Hebrew Voices #24 – Proclaiming a Leap Year of Faith

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Nehemia: This is Nehemia Gordon with Hebrew Voices, and I am on the Aviv search. We are at a place called “Ein Mabua.” This is the place where we’ve been coming for many, many years. And when we find Aviv, this is one of the places we’ll often find it, one of the places where the barley ripens first. And it’s actually wild barley here, so there’s no issue of artificial conditions that could have affected it, you know, GMO, and stuff like that. This is the same barley that was growing here thousands of years ago, it just re-seeds itself. And it’s really yellow, which if I looked at this from the outside, I would say, “Yeah, absolutely, we have here a field of Aviv.” When we open it up and we touch it, we actually squeeze it to see how wet it is, you know, whether the seed has fully formed, and it’s not Aviv. It looks like Aviv from the outside, and here’s an example of, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” And I think from this, we get the new expression, “Don’t judge a sheaf of barley by its exterior appearance.” Don’t judge Aviv by the way it looks from the outside.

I’m really surprised because here we are, tomorrow is the new moon sighting for the end of the 12th month. So, there are two days, basically, today and tomorrow, for us to find Aviv, and we may find it. We’re not done yet. There’s still a lot of places to look. This was the first place, and what we’re finding here at Ein Mabua is the barley’s not Aviv, even though, you know, if you look from far away… Actually, from not that far away. If you stood right over it, you’d say, “Oh yeah, this is Aviv.” And look, there are some individual stalks that are Aviv. I’ve found some, but, you know, that’s here and there.

What we don’t have is what it talks about in Leviticus 23, where it talks about, you can bring the first omer, the first sheaf of the harvest, that you’d bring it to the Temple during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Well, so you’re talking about a harvestable amount, and we don’t have that. We say in Hebrew “po vesham,” here and there we have a stalk. Anyway, I’m here with the team of the Aviv searchers, and what they’ve done is, they’ve taken 10 stalks of barley to see how many of those 10 stalks are Aviv. Have you found any that are Aviv in your sampling?

Yoel: 1 out of 10.

Nehemia: Here’s Yoel Halevy of “Hebrew in Israel,” and he says he found 1 out of 10.

Yoel: Wait, wait, wait…

Nehemia: Is there another one?

Yoel: I might have another one here, in a second. Yeah, this is another one.

Nehemia: Okay, so we’re at 20 percent.

Yoel: This is like 2 out of 11.

Nehemia: Oh, 2 out of 11, okay. All right, that’s your second set of 10.

Yoel: That’s my second set.

Nehemia: So, basically, here and there we have some stalks that are Aviv, but you couldn’t come like it talks about in Scripture, “Mehakhel khermesh bakama,” “When the sickle begins upon the standing grain.” You’re talking about harvesting with a sickle, and that means you’re going to take a whole big clump in your arm, and you’ll cut it with a sickle, and we don’t have that. You know, here you’d have to cherry pick them, so to speak. And that’s not what we’re looking for, so we’re just not there yet. But look, there’s a whole long day and a lot more to examine. I’m going to talk to some other people here. Here we have Devorah, who has a very popular Facebook page called…

Devorah: “New Moon and Aviv barley in Israel.”

Nehemia: Okay, and so, what have you found in your samplings? And you’re a very experienced Aviv searcher, you’ve been doing this for many, many years.

Devorah: Yes, a little over 20 years. I just gathered 10 stalks, and I was just about to do a sampling.

Nehemia: Okay, so do the sampling. We’re going to listen.

Devorah: Okay, this is the first one. So, I’m taking from the middle and I’m squeezing, and that seed came out. That is definitely not Aviv.

Nehemia: And that, basically, is a simple field test to see what percentage is liquid. And based on experience, that tells us if we were to parch this in fire that there wouldn’t be anything left, it would just completely evaporate because it’s so liquid. And we have the phrase in Leviticus 2:14, “Aviv parched in fire.” So, we’re looking for barley which isn’t fully ripe, but it’s close to being ripe.

Devorah: No, the second one wasn’t Aviv, either.

Nehemia: Okay, so we’re oh-for-two. This could be a long segment. I’ve got to tell you, at the end of these days of looking for the Aviv barley, my thumbs and fingers hurt from all the squeezing. Okay, have you found any so far that are Aviv?

Devorah: No, I’ve done 4 so far, and they weren’t. Five, no, although they look really light in color.

Nehemia: Yeah, so this is what’s surprising. From the exterior it looks like it would be Aviv, and you actually get down to it and it’s not. Ooh, and I just caught a grasshopper. Should I eat it?

Devorah: Oh, gosh.

Nehemia: Oh no, it got away.

Devorah: That’s 7.

Nehemia: Grasshoppers are delicious and kosher, Leviticus 11.

Devorah: This one, I would say is Aviv.

Nehemia: Okay, so we’ve got one so far. Can I double-check? No, not there. That’s the worm stage.

Devorah: That one that you’ve got, I don’t know if you got from the middle.

Nehemia: It’s close, but it’s not there yet.

Devorah: This one of nine. This is also kind of close, but…

Nehemia: Let me do an examination here. No, not even close.

Devorah: 10, Definitely not.

Nehemia: So, 0 for 10. Okay, 0 for 10.

Yoel: Really, I got 2 out of 11 so it’s really 1 to 10, basically.

Nehemia: Yeah, well, even if it was 3 out of 10, we’re still not there.

Yoel: Yeah, we’re far, far, far away.

Nehemia: All right, and I’m actually here with Time-Will-Tell Keith Johnson, who has come all the way from some other continent to be here on the Aviv search. Keith Johnson, what do you have to say?

Keith: Listen, all I can say is, I appreciate the fact that you guys don’t just drive by, look at fields and say, “Oh, it looks Aviv.” This is a perfect example where you guys get out of the car, you come to the spots, you open it up…

Nehemia: We almost get arrested…

Keith: Almost get arrested, you had to negotiate with the manager. But here we are in this beautiful place, and you did exactly what this is about. You stopped, you went in, and you opened it and looked at it. I think that’s really powerful.

Nehemia: And I gotta tell you, I’m looking at this barley, and superficially, this should be Aviv, and it’s not. I mean, you’re getting 1 out of 10, 2 out of 10. I’m surprised.

Keith: You can’t judge the Aviv from the outside, you actually have to open it up.

Nehemia: This is a spiritual lesson here. Methodist Pastor, will you say…

Keith: You’d better take the time and look and see for yourself. That’s all I can say is, you guys came, looked, saw for yourself. And at least at this spot, we’re not there.

Nehemia: Look, we’re not done. There are still other places to go. We’ve got a long two days ahead of us, but we’re off to a start, where it’s not Aviv here.

Yoel: Not at all.

Nehemia: All right, we’ll do another segment later.

So, we are here now in the Jordan Valley, and we’re on Highway 90, you can hear the cars going by. Along the road here, across the ditch there is this field which has some barley in it, and certainly from afar it was nice, and yellow, and this could be it. This might be the Aviv. You gotta go check it, though; you can’t just do the long-distance examination.

Oh, interesting. All right, let’s have a look. This might be it.

Wow, from afar it looked like it was totally ripe, and it’s not. You do our squeeze test, and the insides just pop out. No, there’s something there but it’s not Aviv.

Woman: It’s a worm.

Nehemia: It’s a worm. Maybe there’s a stalk here or there that might be Aviv, I haven’t found that yet. I’ll be shocked if we don’t find one stalk that’s Aviv. Yeah, here’s one stalk that’s Aviv, but basically, it’s not, no. Asi, ata mukhan ledaber ba’…

Asi: Nedaber.

Nehemia: I’m here with Asi, who is a Karaite Jew who currently lives in Beit Shemesh. Asi, do you speak English?

Asi: A little.

Nehemia: A little. So, Asi, why did you decide to come on the Aviv search this year? Why is this important to you?

Asi: I want to do Pesach, Khag HaMatzot.

Nehemia: Yeah, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Asi: In the real time.

Nehemia: In the real time?

Asi: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, and what’s wrong with the calendar that most of the Jewish people are following?

Asi: Ze lefi lu’akh shekov’im merosh.

Nehemia: So, most Jews are following a calendar which has been established in advance.

Asi: Bli simanim shel… Mishamayim, simanim al ha’aretz.

Nehemia: Without the heavenly signs which are the signs of the land.

