mivtahim, which means ‘secure dwellings,’” he said, the name having been based on a verse in Isaiah – "And my people shall abide in a peaceable habitation, and in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places" (32:18, translation from Machon Mamre). This was right before the moshav was used by the IDF as an infantry base during the Suez crisis, which resulted in Israel temporarily taking control of the Sinai Peninsula – and the Gaza Strip.

“I worked with him on the farm since I was a child,” Amar recalled. Then, like many young people finishing their military service, he wanted to travel. “My father said, ‘You have worked hard; take a month off and enjoy yourself.’” Amar had heard about a job selling T-shirts on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so in January 1985 he went there – “because it was warm.”

When the summer came around, his boss opened another branch in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, so “Joe,” as Amar was now known, moved up there. A cute, young woman named Michal – from Point Pleasant, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) north – came to work for them selling shirts and ended up with more than just a job. Joe and Michal fell in love, got married – “the Matchmaker made me a match,” he said – and moved back to Ormand Beach, Florida, about an hour north of Orlando.

This time, he opened up his own T-shirt and gift shop in Daytona Beach 10 minutes south, then a company called Joe Cool, Inc., and then another one where he made his own T-shirt transfers. 

“Who would have thought that that’s what I would end up doing for all those years?” Joe quipped.

They had gone to visit Israel several times in the intervening years but didn’t move back until 2014. By then, the parents of a brood, they brought their four youngest kids with them, back to the moshav where dad grew up, while their three married children stayed behind – and Michal made aliyah. 

“I was 18 and he was 23,” she said, laughing at the memory of when they met. 

“I was just out of the army and just came for a month…” Amar began.

 “… and he stayed for 30 years!” Michal concluded.

AMAR AND Michal proudly showed me their round, red, ripe, and shiny tomatoes – some still in bunches attached to vines – and their cherry tomatoes and green beans. 

“We also grow cucumbers, hot peppers, and eggplant now,” he said, gleaming like the tomatoes. “We used to also grow cabbage, cauliflower, corn, cilantro, mint, and zucchini, but haven’t been able to start those up again since Oct. 7,” he lamented.

Amar is obviously a strong guy, but he’s not going to shlep all that produce by himself. Fortunately, their son’s brother-in-law, Shmuel Witkes, comes every week to help out. The 24-year-old from Worcester, Massachusetts, learns just a kilometer away, at the Old City’s Diaspora Yeshiva. 

“I was here six years ago, and have been here now for seven months,” he said. “This is the Holy Land – it feels like home, and I plan to stay.”

This is not just Amar’s own farmer’s market, however. Just like Tevye loaded up his horse and buggy with his own milk to sell to his townsfolk, this farmer loads up his Isuzu box truck – not only with his own fresh and tasty produce but with fruits and vegetables he collects from more than two dozen local fellow farmers in several nearby communities. He starts gathering them on Sunday, finishes on Monday, and drives up to Jerusalem early Tuesday to set up the market.

After the Oct. 7 attack, the farming business was really hurting, either because of actual damage to their operations or because they had lost their Arab and foreign workers. 

Amar was already setting up a farmers’ market twice a week in Ashdod. “But now I wanted to help my farmer colleagues sell their produce in Jerusalem, so I put an ad online offering to do that,” he said. 

“Itamar Taragan, the manager of First Station, saw my offer, called me up, and offered me free space every week for the market to help farmers in the South,” he said appreciatively. "He's a great guy!"

WHERE WERE the Amars while the Oct. 7 massacre was happening?

“We were saved by divine providence – via my wife, daughter, and son-in-law,” Amar explained. 

 “Knowing that I work hard all year, Michal said we should go visit our daughter Arielle Lasry and her family for the Sukkot and Simchat Torah holiday week in Yerres, France, since we can’t work on those days anyway,” he said. 

Arielle really wanted them to come, as she had been in Israel during a war, and was not eager to return with her other married siblings for the holidays. 

Amar had wanted to at least return by Thursday, October 5, to attend the farmers’ market in Arad on the following Monday. But Arielle’s husband, Yossi, actually convinced them to plan for a longer stay. 

If the Amars hadn’t gone abroad, their other married children would have come to them, and the potential outcome of that is unthinkable.

Amar had been reluctant to leave the country, wanting to celebrate the holiday in Israel, but Michal pushed the idea, saying, “That’s how it is – we’re going, and you’re coming!” So the whole family went. 

“We were supposed to come back on October 10, but there were no flights after the attack, so we couldn’t return until November 2, more than three weeks later,” Amar said.

When they left, their farm had two Thai workers, but after Oct. 7, Thailand evacuated all of its citizens, so there was nobody to take care of the operation, and all the produce dried up and was ruined. 

“After I came back, I got two Senegalese workers, but it was too late to save the harvest, so we had to start all over again,” Amar lamented, adding that the government helped a little, but not nearly enough for them to recover their losses.

While they were in France on Oct. 7, many Gaza border communities were attacked and devastated. Mivtahim was one of the more fortunate ones, although it lost two valiant heroes who fought to protect their moshav: Dan Assouline, its military security coordinator; and his friend, volunteer alert squad member Tal Maman, who was the son of Amar’s cousin.

They had defended the moshav for several hours, along with three others security squad members from nearby Moshav Yesha who came to help, until the IDF arrived. “We heard that someone had wounded the terrorist commander, who told his terrorists to take him back to Gaza,” Amar said. “If not for that, what happened at Mivtahim could have been much worse... And we could have been there.”

I HADN'T planned to buy fruits and vegetables that day in Jerusalem, but since I was there and everything looked so good and I knew it was for a good cause, I shopped, stocking up on the Amars’ vine and cherry tomatoes and green beans, avocados from the Negev, fennel from Moshav Dekel, heart-shaped kiwi from the North, and cucumbers from Kerem Shalom, among other delectable items.

