Nissim Srussi (not to be confused with the French Jewish singer!) is a pioneering agronomist and wine maker who has spent his life helping agriculture to thrive in Israel's arid south. He grew up on a moshav in the Negev, his family were among the founders of Gush Katif and then decades later had to start from scratch after losing everything in the destruction of Gush Katif. He rebuilt his life in the Negev, creating the Carmei Mevurakh winery and vineyard.

The saline soil in the desert near Beer Sheva where his vineyard is located was so salty that no one believed it possible that anything could be grown there, there were barely any weeds or native wild plants growing there when Nissim decided that this would be the sight for his newest project. Today it is home to a thriving vineyard which is going from strength to strength against the odds, an island of vivid green in the midst of the barren yellow-brown of the dry season desert.

The abundant rains of the most recent winter/spring rainy season have produced a bumper crop this summer, flushing out more of the salts from the ground and nourishing the vines, making them stronger and healthier than ever.

It's been a long road for this small family run and owned kosher winery and vineyard to get to this point. In summer of 2014 Nissim and his family were getting ready to plant 12,000 grape seedlings before Tu B'Av, a crucial planting date the summer before a shmitta year. But then the 2014 Gaza war, Tzuk Eitan, erupted and overnight all the young men in his family who were going to help with the labour intensive task were drated. He was left alone with his wife and two daughters - and the 12,000 seedlings. He thought he was about to lose everything again but his daughter put a post on social media and it was seen by someone from Hashomer Hahadash, one of the organisations helping farmers in need. The next day they sent Nissim 135 volunteers aged from 8 to 80 and within three days the vineyard was planted, just before Tu B'Av.

His extended family are very involved in helping out. During the summer you can meet young and old relatives in distinctive red family Carmei Mevorakh t-shirts coming and going at the vineyard, helping out however they can at this critical time of year.

Since October 7th he has once again suffered from labour shortages, especially during the busy harvest period when he has found himself needing to rely on volunteer help to pick all the grapes.

It was our honour to join the Southern Exposure agricultural volunteer group to help out this summer and learn more about quite literally making the desert bloom.

Grapes of love

The grape harvest is in full swing, incredible how in the middle of our bone-dry yellow-brown summers so much of the countryside is still vivid green because of all the vineyards, growing numbers thriving around the country, even deep in the desert, as they did in ancient times, but more about that later.

Last week was the festival of Tu B'Av, 15th of the Hebrew month of Av. It's a festival dating back to biblical times, a celebration of the grape harvest but also described in ancient sources like the Talmud as a day on which single women would wear borrowed white dresses (so as not to shame anyone who couldn't afford one) and go out dancing in the vineyards to attract a potential suitor. That custom has mostly faded over the centuries, but instead it's kind of morphed into a Jewish festival of romance, lots of music events out in nature (especially in the vineyards of course), wine festivals, romantic dinners, heart shaped cakes in the bakeries, love in the air.

The morning of Tu B'Av was by chance all the first grape harvest I volunteered at this summer. It was in the middle of the Negev desert, wilderness all around and then a vivid patch of green on a couple of low hills - vineyards and even more surprising, right below it a lush field of tall corn. Grown with recycled water.

The Negev region has recently received a wine appellation designating it a distinct wine growing region, as it was in ancient times. There are dozens of successful wineries in the area today, many, like the one I worked at last week, inspired by research into historic grape growing techniques uncovered in archaeological digs. Later in the week I had a chance to learn more about that too, but I think that will have to be another post.
This was the first batzir (grape harvest) of the season at this small family owned and run kosher vineyard winery in the Negev desert.

We were so lucky to have gorgeous weather, part cloudy, a gentle cooling breeze to mitigate the summer sun, all of which made it easier to appreciate the stunning views. Despite the mid-summer heat it was actually quite pleasant in the vineyard, at least for most of the morning. There was a breeze in the hills and the lush vines gave a little shade, especially if you sat on an upturned bucket to pick, low enough to be shaded by the greenery. We started work around just after 6am and finished before 11am, just as the sun was high enough in the sky to produce a fiercer heat.