Asi: Ken, kov’im mashe’hu akrayi sheberov hazman hu lo tzodek, lo nakhon.

Nehemia: So, they are establishing something arbitrary which isn’t always right.

Asi: Ken, be’hekhlet.

Nehemia: Veze be’etzem lefi haTorah, ma she’anakhnu osim.

Asi: Ken, ki Aviv…

Nehemia: He’s attempting to quote the verse…

Asi: Ki hase’ora Aviv vehapishta giv’ol.

Nehemia: That was Exodus 9:31, he quoted. He said, “The barley is Aviv, and he says that’s the sign.”

Asi: Ken, be’hekhlet.

Nehemia: Absolutely. Toda raba, thank you.

So, you’ve been on the Aviv search in the past.

Yoel: They filmed us over here.

Nehemia: Who did?

Yoel: The video back from 2011.

Nehemia: Oh, the one that was is in Israeli television. That was here?

Yoel: That was here.

Nehemia: The same spot we saw.

Yoel: And this is where the military car stopped and told us…

Nehemia: Oh, they said we’ve gotta get out of here, okay.

Yoel: I was actually on the “Time Will Tell” series, and Keith Johnson interviewed me from the car and asked me what happened, and I explained what happened.

Nehemia: And that was on this spot.

Yoel: This was here. This was literally here.

Nehemia: It’s just the Jordan Valley. It’s a place where we can pull off the road and there’s barley here.

Yoel: So, for example, I actually went to yeshiva and one of the things that I always noticed is that there’s so much theoretical material in Rabbinic Judaism, and there’s no practicality. I once went to my Rabbi, and I asked him…This is an Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi, and I asked him, “Rabbi, I have to really ask you a question. How do you take all this theoretical stuff and put it in real life?” And he said to me something very simple. He said to me, “Yoel, there’s a fifth part to Talmudic studies, a fifth part to the Shulkhan Arukh. It’s called common sense. You have to take this material and bring it down to the real world, and not everyone knows how to do that.” And that’s probably the problem with the calendar. Some of it’s very theoretical. You have to adjust it all the time.

Nehemia: You mean the rabbinical? What do you mean?

Yoel: Well, any calendar has to be adjusted every once in a while. And the problem with the rabbinic calendar is the adjustment is disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in the land.

Nehemia: Well, and I understand why. They were kicked out of the land. All right, thanks, Yoel.

So, we’re here, really at the northern end of the Jordan Valley, south of Beit She’an, where many years we’ve found Aviv barley. And it’s in the flowering stage, which is even less than we saw further south. We’re not even near Aviv here, not even close. And it’s a really beautiful field, the barley, wild, two-row barley, but it’s not even near Aviv. And hey, I’m here with Jerusalem Miri who I interviewed for the Hebrew Voices episode “Rooftop Revelations.” Shalom, Miri from Georgia.

Miri: Shalom, y’all.

Nehemia: Shalom, y’all. So, what do you feel when you see these beautiful fields of barley?

Miri: It is really beautiful, and it’s waving in the breeze. It’s a beautiful chartreuse, it’s just beautiful.

Nehemia: Beautiful what?

Miri: Chartreuse is a color green.

Nehemia: Oh, it’s a beautiful chartreuse. Is that like a Georgian word?

Miri: No, I believe it’s French, but it’s like a light green. But it’s moving, and then…

Nehemia: Chartreuse?

Miri: Yes.

Nehemia: Do you have a song that you’d be inspired here to sing? Maybe a song that you wrote about? No? That’s okay. Guys, go listen to her episode, “Rooftop Revelations.” She’s got some beautiful music you can download for free.

Miri: Yeah, thank you. But I haven’t written anything about Samaria or barley. [Singing] “He goes in the fields of barley,” that’s…

Nehemia: Was that Sting who wrote that song?

Miri: Yeah.

Nehemia: I don’t know who wrote that song.

Miri: I’m sorry, it’s the only one I know about barley.

Nehemia: Anyway, it’s really beautiful here. There’s a pomelo grove right next to us. And yeah, here we are. And so, basically, the bottom line from the Jordan Valley is on March 9th it’s not Aviv, or as Yoel says in Yiddish…

Yoel: Gurnisht.

Nehemia: Which means…?

Yoel: Nothing.

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s not Aviv. Not yet. But we still have tomorrow in the northern Negev. It ain’t over till it’s over.

Yoel: That’s actually a song.

Nehemia: Is that a song?

Yoel: [Singing] “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Nehemia: Isn’t it something about, it ain’t over until the fat Karaite sings, or something? I don’t know how that goes.

Yoel: Well, I tried to sing earlier and Nehemia said, “Don’t make me sing, because it’s terrible.”

Nehemia: It would be a disaster if I sang. One time I sang the song “Amazing Grace,” and Keith’s ears hurt, and he begged me never to do it again.

Yoel: His ears bled.

Miri: Is that a snake hole?

Nehemia: I don’t know if it’s a snake. It’s some kind of critter hole for sure. So, what’s your thoughts here, Mr. Time Will Tell of BFA International, Keith Johnson?

Keith: All I can say is once again, we’re at the spot, looking at it, taking the time. I am impressed that we’re here, but it’s sad in one sense, because it doesn’t look like it looked before, you know? It’s not Aviv. It’s not Aviv here. And we’ve got the experts here, which I really like. We have the experts. I’m not an expert, but we’ve got all these people that really know. I mean, look at that. These are people who’ve been doing this forever. So, to make the effort to get here and then to come and to see, at least at this point we still have till tomorrow, but at least today…

Nehemia: Now, to get here, we actually just passed through an Israeli checkpoint, and I want Keith to share that story. So, we cross the Israeli checkpoint, and if you sound like you’re a foreigner, they make you pull out your passport, sometimes they go through your trunk. And so, the woman starts talking to me and I respond to her in Hebrew…

Keith: No, she started talking to me and you kept answering for me.

Nehemia: And what did she say?

Keith: She says, “Why won’t you let him talk?”

Nehemia: No, she said, “Why doesn’t he talk?” “Lama hu lo medaber?” And then, she starts talking to Keith in Hebrew. It was impressive.

Keith: Ze hakhaver sheli, ein lo savlanut.” “He’s my teacher, but he has no patience.”

Nehemia: But it was very impressive. He spoke to the lady in Hebrew. And she didn’t ask to see our documents, or anything.

Keith: She did not ask for it.

Nehemia: We just slid right through.

Keith: She just laughed at us.

Nehemia: It was pretty cool.

Yoel: The trick is to turn around before they even say anything. Turn around in Hebrew and say something very Israeli, and they realize you’re okay. That’s what we did.

Devorah: We had a similar incident, where they asked, “Where are you guys from?” And we said, “We’re from Jerusalem.” And she said, “Well, what about her?” And Miri understood her, she said, “Ani gam miYerushalayim.”

Nehemia: “I’m also from Jerusalem.”

Devorah: And so, she didn’t ask for any of our te’udot, because we both know…

Nehemia: She’s Jerusalem Miri, after all. Anyway, so here we are. We’ve gone through the checkpoint. We’ve gone through the religious police and the spiritual border patrol, and we’re dealing with real terrorists, and spiritual terrorists who are out there trying to mess things up for people. And we’re not gonna let them stop us. We’re gonna persevere and just keep going.

Tomorrow, we’re gonna continue this in the northern Negev and see if there’s Aviv, because right now, the answer is… You know, Keith says he’s disappointed. I am very pleased, because we’ve discovered the Creator of the Universe’s times. And the time, based on what we’ve seen so far, is that this is the end of the 12th month, going into the 13th month, tomorrow night at sunset. But we don’t know that for sure. We gotta still persevere and check tomorrow in the northern Negev, and then we’ll have a definitive answer. It might be the exact opposite answer of what we expected, and the Creator will decide that. All right, until tomorrow.

Crowd: Amen.

Nehemia: All right, so this is Nehemia Gordon, and I am back here on the second day of the official Aviv search, March 10th, 2016. Yesterday, we went out looking for the Aviv in the Jordan Valley, in the Judean Desert, and now we are in the northwestern Negev. And we’re actually standing in something we haven’t seen yet, which is a field of planted, domesticated two-row barley. We went all day yesterday and we saw a lot of two-row barley. We didn’t see a single field that was planted, it was all wild or volunteer barley. And this is actually planted two-row barley.