“Not everything is from the Gaza border region,” Amar said. “We have to fill in with some stuff from other places, like the Arava and even up North so we have a full enough selection for our customers.” My purchase came to NIS 64; I had expected to pay NIS 100.

I thanked Amar for the produce and said I’d like to come visit sometime; he said, “Bevakasha, please do! You’re welcome, and I’ll show you around!”

I took him up on his offer earlier this week. I am basically a city boy and wanted to see the farm – and the Gaza border area, about which I had unfortunately heard so much tragic news for the past seven months. I was a little hesitant, imagining it all to be a war zone down there – like many people who haven’t been to Israel think that the whole Jewish state is. But I thought this would be a good opportunity to go – and be shown around by a local expert.

So I went on Monday, the day after the attack against the IDF at the Kerem Shalom crossing, where four soldiers were killed, and which likely contributed to the government’s decision to finally enter Rafah in southern Gaza, near the Egyptian border.

My bus from Jerusalem finally passed Sderot, which is near the northwest corner of the Gaza Strip – and which, along with Netivot farther southeast, I had visited years ago. Then we passed towns that I had seen so often in the news: Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Re’im, Nir Oz. I took another local (and infrequent) bus 10 minutes from the Eshkol Regional Council to Moshav Mivtahim, which is about three kilometers from the Gaza border and 13 km. from the Egyptian one.

WHEN I got off the bus, I was greeted by the sounds of two explosions. I wasn’t that startled, since I am used to hearing them in Jerusalem, but when I looked back I saw a plume of gray smoke rising in the distance; I was told later that it was either Khan Yunis or more likely Rafah, on the other side of the border. 

Amar came to pick me up in his 14-foot-long truck and took me to his farm. There were some fields waiting to be prepared for planting, and we went to his greenhouse. We were met by Sisi and Nipu, his two Sri Lankan workers, who were all smiles and kept calling him “sir.” “Pick another box of beans, OK?” their boss said. “OK, sir,” they replied.

The greenhouse was big – two dunams (half an acre), Amar said – and there were rows of green beans, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers, all attached or wrapped around wires rising up three to four meters to a horizontal wire that runs the length of the greenhouse. Most of the tomatoes were green, but some were red and “ready to be picked,” he said. He cheerfully picked a cucumber and some ripe cherry tomatoes for this city slicker, who relished their off-the-vine freshness.

We went outside to a small adjacent open field, where something low on the ground was growing. “We really haven’t had time or manpower to get all of this going properly,” he said sadly.

We then drove on a dirt road that turned into a newly paved road. “The government built this after the old one was ruined,” Amar said. The road passed many more green and screen houses. It looked like a massive tent city, but with vegetables for residents instead of refugees. Most of the greenhouses were rectangular; some had arched roofs.

We saw a tractor pulling an open trailer that had a bunch of foreign workers relaxing on it, some with their legs hanging over the side. They all had hats with extra material hanging down the sides to protect their necks from the sun. There was a pile of freshly picked pineapples next to them. They saw us and, like all of the foreign workers I saw, were all smiles.

I HAD heard so much about the Kerem Shalom crossing, and I really wanted to go there. We couldn’t go to the actual crossing for security reasons, but we did go to the farm that produced the mini-cucumbers I had bought at the farmers’ market. I didn't realize that Kerem Shalom, which means "vineyard of peace," was not just the name of the crossing, but of an adjacent area.

Edward Kovarski met us at the entrance to his farm in Kerem Shalom, which is only about a kilometer away from both the Gaza and Egyptian borders. He made aliyah 30 years ago from Kahbarovsk in Russia’s far eastern region. “I was also a city boy – only saw vegetables in the store,” he said quietly, “but someone from Israel came to our community to encourage us to make aliyah and offered us land to farm, so I came.” He seemed surprised and shy to have an actual visitor.

We hear buzzing overhead. Amar said, “It’s an IDF drone, waiting to attack a target over the border.” It was reassuring to know that at least it was one of ours.

Kovarski’s greenhouse was even larger: 5 dunams (1-1/4 acres). Amar said that his is the only place that grows this kind of mini-cucumbers. The plants rise along wires from pots like Amar’s, and Kovarski is trying out a new planting system that cools the warm southern water.

He has six Thai workers; he needs 13. He showed me their house and the new bunkers built for them. “Here is where a mortar fell on Oct. 7,” he points out nonchalantly, right outside the new building, and the holes made in the attached old building by the projectile’s shrapnel.

He also showed me the two new square, concrete safe rooms that had recently been built for his workers. He also has a fascinating contraption that turns cucumber waste into cooking gas for them!

Kovarski took us to an open, unplanted field behind the greenhouse, to show me, from a closer vantage point, where the Kerem Shalom attack happened. All of a sudden, we heard and then saw the smoke from yet another explosion. Only later did I realized that the Rafah operation was already happening – and was told that a mortar fell on the road to his farm 15 minutes after we had been there.

In his open field, there is a “graveyard” for the walls of buildings that were demolished in nearby Yamit in 1982 as part of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Some local communities are named after some of those destroyed ones.

Both Amar and Kovarski said it’s good that Israel is finally going into Rafah – but it’s a little late, and they should have started there instead of ending there. 

I’M BACK in Jerusalem, feeling (relatively) safer. And I’m going to become a regular at Amar’s farmers’ market, to directly support southern (and some northern) dedicated, brave, hard-working, and idealistic farmers. You’re invited to come to the market to shmooze with and buy from the Amars. And maybe you'll come with me down South and work on the farm some...■