The Miracle of the Wormy Seed

5711, the second year of Moshav Komemiyus, was a Shemitta year.

My name is Dov Weiss, and I was part of the group of about thirty religious young men who started the agricultural settlement Moshav Komemiyus, in the south of Eretz Yisroel. It was in 1950, after we had completed our army service, and I was still a bachelor. Among the founders was also the well-known Torah scholar and rabbinical authority Rav Binyomin Mendelsohn, who had previously immigrated to Eretz Yisroel from Poland and had served as the Rav of Kfar Ata.

At first we lived in tents in the middle of a barren wilderness. The nearest settlements were a group of kibbutzim associated with the left-wing Shomer HaTzair movement: Gat, Gilon and Negva. Several of our members supported themselves by doing different types of manual labor at Kibbutz Gat, the closest to us. Others worked in agriculture, planting wheat, barley, rye and other grains and legumes. I myself drove a tractor. Our produce grew throughout the fifteen thousand or so dunam (nearly four thousand acres) allotted to us, and we sold it to bakeries and factories.

At that time there were not yet water pipes reaching our moshav. We had to content ourselves with what could be grown in dry, rugged fields. Every few days we made a trip to Kibbutz Negva, about twenty kilometers away, to fill large containers with drinking water.

The second year we were there, 5711 (fall 1950 to summer 1951), was the Shemitta year, which comes every seventh year, when the Torah commands us to desist from all agricultural work (see Vayikra 25:1-7). We were among the very few settlements in Eretz Yisroel at the time to observe the laws of the Sabbatical year and refrain from working the land. Instead we concentrated on building, and that year we succeeded in completing much of the permanent housing. The moshav gradually developed and expanded, and more and more families moved in, as well as a number of young singles. By the end of the year we already numbered around eighty people.

As the Shemitta year drew to its close, we prepared to renew our farming. For this we needed seed to sow crops, and for this purpose we could use only wheat from the sixth year, the year that preceded Shemitta, since the produce of the seventh year is forbidden for this use. We went around to all the agricultural settlements in the area, near and far, seeking good quality seed from the previous year's harvest, but no one could fulfill our request.

All we were able to find was some old, wormy seed that, for reasons never made clear to us, was lying around in a storage shed in Kibbutz Gat. No farmer in his right mind anywhere in the world would consider using such poor seed, not if he expected to see any crops from it. The kibbutzniks at Gat burst into loud, derisive laughter when we told them that we were actually interested in this infested grain that had been rotting for a few years in some dark corner.

“If you really want it, you can take all you like, and for free, with our compliments,” they offered in amusement.

We consulted with Rav Mendelsohn. His response was, “Take it. The One who tells wheat to sprout from good seed can also order it to grow from inferior, wormy, leftover seed.”

In any case we had no alternative. We loaded the old, infested seed that the kibbutz had offered us free of charge onto a tractor and returned to Komemiyus.

The laws of Shemitta forbade us to plow and turn over the soil until after Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the eighth year, so we did not actually sow the seed until the next month, Cheshvan. This was two or three months after all the other farmers had completed their planting.

That year the rains were late in coming. The farmers from all the kibbutzim and moshavim gazed upward longingly for the first rain. They began to feel desperate, but the heavens were unresponsive, remaining breathlessly still and blue.

Finally it rained. When? The day after we completed planting our thousand dunam of wheat fields with those wormy seeds, the sky opened up and the rains came down to saturate the parched earth.

In the following days we were nervous in anticipation, but we turned our attention to strengthening our faith and trust in Hashem. It did not take long for the hand of Hashem to be revealed clearly to all. The wheat fields that had been planted months before the first rain sprouted only small, weak crops. Our fields, sown with the old, infested seed long after the proper season, were covered with an unusually large and healthy yield of wheat, by any standard.

The story of the “miracle at Komemiyus” spread quickly. Farmers from all the agricultural settlements in the South came to see with their own eyes what they could not believe when they heard the rumors.

When the farmers from Kibbutz Gat arrived, they surprised us. After looking in open-mouthed astonishment at the impressive, bountiful wheat flourishing in our fields, grown from the infested seeds they had provided, they decided to go back on their generosity. They announced that they wanted payment for the tractor load of old, rotten wheat that they had scornfully given us for free only a short time before.

Even more startling, they said they would bring a claim against us in Bais Din, the rabbinical court, before Rav Mendelsohn himself, no less. Probably they figured that in a secular court such a claim would not have the slightest chance of gaining them even a single penny.

Rav Mendelsohn took their case seriously and in the end ruled that we should pay them. He explained that the reason they had given it for free was that they thought it worthless for planting, while in truth it had been excellent for that purpose. We were astonished to hear his ruling, but needless to say, we complied.

The whole story became an extraordinary Kiddush Hashem, a glorification of Hashem, in the eyes of people throughout the country. Everyone agreed that it was a clear fulfillment of Hashem's promise in the Torah: “And if you shall say, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year? Behold, we may not plant, nor harvest our produce.’ I will command My blessing to you...” (Vayikra 25:20-21).