And we’re here, south of a place called Rahat, which is one of the Bedouin towns, so these are Bedouin who plant these fields. And in fact, this is a field that doesn’t even have irrigation. Even if they wanted to water this field, they couldn’t. These are plants that are getting the water from the rain, what there is of it. And I’m here with the Aviv searchers today, Devorah Gordon, Yoel Halevy, and Keith Johnson. Say Shalom to Mr. Johnson.

Keith: Hello, hello, hello.

Nehemia: This is Keith Johnson of Time Will Tell, BFA International.

Keith: Hello, hello, hello.

Yoel: Hello, it’s Yoel.

Devorah: Hi.

Nehemia: Okay. You know, we were talking before and I was trying to get them to feed me a question, and they won’t work with me.

Keith: Wait, no, I’ve got a big question. My wife says to me, “Why are you doing this?” I said, “I’m going on the official Aviv search.” And so, she says to me, “What makes it official?” And I said, “Because I’m going with you, Nehemia.” Is that what makes it official?

Nehemia: No, that’s not what makes it official. When I say, “official Aviv search,” what I mean is, this is actually my fifth or sixth time going out looking at the barley. I went out last week, I went out…

Keith: You mean on this search.

Nehemia: This year.

Keith: Yeah, this year.

Nehemia: Meaning, I went out last week, I went out a few times earlier this week. And that was just to get a sense of, where’s the barley and how is it developing and continuing to ripen. That was just for my own education, to get an indication of what’s going on. When I say this is the “official Aviv search,” what I mean is, the lunar month ends tonight with the new moon. And actually, even if we don’t sight it tonight, it’s by default the end of the 30th day, so, it’s definitely tonight. And when I say, “official Aviv search,” I mean, this is our opportunity to find the Aviv.

If you don’t find it at the end of the 12th month, then the following new moon is not the beginning of the year, it’s the beginning of the 13th month. And that’s what I mean by “official Aviv search.” You know, in the times of the Temple, this would have been carried out by… First of all, every individual farmer would have gone out into his fields daily, and then they would report to the local Kohen, the local priest, from the line of Aaron. And then they would bump that up to the High Priest in the Temple, and they’d say, “Oh, the farmer next to Be’er Sheba found the barley that’s Aviv? Let’s send our delegation down there and get some stalks.” That’s how they would have known.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the Temple today, and we’re stuck with me and you, and people who are willing to go out into the fields and gain experience and do it. I pray that the Messiah will come this afternoon, and He will make the declaration about whether this is the beginning of the year, or the beginning of the 13th month. And then I won’t have to do it, because I really don’t want to. Anyway, let’s describe what we have here. So, Devorah, you’ve been doing this for quite a long time, for what, 20 years or something? What are you looking at here?

Devorah: These seeds are… this is very underdeveloped.

Nehemia: What does that mean, “underdeveloped?” Because that could mean different…

Devorah: There’s barely any seed here.

Nehemia: No, but there are some stalks here that are pretty fat. I mean, that’s a substantial sized seed. But when you mean underdeveloped, what do you mean? What are you looking for?

Devorah: I’m squeezing it, and the seed is coming out.

Nehemia: Right, so basically, it has a very high-water content. That would probably be the more technical description. And what happens with the seed as it ripens is that water content turns into starch, which eventually you end up with this big, fat, dry seed. And when it’s completely dry, then you can harvest it. When it’s just slightly, before being completely dry, it’s what we call “Aviv,” or “firm dough.” And when it’s that firm dough, then you parch it in fire, and you have what Leviticus 2:14 calls “Aviv parched in fire,” “Aviv kaluy ba’esh.”

So, what we’re looking at in this field is what I like to call… this isn’t a technical term that you’ll hear agronomists use, this is Nehemia’s term. Actually, somebody else came up with it, but I’ve used it as well, and it is the term we call the “tola’at” in Hebrew, the worm stage. So, this is not Aviv yet, and how do I know that? Take this home, parch it in fire, and because the water content is so high, there won’t be anything left. You won’t be able to eat it. And I’ve actually done that many, many, many, many times. I encourage people who come flying to Israel and they don’t really know what they’re doing, and they wander around these fields, and they see, “Oh, we’ve got green ears.” And in the King James Bible, “Aviv” is translated as “green ears.” And so, I would challenge them to take these “green ears” of the type that we’re looking at, take it back to your hotel room and parch it in fire, and see if there’s anything to eat, and you’ll find there’s nothing.

Yoel: It’s the truth. I’ve been doing this, like, six years, I think. This is the first time we actually walked into a field that’s actually planted, instead of something which was voluntary, which is the most of what we’ve usually found.

Nehemia: I’ve definitely seen other ones in the last six years, but…

Yoel: For me it’s the first time, and I actually started wondering about two years ago, wait, does that always have to be voluntary or not? Because most of the time for me it was voluntary, but really in truth, when you think about it, people go to the actual fields. I mean, today people don’t eat barley bread anymore, but it used to be that people did eat barley bread. And people did plant barley, it was acceptable. Today, people don’t eat that. It’s more for animals.

Nehemia: Yeah, here they’re almost certainly not growing this for bread, or for beer in this Bedouin field here near Rahat. As they’re Bedouin, they have lots of sheep and goats, and this is almost certainly for their sheep and goats.

Yoel: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting to see it, finally to see a field like this, because for me, it makes it a lot more real. Because voluntary is, okay, it’s voluntary. You have to think about the reality of back then, that people literally went out to their fields, and they saw barley in their own fields.

Nehemia: Look, I’ve heard people argue, and there’s something to this, that the voluntary barley that we find growing wild all over Israel, there’s an advantage in that, because we know there was no GMO in the voluntary barley. It’s just growing what’s grown for thousands of years. We don’t know what happened with this thing here. Meaning, it’s very unlikely, quite frankly, that the Bedouins are involved with GMO. But if we were to find Aviv in this field, I would also want to find it among the voluntary barley, quite frankly.

Yoel: Yeah, exactly. But still, we have to remember the fact that people did go out to their actual fields and see what they planted. The question I have is irrigation, because, on the other hand, if you have your own field, you’re probably putting some water somehow into it. So, doesn’t that affect anything?

Nehemia: In ancient times, they weren’t involved in irrigation in Israel. In Egypt, irrigation, it was all about that. You would take water from the Nile. You know, ‘de Nile is not just a river in Egypt, it’s the source of the irrigation. But here in a field like this, you can see there’s actually no spigots. And this is a concern that I do have, that we’ve been really careful that if we find a planted field… And we’ve found, actually, quite a few in the past that are six-row barley. That’s much more common. A two-row barley that’s planted is pretty rare, I’ll tell you that.

The six-row produces a lot more seed and that’s why people plant it. And we want to make sure it’s not irrigated, because the methods they’re using to irrigate these fields didn’t exist in ancient times. In other words, you’re using a motorized system to pump water from deep in the ground, or actually, often it’s to pump water all the way from the Sea of Galilee down here to the Negev. But here’s a great example, where the field doesn’t even have any spigots as a source of water, so it’s clearly not irrigated.

Devorah: Yes, so I wanted to ask a question that comes up a lot on The New Moon and Aviv Barley in Israel forum on the Facebook group.

Nehemia: Wait, so you guys have posted these questions on Devorah’s forum, The New Moon and Aviv Barley in Israel on Facebook. And now, we’re gonna actually hear from some of the people who have posted on the forum.

Devorah: So, one of the questions that comes up a lot is, how much Aviv barley does one need to find to declare the first month?

Nehemia: That’s a great question. Of course, people can go to nehemiaswall.com where I talk about all these issues. But no, it’s a great question. And this is important, because sometimes I’ll hear people say, “We’ve found Aviv,” and when you investigate, half the time they’re talking about wheat, because wheat is so much more prolific in modern Israel. And then, other times they’re saying, “Yeah, you’ve found a stalk of Aviv, or three stalks of Aviv.” And the definition in the Torah, we were actually just reading this in the car on the way down here. We were reading Leviticus 23, and it says, “When you come to the land…” I’m paraphrasing here, “When you come to the land which I give you and you harvest its harvest.” So, we’re dealing with the harvest, and so, that’s not cherry picking. And Hebrew, by the way is a very… You know, they say the Eskimos have like 100 words for snow. I don’t know if that’s true, but they have a lot of words for snow. Biblical Hebrew has many, many words for agricultural terms. And the word “harvest” is a very specific term which describes an action where you take a sickle, and you go through a field with a sickle. You grab it with your arm, and then you cut it with the sickle. And so, we’re dealing with harvesting with a sickle. That’s confirmed in Deuteronomy 16, where it says, “Mehakhel khermesh bakama,” “From when the sickle begins upon the standing grain.” So, you have to have enough that, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it could be harvested with a sickle. And that’s not cherry picking three stalks here, and two stalks there. You need a field that’s going to be harvestable during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Devorah: And so, what is your thought about six-row barley? Do you think that’s domesticated and they didn’t have that in ancient times? Should we be looking at that? Not looking at that?