We were picking Chardonnay grapes, among the earliest to ripen. The Negev is known especially for its white and rose wines, though this vineyard also had some red varieties like Malbec, Marselan, Cabernet Franc and Barbera. I'm not a big wine maven but I'm learning so much from working at vineyards around the country. I think vineyard work has become some of my most favourite agricultural work, from the shaping and maintenance of the vines while they are dormant during the winter to the exuberant summer harvests, there is something so magical about grape vines, whether for wine or table.

Much of the work has a meditative quality to it, wending your way along the long, often extremely long, rows, sometimes in terraces on rocky hillsides, sometimes among lush lowland farmland or plateaux of rick dark soil left by long extinct volcanoes or rocky desert wilderness or even sandy desert dunes. It's stunning to me the variety of environments in which vineyards can thrive, and that's just in my tiny corner of the world. Grape vines are truly remarkable. Picking grapes is very social work, you meet people working the other side of the vine across from you, next to you, conversations naturally strike up, stories exchanged over the gentle clip clip of the pruning shears and the plop of grape bunches into the waiting crates.
We were a diverse bunch that morning, a group of local young people doing a year of post-high school volunteering, volunteers mostly from the Jerusalem area from pensioners to primary school kids, mostly Orthodox Jews, a few Christian tourists from Europe and east Asia, and a group of veiled Bedouin women from a nearby village.
But what about the wines you ask? Well we have been promised tastings next time we come to help with the harvest at this place, hopefully in another couple of weeks. The grapes fresh from the vine are incredibly sweet and delicious.

We watched the opening of the last World Cup, hosted by Qatar, on tv screens set up outside a pavement cafe in the southern Jordanian port city of Aqaba.

A mostly local Jordanian crowd with a smattering of overseas tourists, both Western and Arab, sat together watching the pomp and ceremony and the opening Qatar vs Ecuador game in good spirits, sipping traditional Jordanian coffees and teas, munching on baklava and dates, quite a few puffing away on nargilla hubble bubbles.

The chaos and uncertainty of the pandemic was starting to lift, there was a sense of hope and new beginnings.

Today, the last day of this year's World Cup, Aqaba was targeted by a volley of Iranian missiles, intercepted by US anti-missile defense systems and Israeli Iron Dome systems across the border in Eilat.

War clouds seem to be gathering again over the region, including the Gulf states and previous World Cup host Qatar, which had thought their vast wealth and playing both sides would grant them immunity from any potential Iran war or regional instability.

It was a sweltering day to be working in a greenhouse but it was such a satisfying day's work despite the non-stop shvitz.

My companions were two incredible volunteers who despite physical/health constraints are two of the most enthusiastic and dedicated farm volunteers I know, people with a deep love of Am Yisrael and a smile and friendly word for everyone.

There's something meditative about a straightforward farm job, like trimming leaves from a tomato plant, you have to think, yes, but you get into a rhythm of the familiar and you can immediately see results as the "jungle" of stray leaves and shoots evens out into a colourful neat tapestry of bright cherry tomatoes hanging on the trimmed vines.

Today's work was further enhanced by two podcasts, though admittedly I did not understand a word of the first one because it was entirely in Thai. The presenter had a very pleasant, relaxing voice though. I enjoyed just listening to the music of the language while I clipped and pruned, at once focusing on NOT CUTTING THE STRINGS OR TOMATOES, while being soothed by a monologue in a language with which I have almost no familiarity. The Thai worker listening along seemed very intent on his work and the speaker, when I walked past he was smiling a warm contented smile as he listened and clipped the vines.

The second podcast was playing from the phone of a high school student from the village, a serious young man who works at the farm after school and through the summer.

He was on a channel aimed at helping young people prepare for national service and he was listening to an interview with an educator at a yeshiva pre-army programme talking about his life story and experiences.