Nehemia: Certainly, by definition, domesticated. The definition of “domesticated,” let’s talk about that just for a second. If you leave this two-row barley in the field and you don’t harvest it, let’s say, some of the stalks will fall to the ground and they’ll reseed themselves; that’s what’s called “volunteer barley.” If you’re dealing with wild barley, which is non-domesticated, it will vary. The head of the barley, when it’s fully ripe, will very easily, what’s called “shatter,” which means you have 25 seeds here on this two-row, something like that. And you’ll have 25 plants that grow out of it, because it’ll just shatter, it’ll fall apart. To break this domesticated barley, you’ve gotta do what they did in ancient times. They had an ox stomp on it. That’s the phrase in the Torah, “Lo takhsom shor bedisho,” “You shall not muzzle the ox as he…” “Ladush,” what’s that in modern English?

Devorah: Trample?

Nehemia: Trample, maybe. I don’t remember the English term.

Yoel: Ladush is basically the separation of the seeds from the…

Nehemia: Right, and that’s sort of a violent process. They could walk on it, or they could drag a thing over it, depending on how much you had and what your conditions were. And that would basically break it apart. And the point is, wild barley doesn’t need that. It breaks apart almost from just touching it. It’s very difficult to gather wild barley, whereas the domesticated barley is gonna be very sturdy. And it has to be, because if I come with my sickle and start cutting this, anything that breaks apart by itself, just by a process of selection… and it’s actually not natural selection, it’s artificial selection, anything that breaks apart won’t be planted next year. Yes, Keith.

Keith: I’m still stuck on the official issue. How many years have you been doing this?

Nehemia: Since around 1992. I’m bad at math. 24 years?

Keith: How many years have you been doing this?

Devorah: Over 20 years, at least.

Yoel: About six years.

Keith: This is my fourth time, and I gotta say, I’m in the car, and we’re talking about the Hebrew Bible, and we’re talking about the terms, and we’re talking about all these issues. I wanna know if I can put a stamp that says “official” on your chest. I mean, put it on the car or something; we’d be the “official Aviv barley people.”

Yoel: You want to brand it?

Keith: I want to brand this thing. I want to market this thing. No, it’s amazing. I’m just saying, there’s people around the world that are interested in this, and I do want to say though, it’s not official. In other words, the Israeli government hasn’t said this is the official…

Nehemia: Well, it wouldn’t be the Israeli government, it would be the High Priest of the Temple. And since we don’t have that, this is what we’re stuck with.

Keith: What I appreciate is we’re opening up… Look, people are excited, they’re beeping at us, in the fields.

Yoel: You didn’t see this.

Keith: I did see it.

Yoel: This truck driver is honking. I looked straight at him, and he puts a two thumbs-up.

Keith: He gave two thumbs up, he’s like, “Way to go out there, in the official Aviv barley search.”

Nehemia: All right, so we’ve got a lot more fields to see today. This is definitely not Aviv, this is in the worm stage.

Devorah: So the six row is not domesticated.

Nehemia: Oh, the six-row is absolutely domesticated. In other words, there’s a wild two-row and a domesticated two-row. Six-row is only domesticated. Your real question is, is six-row some kind of modern invention? And the answer to that is, no. And I have a really interesting story. And incidentally, here and there we’re finding some six-row in this field. And what probably happened is, when they came through here to plant, they had a big bag of seed. And in that seed, there was some six-row mixed in with the two-row, and there’s virtually no way to separate it.

Yoel: Would it be correct to say that the six-row was developed in ancient times, because they wanted to produce more grain?

Nehemia: Look, I’m not a scientist, but my guess would be that the six-row… I’ve gotta be really careful here… was a mutation that accidentally grew out of the two-row. I don’t know. Or maybe, God, during the six days of creation, created the six-row. I don’t know which one. But the point is, six-row existed in ancient times, and how do I know that?

So, a very interesting thing happened to me a few years back, where I ran into this woman who works for a seed bank in Israel. She heard what I was doing, and she said, “Oh, I have barley seeds that were picked in 1909.” Now, remember, 1909 was before what we call the “agricultural revolution” that took place in the 1950’s. No one was doing complex hybrids and stuff like that. That was just the indigenous barley that was grown. A man named Aaron Aaronsohn…1909 is when he went around, and he actually did this on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture.

One of the things he discovered, during this mission in 1909, is what we call “em hakhita,” which is the wild wheat. He discovered that up in Rosh Pina in the north. But he also walked around the barley fields of Israel and picked some barley. And when I was given these seeds… imagine what I’m being given here. I’m being given seeds picked in 1909, 100 years before they’re handed to me. And I’m assuming they’re two-row, because six-row, that’s a modern development. And I plant them, and it turns out it’s six-row. That was the standard barley that was grown in the hills of Judea, where he was wandering around.

Devorah: So, what do you mean when you say “domesticated?” It won’t grow by itself, naturally, next year?

Nehemia: It will, but not to the same extent. In other words, nobody harvests this field. An animal will be walking through this field, or a bird will land on the plant and the head will fall, and some of those seeds will reseed themselves. But not the way that the wild barley…I mean, it’s prolific, it’s in every hillside. Anywhere you don’t cut it, across the street from my apartment, you’re gonna see tons of this wild barley. It’s just very prolific because it shatters so easily, and that’s the definition of wild.

Devorah: You mentioned in this field it doesn’t look like it’s been irrigated at all. Is that something you look for when you look for Aviv barley?

Nehemia: Absolutely. We need to determine, if we find a planted field of barley, has it been irrigated? Because you can manipulate the timing of when it will ripen with the irrigation. Of course, a field like this, it’s all dependent on the rain, and that’s a God thing. He controls the rain.

Devorah: You don’t think that they had irrigation systems in biblical times?

Nehemia: They had irrigation systems for very limited purposes, for vegetables and things like that. We have that phrase in the Tanakh, but it would have been under very specific circumstances. It would have been in the terraces in the mountains, where they had a spring coming out of the side of the mountain. And they would have channeled it into a pool, and then used that to irrigate. Not for barley and wheat. Certainly, not for barley. Barley was considered kind of like a throwaway secondary crop. Let’s save that for later.

Keith: Where are we at in Israel?

Nehemia: We are in the northwestern Negev, just south of a town called “Rahat.” I believe it’s seven Bedouin towns. And that actually sounds counterintuitive. Bedouins live in tents, not towns, but the State of Israel actually built cities for them, seven cities, and this is one of them. If you came here before 1948, there would have been Bedouin planting crops here, but they would have been living in tents. And probably, what they would do with these crops is, they would wander around the country and come back here at a certain time of year. And they would either harvest it, or just have their animals graze through it. All right guys, we’re going to go to some more fields and report to you, and answer some more questions from Devorah’s group, which is called…

Devorah: “New Moon and Aviv Barley in Israel.”

Nehemia: And then, you’ll be able to hear this hopefully tonight, after the new moon sighting on Hebrew Voices. Shalom.

All right, we are now at Tel Gama in the northwestern Negev. This is actually the third time we’ve been here this season. We’ve found here Aviv in the past, and so, we’ve now taken two separate samplings. And as we’re recording this live from the fields, we’re going to check. You’re going to find out as soon as we do if it’s Aviv. We’re going to check other places in Tel Gama. It’s possible that it’s Aviv here and not in another place, or it’s possible this isn’t Aviv, and in another place, it is. Keith, would you hold the recorder?

Keith: Absolutely.

Nehemia: All right, so let’s start. We’re taking the stalk off… let’s put this down. All right, so we’re doing this here, doing the squeeze test. And no, not Aviv, it’s close, close but no cigar. That’s one. That one is Aviv. One yes, one no. Okay. You can feel the tension as this is happening. Oh, no.

Keith: I thought for sure, looking on the outside…

Nehemia: Yeah, from the outside it kind of looks it.

Keith: It looked like it was.

Nehemia: Two no’s, one yes. That’s a no. Are you counting?

Keith: Yeah.

Devorah: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s an obviously no. This one, my guess would be yes, before I even touch it. And the answer is, yes. Two yes’s. Two out of six. We might be off by one, guys. That’s a no, not even close.

Keith: That was quick.

Nehemia: Two out of seven… Two out of eight.

Keith: This one’s golden, I’m telling you.

Nehemia: You mean golden like the color?

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, it could be Aviv… And it’s not. And we’ll do one extra, just in case we counted wrong because that was 2 out of 10, so this might be 2 out of 10 or 11. All right.

Devorah: And the rest are in the worm stage?

Nehemia: The rest were in early or advanced worm stage, yeah. Like we say, we’re at Tel Gama. This is an ancient ruin of a city that certainly, during the Israelite period, would have been a pretty substantial city here in the northwestern Negev. It’s my understanding that at one time this was an Egyptian garrison during the Egyptian occupation. What have you got, Yoel?

Yoel: 2 out of 10.

Nehemia: So, Yoel has got 2 out of 10. I got 2 out of 10. We’ll do some more samplings up… This is at the bottom of the tel at Tel Gama. Tel is the ruin of an ancient city. We’re gonna go to the top of the tel and see what the barley tells.

Keith: That looks like a pretty tall tel.

Nehemia: That’s a big tel. Should we do some more questions before we hike and are out of breath? Because we’re gonna have to walk up this. What’ya got, Devorah?

Devorah: We saw that a lot of it was in worm stage. Is that soft dough or hard dough? We see these expressions and these terminologies being used.

Nehemia: Right, and I should explain that the people who started doing this in 1988 in Israel, a few years before I got involved, they kind of intuitively developed terms to describe what they were looking at. When they would squeeze it and the insides would pop out, they called that “worm stage.” Today, you would probably, if you were an agronomist, call that “soft dough.” And then, “hard dough” would be what the ancient farmers would harvest, although a modern farmer with a combine wants it much drier than hard dough. And what we’re looking for is firm dough, that when you squeeze it, the insides don’t pop out. Enough of it has formed and developed into a nice, starchy seed that you parch in fire and you’ve got something to eat.

Devorah: So, you’re saying there’s three different stages. There’s soft dough, there’s firm dough and there’s hard dough.

Nehemia: Right, exactly.

Devorah: And firm dough is “Aviv.”

Nehemia: That’s correct. And in Hebrew, one of the terms they used early on in 1988 and on is, they would call that “donag,” which is the Hebrew word for “wax.” It’s actually a term that agriculturalists in Israel in Hebrew do use.

Devorah: Another question I see often on the Facebook group is that, because we saw two stalks that were Aviv… Let’s say 20 percent of what we’re looking at is perhaps Aviv, is that going to then rot by the time we can actually start harvesting this field?

Nehemia: That’s a really good question. In other words, if 20 percent now is Aviv… and let’s say we don’t find Aviv today, meaning like 20 percent, that’s not enough to harvest with a sickle. Let’s say we therefore determine that this month, which is going to begin tonight with the sighting of the new moon, or actually, even if we don’t sight the new moon, by default, tonight will be new moon day after 30 days. So, then we’ll wait another month. We’ll have a 13th month, which by the way, at this point, we don’t know that will happen. But if it happens, then we’ll have a situation where, maybe two weeks from now, maybe three weeks from now, the barley will be fully harvest-ripe, but the wave sheaf offering won’t be for… I’m really bad at math. It won’t be for like another six or seven weeks.

In other words, we’ll have a 13th month. And it won’t be until what we might call the 14th month, which is really the first month, that during that is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Then you’ll bring the wave sheaf offering. So, let’s say that would be three weeks into the month… It might not be, but let’s say it’s three weeks into the month. We’ve got another two weeks of the 13th month. We’re talking about five or six weeks that the barley might be fully ripe.

And what you’re saying is, would we have harvested some of it? Certainly, the beginning part of the crop. Are we allowed to? And my answer is, show me where in the Tanakh it says we’re not allowed to. What it says is, you’re not allowed to eat it. And that actually indicates you have harvested it, and maybe even threshed it. Oh, that’s the word we were looking for, threshing. “Ladush, disha” is threshing. We called that stomping before, because we couldn’t remember the English word. You’ve threshed it and you’ve winnowed it. Threshing is where you have the animal stomp on it, or it drags a sledge that crushes it and harvests it. And the sledge has little pieces of flint in it, and the ox pulls it over and it breaks up the grain. And then, you take what’s called a “winnowing fork” and you throw up everything into the air and the air blows away the chaff, and you’re left only with the seed, which is what you want. You want the seed.

And, of course, then you’ve got still a little chaff, so then you have to sift it, get out the last amount of the chaff. And then you’d have just the seeds, which is what you want. And there’s this great image, and I think it’s Jeremiah, where he talks about this punishment from God, somebody being threshed with an iron threshing sledge. Instead of flint it’s actually iron. You’re really going to be crushed by this process.

So yes, what you’re asking is, are we allowed to harvest it? Because one of the thoughts is, if you don’t harvest it, it’ll rot in the field. Or more realistically, animals will come and eat it, or someone will steal it, or it’ll burn. That can easily happen here, if it’s really bone dry. And my answer is, of course they harvested it as soon as it was ready for harvest. They just didn’t eat it. And that’s the whole point of Leviticus 23 is not eating the new grain until the day of the wave sheaf offering. There’s obviously something to eat, right?

Yoel: So, one of the things actually I know about the whole harvest is that they don’t necessarily harvest and then just go home with it. I also know there are cases, actually I think they do this all the time, where you harvest and actually leave it in the field for a couple days to completely dry out.

Nehemia: Yeah, and that’s absolutely something they would do. They would have these piles, and you’d leave it for the wind to blow through it. And here’s one of the really important differences that people get confused about. And I’ll be honest, when I first started this, I didn’t know this. I had worked in a wheat field for a year on a kibbutz. And I saw the combines come, and how bone dry it was. And why is that? Because the way a modern combine works, it’s a combination; it harvests, it threshes, it winnows. It does all that in one machine, in a matter of seconds. And so, for that you need it to be approximately 12 to 13 percent moist, meaning… I’m bad at math, but what is that? 88 percent dry?

In ancient times, if they would try to harvest something like that, it would be too dry. And so, they would want it to have a little bit of moisture, a little bit of give, something probably around 25 percent, which is ancient. And these numbers… I don’t know that they’re right, guys. I know what it feels like and what it looks like. I don’t know that these numbers are accurate. But the ancient harvest, dry or ripe, is slightly more than the modern combine harvest dry. And that’s why they would leave it out in the field for the wind to blow through it and give it a little bit more dryness. By that time, it’s already been bound into this, what we call in Hebrew an “aluma.” An aluma is several omers. An omer is a sheaf, and again, I don’t know what the English words are, but an aluma is several omers, several sheaves that are then bound together. And then you put that in the field, and that gets some wind blown through it. And then you take that to the threshing floor.

Yoel: I actually grew up in the Galilee, and we had a lot of fields there that belong to the Arabs living in our area. And I remember seeing, because this wasn’t too far away from my actual house, and they would actually go out and they’ll harvest. And they didn’t have combines, these people. They, basically, went out with sickles and everything, and they’d just cut it up and they left it out for days to dry out. So, I’ve actually seen this with my own eyes, the older way, or the ancient way of actually doing it.

Nehemia: And that’s really important for us, because when we’re talking about something being “harvest ripe,” we mean ancient harvest ripe and not the modern combine harvest ripe. And the Aviv is slightly even more moist than the ancient harvest ripe.

Devorah: You mentioned that, in modern times, the combine harvests the whole field at once. But in ancient times, didn’t they not harvest the whole field at once?

Nehemia: I’m not an expert on combines, but if you’ve got a large enough field, you won’t harvest the whole thing at once, necessarily. You might find that the outside of the field is more ripe than the inside of the field. And certainly, in the ancient times when you had a significant field… and by “significant field” I don’t mean in American terms, I mean an acre or two. That was a lot of work. That could take weeks, depending on how many children you had as childhood labor.

Devorah: And it wouldn’t all develop at the same time.

Nehemia: It wouldn’t all be ripe, necessarily, at the same time, and it wouldn’t need to be. That’d be okay, because it could take you quite a bit of time to harvest the whole thing.