It was absolutely fascinating, the man being interviewed (who's name I didn't catch) was deeply thoughtful, someone with great conviction and deeply held beliefs, but also someone who didn't gloss over experiences he found challenging or painful, but instead talked about how he grew from them, how they fashioned his world view and most importantly to him, how they shaped the way he performs his job as an educator who teaches classes in Gemara, Krav Maga and wilderness survivalism.

He said a great many things and if my hands hadn't been busy trimming cherry tomato vines I would have taken notes, but one of the things that stuck with me in particular was his comment that what marks Krav Maga as an Israeli martial art is how it draws from a Sabra ethos of using whatever you have to hand to protect yourself, a shoe, sand, and likewise survival skills are predicated on knowing how to make full use of your environment, being able to create what you need from what there is, not from what you wish you had.

He said spiritual, mental and soul survival should be thought of in the same way. What resources do you have to hand? What can you use to build up your mental and spiritual strength when you need to? Everything you have experienced, everyone you've ever met, all your knowledge, all the history of those who came before you, so many tools that people often fail to see or lack the creativity to explore or think about, even when maybe they are right in front of them.

I asked the youngster what he hopes to do during his army service. He answered with a slight air of bewilderment because this is the most obvious thing in the world: he wants to be a combat soldier when he finishes secondary school so that he can protect his home and community located near the Gaza border.

I'm frankly way too sleep deprived from air raid sirens at all hours of the day and night because Iran is firing ballistic missiles at densely populated civilian areas in several US allied Middle Eastern countries but after seeing post after post like this I feel like I have to say something as someone in the Middle East looking at the discourse in Europe and North America from afar. Those of us in countries like Bahrain, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman look at how the enlightened countries of the West are happy to enable the Iranian regime to spread death and destruction across the Middle East, caring only about whether they will have to pay more for oil. Who cares how many ballistic missiles armed with cluster munitions Iran lobs at densely populated civilian areas and international airports (leaving thousands stranded), as long as the price of gasoline doesn't go up. It kind of reminds me of bumper stickers from the 1973/4 oil shocks caused by a different Mid East War: "If you're cold this winter burn a Jew". I really right now don't care who the US president is when it comes to dealing with the Iran threat, if he's a progressive Democrat, if he's Trump, this should not be a partisan issue. The Iranian regime (distinct from the long suffering Iranian people) has been a major destabilising force in the Middle East and the world for decades now. It is a major sponsor of brutal jihadi groups like Hizballah with its horrific stranglehold on Lebanon, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen who've been terrorising international shipping in the Bab al Mandab straits and the Red Sea for years now, as well as inflicting terrible suffering on the people of Yemen. In recent months the IRGC and affiliated militias have murdered tens of thousands of Iranians who dared to protest against the tyranny of the regime. All over the world there are thousands, millions, or Iranians who fled this cruel regime and are begging Western countries to help them bring freedom, safety and stability to their homeland. Is this possible? I don't know, but their testimony of the horrors wrought by Khamenai's government show how One of its chief aims since the 1979 revolution has been the destruction of Israel, a country with which it does not even share a border and with whom Iran had warm relations prior to the revolution. As a Shii fundamentalist regime it has targetted its Sunni neighbours, stirring up terrorism, wars and instability across the Middle East, with massive death tolls, all sparked by the extreme ideology of the Iranian regime and the IRGC. Learning from Iraq's use of Scud missiles as terror weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian government has dedicated huge resources to the mass production of ballistic missiles and drones to terrorise the civilian populations of nearby Sunni countries and Israel in the present, but also to work on developing longer range missiles to threaten Europe and even the US in future. Iran has used its missile and drone expertise to help Russia in its war against Ukraine, building drone factories in Russia and helping to kill and maim vast numbers of Ukrainian civilians and decimate Ukrainian towns and cities. And then there is the Iranian regimes nuclear weapons programme. This isn't WMDs in Iraq all over again, this is a real and present danger, not just to Israel, which I understand many in the west would be happy to see nuked along with her 10 million citizens, what the Iranian leadership likes to call a "one bomb country", because Israel is so small, just a couple of nuclear warheads could wipe out its entire population, but because a nuclear Iran could more easily hold the world to ransom - imagine a crisis over oil tankers getting through the Straits of Hormuz if Iran already had viable nuclear warheads to fix to its long range missiles aimed throughout the Middle East, at Europe, at southern Asia. The Iranian government's single minded focus on all of these projects have made it a real time threat not just to its neighbours, not just to Israel, but to the world at large, yes, to you in the West, in North America, in Europe, in Australia, NZ, Japan, Korea - wealthy industrial nations who worry about the price of oil and the impact on their economies. Yes, you can all keep appeasing Iran, let them wreak havoc across the Mid East as long as you get your oil, but the wars and instability will catch up to you and your economies because like it or not, you all have important economic interests in the Middle East, whether it's Gulf oil and gas or Israeli innovation and R&D. From medical technology to agricultural innovation to computer chips to cyber security, Israel is an important part of the global economy contributing to the world in a myriad ways that improve standards of living, promote growth and create jobs, including in the US and Europe. Western countries have an interest in Israel not being wiped off the map by Iran. It is detrimental to the global economy when Iran threatens international oil and gas supplies but it is also detrimental to the global economy when one of the world's top technological innovators, major R&D centres and huge start up generators is under fire from ballistic missiles. Likewise when a major banking centre like Manama, Bahrain is being targetted or a business hub like Abu Dhabi.