Devorah: Because the exterior gets more exposed to the sun, and so, the inner parts, do you think…

Nehemia: I don’t know if that’s the technical reason, so I’m not going to provide that reason. But for whatever reason, it tends to be that the outer part is more ripe than the inner part, although that might depend on the shape of the field. If you’ve got a hill in the middle and the outside is a low area, maybe that’ll affect it. There are all kinds of factors. Harvest is not a one-day event in ancient terms. Even in modern terms, but in ancient terminology for sure, harvest is a process that would take weeks.

Yoel: Look at the book of Ruth. She goes to the field every day. This is a process that goes over several weeks, very clearly.

Nehemia: Yeah, and they’ve got a lot of workers there. Of course, we don’t know how big their fields were. They weren’t as big as American fields, but you could still have a significant size for people working by hand.

Yoel: I have a friend who is a farmer in North Dakota, or something, and they work day and night. But we’re talking about fields which are so big, you’d drive for eight hours to get from one end to the other.

Nehemia: That’s an old joke. Can I tell my joke? That’s the joke where the Israeli farmer’s talking to the American farmer, and the American is bragging. He says, “My field is so big, I get in my tractor at the beginning of the day, and I drive for eight hours. And only at the end of the day do I reach the other end of the field.” And the Israeli said, “I used to have a tractor like that.” Keith liked my joke.

Yoel: The one thing my friend keeps on telling me is that they work for so many hours that they actually use massive floodlights to work during the night. But in ancient agriculture… it’s like in archaeology, you work when you have light. You have to rest in the middle of the day because it becomes too hot to work, and then you continue until it gets relatively dark. And then you go home, and you come back the next day.

Nehemia: You wouldn’t be working in the middle of the night, because that’s when the bandits would come and slaughter you, and you’d cut yourself or whatever, because lighting was very expensive with candles or oil, rather.

Okay, guys, let’s hike up the mountain and see, is it Aviv or is it not Aviv? We literally, at this point, don’t know the final answer. Although based on what we’ve seen, the answer is no. But I think by the end of Tel Gama we will know the answer. Of course, we might find it somewhere else, but from the preliminary searches that we did, this was the most advanced that we’ve found in the northern Negev, or actually anywhere, was here at Tel Gama. And so, my suspicion is that if we don’t find it here, then we’re going to have a 13th month. But hey, we’re not done here yet, and let’s continue.

All right, we’re at the top of the tel now and Keith is going to do a sampling that we just plucked. What have you got?

Keith: Well, let’s see. The first one…Oh, that’s not Aviv.

Nehemia: 0 for 1.

Keith: 0 for 1. 0 for 2. Just so folks know, if you’re imagining, here it’s a little video. I’m squeezing this, I’ve learned this from these experts. You squeeze it and then you get a chance to find out. It’s not quite as complicated as I thought it was before. Oh, there’s another one.

Nehemia: 0 for 3?

Keith: Yeah, 0 for 3. By my expert opinion, I’m going to say this one is…

Nehemia: Is Aviv.

Keith: Is Aviv, is what I’m going to say.

Nehemia: That would be my guess.

Keith: And I would say that is, yeah.

Nehemia: Definitely, for 4.

Keith: 1 for 4, okay. This is only 1 for 4. I’m going to need a second opinion on this one.

Nehemia: Let me grab some of that.

Yoel: I was able to squeeze that.

Nehemia: Liquid’s coming out. It’s close. It’s close, but not… So, what is that number?

Devorah: That was number 5.

Nehemia: So, one for five.

Keith: Yeah, and now we’ve got another one, again.

Nehemia: So, it’s 1 for 6.

Keith: 1 for 6.

Nehemia: We’re getting there.

Keith: Again, I’m going to go with this. This has got to be one more.

Nehemia: This, my guess, it would be Aviv, but we’ve got to check it. We might have 2 for 7.

Keith: I learned from Devorah… That seems a little wet. No, it looks good.

Nehemia: Let me have a piece. No, I have a different seed here. Yeah, from the middle.

Devorah: I don’t see it.

Yoel: Let me squeeze it.

Nehemia: Oh, yeah. It just popped right out.

Keith: Yeah, okay. 1 for 8. 1 for 8.

Nehemia: Is it 1 for 8?

Keith: We said it was just 1 for 7 before, now it’s 1 for 8. I’m keeping good time.

Nehemia: What you’re kind of doing is, doing it with your nails. The trick is to squeeze it, and that will give you an indication of how much liquid is in here. So, let’s take a whole one, from there. You take one. So, it popped.

Yoel: With the left hand, it popped.

Keith: 1 for 8.

Nehemia: 1 for 9, now.

Keith: 1 for 9.

Nehemia: And this is the last one at the moment. It’s still not… Interesting, so down in the bowl, it was more than here. Yeah, it’s not even. Yeah, we’ll take more samplings. We’ll check more. But I’m surprised because, if we would have looked at this from outside, I would have said, “There’s definitely Aviv there.” And it’s just a stalk here, and they’re 20 percent. So, I’m kind of surprised.

Keith: Can I just say one thing that you did at the bottom of the hill? You stopped and you and Devorah said, “We should have this prayer on recording.” But the general sense of the prayer was that you said, “It is not our will to proclaim. We want to find out what it is and proclaim God’s time and not proclaim our time.”

Nehemia: Amen. Without agenda, without theology.

Keith: Without any ideas, and no theology. Let’s just go and see what it is, and then make the proclamation. So, I just want to say, I feel really blessed by this, because that’s exactly what we’re doing. We don’t know.

Nehemia: And I’ve got to say, I’ve been saying this now for a few days, I’m surprised. Because, if I would look at this from the outside, I would say it was definitely Aviv here. We’re done, and we can go home. And we just did the sampling, and it’s 20 percent. And I’m surprised, but this is what God’s will is. It isn’t what my will is, it isn’t what anybody else’s will is, although we’re still not done. We’re still trying to determine God’s will. But so far, we’re getting the answer that it’s not Aviv. Which is a little bit surprising to me, but there you have it.

Yoel: One thing I want to say about this, seeing it from the outside, is the fact that… for example, we have all these cases where people say, “Oh look, I saw barley,” and really the discovery is wheat. For example, back in, I think 2014, you weren’t here, and I was dealing with some of these discussions. People said, “Oh, we found barley,” so people were putting up pictures. And I said, “That’s not barley, that’s wheat.”

Nehemia: I’ve seen pictures like that this year.

Yoel: Yeah. No, that was specifically for me that year, because I was here answering people.

Nehemia: And then they may find barley. And it’s interesting, because what we’ve found just now at this tel is more advanced than any of the pictures I’ve seen of people who are proclaiming it. Maybe they have a different definition of what Aviv is. And again, my challenge to them would be, take that home and parch it in fire and show me what’s left.

Yoel: Exactly. Let me point out one thing. The Hebrew word for “se’ora…”

Nehemia: Yeah, se’ora is barley.

Yoel: “Se’ora” is barley, while “khita” is wheat. Se’ora comes from the word “se’ar,” because the whole idea is that barley actually has very long hairs. I’m not sure what the technical name is.

Nehemia: “Se’ar” is the Hebrew word for it. I think those are called “awns.”

Yoel: Okay, we’ll go with your word, “awns.” Basically, very long ones.

Nehemia: Although Ruth Anne can correct me when she hears this. We know the Hebrew word, “se’arot.”

Yoel: When you see it from a distance, you don’t really know. You have to actually walk up to it and look. How long are the hairs in comparison to the wheat itself?

Nehemia: And interestingly, not far from here, I don’t know if we’ll have time to get to it, there’s a place called “Khurvat Se’ora,” the “Ruin of Wheat.”

Yoel: No, “Ruin of Barley.”

Nehemia: Sorry, “Ruin of Barley,” that’s what I meant to say. “Khurvat Se’ora,” the “Barley Ruin,” or I wanna call it “Old Barley Town.” All right, we’ll go there if we have time, and we don’t get shot at.

Yoel: Ye Old Barley Ruin.

Nehemia: It’s actually close to the border of Gaza, so we might not go there. But anyway, let’s keep looking. We’re not done yet.

Well, we’ve come down from the top of the tel. And we looked in the bowl, and we looked up on the top and on the slope. We looked everywhere, trying to scrape together Aviv barley, and the most that we could get was really between 10 and 30 percent in the samplings that we took. Here we are, guys. What do you think?

Yoel: I don’t think there’s any Aviv this year. This is very surprising to me, because it’s been relatively warm the past couple of weeks, and I expected it to actually ripen and become very close to Aviv, or actually Aviv, and not even close. I’m actually very surprised.

Nehemia: I want to be careful to say there’s no Aviv, because we have found stalks here and there and you could cherry pick and come up with an omer of Aviv barley. But it wouldn’t be something that you harvested with a sickle, and that’s really interesting. I think there’s a spiritual lesson there, about how people cherry pick truth instead of getting it in the whole context. What I’m all about is language, history, and context. Amen, Keith Johnson?

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: And really, if we look in the context, it’s not Aviv. What have you got to say, Devorah?

Devorah: Yeah, I’m very surprised that we haven’t found Aviv, just because the barley looks very light in color. But it has been cooler lately. It’s started to get warmer in Israel, but this morning we were driving up, there was a lot of clouds. We thought it was going to rain.

Nehemia: Yeah, it was foggy.

Devorah: It got a little bit nicer out, but it’s not as warm here in the south as it has been in previous years when we’ve looked for Aviv and found it, when it’s been really boiling hot. It’s not as hot here. We got out of the car when we arrived here, I was saying to Yoel, “It’s cold. I’m chilly.”

Yoel: When I say “warm” my meaning is here, that in comparison to other years, where you have rain, and so on… when Israelis say “Kham hashana,” basically, what we mean by this is that there hasn’t been much rain. During this winter, I walk around with a sweater and everything. I’ve actually walked out of the house more times with a short-sleeved shirt than I’ve done in a very, very long time this year.

Nehemia: So, based on the amount of heat, at least where you live in the north, you’re surprised. And the south tends to be hotter. You’re surprised that it’s not Aviv. And I’ll tell you again, for me, the biggest surprise is, we’re March 10th, 2016, and in previous years we’ve found Aviv barley on March 10th. But in this year, we haven’t. Meaning, we’ve found individual stalks where you could cherry pick it, but you wouldn’t be able to come with your arm and grab an omer-full and cut it with a sickle. It’s just not here. It hasn’t happened yet.

Devorah: It also rained a lot this past winter, which obviously has delayed the ripening of the barley.

Nehemia: Well, there’s definitely a lot of factors involved. And I want to be really careful, because what the weight of the different factors is, I don’t know that anybody has done a scientific study to determine that in this particular environment. But the bottom line is, we went around Tel Gama, and we’ve actually gone all over the northern Negev and the Jordan Valley. And the most advanced thing we’ve found anywhere was here in Tel Gama, and the most we could get out of here was 30 percent. It’s just not Aviv yet.

Yoel: Just to clarify, what Devorah actually says is very true, because I actually live up in the north and this year in the north we had less rain. While here in the south it rained like crazy, like you wouldn’t believe. And I kind of agree with Devorah about this. It rained more here, and it actually might affect… but again, there’s a whole thing we have to understand here about how it affects, and so on. There’s no point in going into all those details.

Nehemia: And my understanding from the rain is that… what happens is, the plant gets all this water and says, “Okay, I’m going to make a bigger stalk. I’m going to make bigger seeds. But those seeds, I won’t let them ripen as long as I can keep getting water.” I don’t know that it actually has a thought process, but that’s me anthropomorphizing the barley. But that’s basically how it functions, from my understanding. And so, yeah, if you get a bunch of rain here, it’ll delay the process. And Keith, what have you got for us?

Keith: Well, I’m not a Prophet, nor a son of a Prophet, but I can guarantee you what’s going to happen. There’s going to be somebody that’s going to say, “But it was just those guys who have an agenda. They have an agenda regarding the calendar. They went out and said it’s not Aviv, because they want to make sure that it’s connected…” You know, there’s going to be some agenda that comes up, and I just have to say something. I have to give a short testimony, if I can take just a few seconds.

Nehemia: What are you doing here, Keith? Didn’t you just have a tour with some Namibians, and you flew back to the United States? What on earth are you doing here in Israel?

Keith: I was minding my own business and, you know, I was here, and I really did think it was spring-ish, very beautiful. And I thought, “Wow, they’re going to find Aviv, it’s easy. It’s going to be slam dunk. I’m going to get a phone call from Yoel, and I’m going to hear from Nehemia.” Sunday morning, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and something says, “How do you know what time it is?”

Nehemia: So, you’re in Charlotte, and you wake up at 4:30 in the morning?

Keith: 4:30 in the morning. “Jet lag,” I’m thinking. “I’m going to go back to sleep.” Long story short, I sent a test. I said, “Okay, I’m going to ask Nehemia a question. Nehemia, do you have room on your couch?” And if he comes back and says, “Yes,” then I’m going to get on an airplane and go see for myself. And you didn’t only say you had room on the couch, you said you had room in the car, and you welcomed and invited me to come. And the next thing I knew, you said I could even be a driver.

Nehemia: And I’ve made him drive all day.

Keith: I want to rest now. But I want to say something.

Nehemia: Can I just say, if you would have said, “Do you have a bed for me?” The answer would have been, “No.” Because I already gave that bed to Yoel. And Keith is literally sleeping on Georgia, of blessed memory’s couch.

Keith: Let me just tell you something very quickly. The schedule is five o’clock in the morning wake up. From five o’clock Nehemia makes eggs, very good eggs.

Nehemia: Amen.

Keith: We eat the eggs…

Yoel: Amen to that.

Keith: …we get together, we go out and travel all day, all day, all day, going in field after field, after field, after field. And all I want to say is this. For those people who say there’s some agenda with this group, I want to make a real quick announcement. I’m not a Karaite. I’m not Jewish. I’m a United Methodist Pastor who simply wants to know God’s time. That’s what I want to know. And the best way I thought I could know that is to be here with you guys.

And I wanted to be with people who had the information. I don’t want to say anything negative about anyone else, but I have seen picture after picture of people who say, “It’s Aviv,” and “not Aviv.” And they’re looking at wheat fields, and they’re making all sorts of statements about things that have nothing to do with scripture. And what we’ve done in this car, constantly, Nehemia’s opening up the text and we’re discussing the text in Hebrew. Then we’re stopping in the land. We’re getting out of the car and we’re checking.

And all I want to say is, for those who have that agenda that say there’s some other agenda other than us knowing the time, I can say without a shadow of a doubt from being here, I have verified that the process is genuine and it’s authentic. And you know what? I want to tell you guys, thanks for letting me come, because I’m not a part of any group.

Nehemia: No, you’re a Methodist. It’s a group.

Keith: I’m here by invitation. You know what? We’ve found out what time it is according to scripture. And that’s what I’m excited about.

Nehemia: Halleluyah.

Yoel: So, this was very exciting. I come from an Orthodox background, and I get excited every year that we do this. Every year because, in truth, this is the real calendar. I can’t lie about that.

Nehemia: And I want to say where my struggle has been this year.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: It’s 2016. The last time the rabbinical calendar was wrong, when it came to the Aviv was 2005. And I look at this and I say, “How can they have such a winning streak when they’re just guessing?” I don’t understand it. And I really don’t understand it, and that’s why I was really shocked March 10th, so late in the solar cycle. And ultimately, the Aviv is a solar indicator from Genesis 1:14. It’s so late in the solar cycle, and we’re not finding fields of Aviv barley, which means we’re going to have a 13th month, and the Rabbis got it right for the 11th year in a row.

Keith: How did the Rabbis get it right? What do you mean, for the people who don’t understand what you’re talking about?

Nehemia: So, I mean in 359 AD, Hillel the Second came along, according to tradition… and I say that because it might have been later. But according to tradition he came along at 359 AD. And he adopted the Greek Metonic cycle, which was something the Greek calendar had used, which was taking every 19 years, assigning arbitrarily which of the 7 years during the 19-year cycle would be leap years, would have a 13th month. And he chose the 3rd, the 6th, the 8th, the 11th, the 14th, the 17th and the 19th years. And, of course, why do I say it’s arbitrary? Because it could have been the 3rd, the 6th, and the 9th. The years he chose were arbitrary. And you’re telling me, those arbitrary choices over the last 11 years were right. I don’t understand it.

Keith: I don’t think it’s arbitrary.

Nehemia: I don’t have an answer.