More traditional spring skies - flocks of migrating storks, pelicans, cranes, alpine swifts and swallows, myriad raptors and song birds travelling over Israel on their long journeys between Africa and Eurasia. A sure sign Pesah is almost here. Such a joy to look up to the sky and see the birds doing their thing as they do every spring come war or covid and whatever other crazy thing is turning our human lives upside down.

Love and fava beans

 

So what did I do today? Joined several groups of volunteers helping out on an Iranian-Israeli (Jewish) family farm in the heart of Israel sorting and shelling fresh ful (fava) beans with a friendly Iranian-Israeli woman who came to Israel from Yezd when she was a teenager more than 50 years ago.

As we worked conversation flowed, Pesah customs and recipes, like Persian green rice with fava beans, "traditional women's talk" that made us feel grounded and connected with our female ancestors from Jewish history, sitting in a circle, assorted Jewish women of different ages and backgrounds, preparing vegetables from the farm for the upcoming holiday.

The farmer's mother stopped by to say hello, chatting for a while in Farsi with my work companion. She also brought with her a still steaming dish of freshly cooked fresh green fava beans for us to taste, a seasonal delicacy, a sign of spring, for the fresh ful season is short. In some communities dishes like this are traditional for Pesah, in others we refrain from eating beans on Pesah, but either way, fresh green ful in the market stalls is a sign of spring in Israel.

And from time to time we got alerts of incoming Iranian missiles and work stopped while we all made our way to the big central shelter in the centre of the moshav village, Jews of all kinds, including those with Iranian roots, non-Jewish migrant workers, Arabs - we all get the Home Front Command alerts on our phones, everyone takes cover together, knowing that Iranian missiles target us all.

On the bus home I sat up front near our Arab driver. He worried about incoming missiles while we were on the road. Worried that I get off at a major junction that's out in the open without close shelter (I knew a friend was giving me a lift from the bus stop so I wouldn't be standing around waiting, not to worry).

The people sitting up front talked about cancelled Pesach plans and vacations, cancelled Eid ul Fitr (the Muslim holiday concluding Ramadan which just finished) plans and trips, life put on hold by the war, spur of the moment ad libbed plans to keep living within the strange new rubric of this war. Strangers, friends and acquaintances, but all with a deep genuine empathy for each other's experiences because we are all in this war together, we all get it, understand each other despite our different communities.

"Safe journey, quiet journey", "Good tidings", "peace" we call out to each other as people get off at their stops. They aren't just words, but blessings and wishes from the heart.