Keith: I think the Father in Heaven is doing something. I just happen to think this. I think it’s wonderful that it’s coordinated. For those that are wondering, when is this going to be now? In other words, we found out that there’s a 13th month. So, when is it going to be? People are going to say, “Look, I can actually go online and find out when it’s going to be.” Can they actually know exactly when it’s going to be without sighting the moon?

Nehemia: Say that again. I wasn’t listening.

Keith: He’s looking at his phone.

Nehemia: No, I want to share something.

Keith: You find out that the barley is Aviv, and what’s the next thing we do?

Nehemia: Now we go look for the new moon, which hopefully we’ll see tonight. And even if we don’t, by default, it was… Oh, that’s a crop duster. I think they’re coming for Keith. Every time I see one of those, I think of my good friends, Bernie and Ruth Anne.

Devorah: They used to come on Aviv trips.

Nehemia: Yeah, they’ve been on an Aviv search, and Ruth Anne has taught us so much on the Aviv trips. It was from God that she came on these Aviv trips. I’m very thankful to her. She really supplemented the information that we had and helped us, really more than anything, express it in kind of scientific terms. We were talking about “worm stage.” I still use those terms, but she helped us use terms like “firm dough” and things like that. Which the outside world could understand a little bit better if they know what they’re talking about.

So yeah, we’re not done. In other words, now that we know there’s no Aviv, the next new moon, which is not that long from now, is going to be the new moon of the beginning of the 13th month.

Keith: And then what do we do?

Nehemia: Which will then mean that the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Khag HaMatzot, Pesach, will be, not this month in two weeks, but it’ll be in approximately six weeks. Meaning after the next new moon after that.

Devorah: I know everyone’s going to ask, are we going to go out again? And when are we going to go out again?

Nehemia: Yeah, and we’ll go out again, but it’s a no-brainer at this point. Meaning, by next month, maybe even in a couple of weeks, we’ll have Aviv. But going into the month, we can’t say this is the month of Aviv, meaning we don’t have it. We don’t have it at the beginning…

Keith: Here’s what they want to know; when is Passover? This is what they want to know.

Nehemia: Basically, Passover is in April, what is it, like April 23rd or something. I don’t remember the exact date, it’s something like that. Meaning, it’s not this new moon, it’s the following new moon. And if I’m not mistaken, this year, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Chag HaMatzot, Passover is going to be the same date as the rabbinical calendar. How is this possible?

Devorah: Didn’t it happen last year? Was it last year it happened?

Nehemia: It happened one year.

Yoel: It happened a couple of years ago. I remember, I did my Seder, and then I came to your house to sit with you.

Nehemia: No, this is very inconvenient, because I want to have the Karaite seder with my Karaite friends, and my mother wants me to come to her seder. And now they’re on the same night. Very inconvenient.

Yoel: I think it’s great. I can do my seder…

Nehemia: I want to honor my mother. But I also want to honor the Creator of the Universe, and now I’ve got to make a choice.

Keith: But they’re on the same time.

Nehemia: Right, so I can’t do them together.

Keith: I think it’s amazing.

Nehemia: Anyway, it’ll work out. So, I want to share something, guys. We looked for the Aviv, and it wasn’t the time of the Aviv. And I really want to say, in all humility, that this isn’t our determination. What we’re figuring out is, what times has the Creator of the Universe appointed? And I really do say that in all humility.

And I really ask that, when we’re dealing with other people who have different understandings… and, you know, those guys are wrong. But when we’re dealing with them, that we approach them with humility and with compassion, and that we not judge them. Look, they have their relationship with the Creator of the Universe and it’s between them and Him. And we have to focus on our side of the street, which is our walk with Yehovah.

It’s interesting. We look at these barley stalks and, on the outside, they look completely ripe. And we look on the inside and they’re not. And maybe there’s some deeper spiritual significance of that that we needed to see this year, that somebody on the outside… you never know what’s going on in the inside, and the Creator knows. He’s the one who examines the heart. And it’s interesting, in Hebrew it says, “He examines the kidneys.”

Yoel: “Bokhen klayot valev.”

Nehemia: Exactly.

Yoel: Wait, it also says the heart, “Bokhen klayot valev.”

Nehemia: No, but the kidneys, He looks in the kidneys. But no, the point is that for the Creator of the Universe, He’s looking at our guts that are inside. He knows what’s inside the barley of our souls, and from the outside we can’t tell from that superficial stuff. There are some deep spiritual messages we’ve gotten this year. You know, cherry picking truth, where you can cherry pick the barley, and cherry picking the Aviv, but it’s not getting the context, looking at the outside thing. And I really, in humility, want to say that I looked as hard as I could, and you guys who were here with me will testify. I was looking, desperate to find that there is Aviv.

Yoel: Obsessively.

Nehemia: This is what I do. I’m Asperger’s. I’m obsessive. Pull over, pull over, pull over.

Yoel: This was completely insane.

Nehemia: This is my Asperger’s obsessiveness, trying to find that it is Aviv. And the answer is that it’s not. I want to share a passage here. You know, we’re gathered here four together, and we are trying to determine God’s times, based on His Torah, and honoring His tetragrammaton. That’s Keith’s line, but I just took it.

There’s this passage I’m going to read from the Mishnah. I hope nobody’s offended. By the way, I brought this passage, this discussion, in “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence,” my book. And I’m just mentioning that, because this is something I came up with at the moment, but I really think it’s relevant here. And I love that this Mishnah, it’s Pirkey Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, chapter 3 Mishnah 2, section 2. It’s quoting Rabbi Hanina Ben Teradion. And I love this, because he was put to death by the Romans for speaking the Name of Yehovah the way it’s written. He was burned at the stake, we’re told, for doing that. And here’s what he says.

And, in a way, I don’t really care what Rabbi Hanina said, but he’s explaining what Malachi was talking about, Malachi 3:16. “Rabbi Hanina Ben Tradion omer,” he says, “Shnayim sheyoshvim veyesh beynehem divrey Torah,” “two who sit together and they have between them words of Torah,” “shekhina shruya beynehem.” Shekhina is an interesting word. “The dwelling of Yehovah’s spirit is…”

Keith: That’s the Shekina glory.

Nehemia: Keith calls it “Shekina glory.” We call it the “Shekhina,” or “Ruakh Hakodesh.”

Yoel: No, I don’t think Ruakh Hakodesh is Shekhina.

Nehemia: Let’s not have a theological discussion about that. But Shekhina is basically, in the simplest sense without getting into theology… And there is a debate between Nachmanides and Maimonides about what the Shekhina is, whether it’s Yehovah, or an angel of Yehovah. Whatever, we’re not going to get into that. The point is, it’s a somehow some tangible sense of Yehovah’s presence. That’s what Shekhina is. I think that’s the broadest definition without getting into theology.

Now, where does he get such a crazy concept? He says, “As it is said,” and he quotes Malachi, “az nidberu yir’ey Yehovah eesh el re’ehu,” “then those who fear Yehovah spoke one to another,” “vayakshev Yehovah,” “and Yehovah heard.” “Vayishma,” “And He listened,” “Vayikatev sefer zikaron lefanav leyere’ey Yehovah ulkhoshvey shemo.” “And there was written in the book of remembrance before Him for those who fear Yehovah and think upon His name.” And here we are, four people who are speaking words of Torah and speaking about the Name of our Creator of the Universe, Yehovah, and trying to determine His times, based on His Torah, in the glory of His tetragrammaton, His name, Yehovah.

I pray and hope that Yehovah’s Shekhina is here among us and guiding us in this, because we can’t rely on our wisdom. You know, it talks in the Proverbs about relying upon your own wisdom. Yehovah, I don’t want to rely upon my own wisdom. I need You to guide me. I need You to guide my steps and help me know where to go. Because if I misstep here, if I put my foot in the wrong place, I fall down. I go rolling down this tel. I almost died earlier, guys, because I wanted to go in a certain place and they’re like, “You’re going to roll down and die, and we’re not coming to get you.”

And Yehovah… I truly do believe He’s guided us through this process, and I pray that He continues to guide us and give us the wisdom that we need. And I’m struggling that we didn’t find Aviv, but I’m also so happy. And the reason I’m so happy is because I predicted we would find Aviv and I was wrong, and now I have the truth. And there’s nothing more sweet and glorious to me than the truth of Yehovah. Can I get an Amen?

Crowd: Amen.

Nehemia: All right, guys. Shalom. And I can’t say to you, “Happy new year.” We’ve got another month to go.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: So, Khodesh mevorakh, have a blessed 13th month. Shalom.

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