Jewish Seed Project
The Jewish Seed Project is a collective of Jewish growers, seed keepers, and storytellers asking “What is a Jewish Seed?”
This project was instigated by sephardi Jewish seed activist and founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Company, K Greene. After years of supporting other peoples in their cultural seed work, K turned some of their attention towards the question of Jewish seeds.
While we plan to expand to other culturally relevant seeds, the Jewish Seed Project is currently focused on Quishuim a variety of Cucumis melo that is mentioned in the Torah. Each year, research growers, academics, and organizers work together to cultivate and connect with this biblical seed variety.
The Jewish Seed Project is supported by the Hudson Valley Farm Hub.
We recognize that — just as we keep seeds — they, too, keep us. Seeds grow with us, care for us, and sustain us with nourishment, stories, memories, and beauty. We approach the seeds with intention and the desire to share in their sustained life.
In keeping seeds, we honor their history, passed down from generation to generation, connecting us to those who have kept seeds before us. In thinking of ourselves as future ancestors, we consider what these seeds will share in the future by observing and learning from what they share with us today.
We are growing for future generations while enjoying the fruits of the present and seeking to understand the past.
Where do our lives as Jewish farmers and gardeners intersect with the stories of seeds, both ancient and modern?
How can we find, grow, and share culturally resonant seed across our community?
Join us for an adventure in seed keeping, seed sharing models, and Cucumis melo, and contribute to the creation of JFN's seed project!
Learn more about the Qishu'im
"The three cucurbits mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the qishu’im, the avattihim, and the paqqu’ot sade, as well as several other cucurbits, are the subject of rabbinical commentary in the Mishna and the Tosefta. The citations from the Mishna and Tosefta below will be given according to the name of the massekhet (tractate), chapter number and statement number. Most significant is that the first four cucurbits described below were mentioned along with edible fruits of various other plant families on the subject
of tithing (Mishna, Ma’asrot 1:4) and therefore must have been food sources growing in Israel in the 2nd century.
The qishu’im were known to the Children of Israel from Egypt, who longed for them during their wanderings in the Sinai Desert (Numbers 11:5). No later than by the time of the first temple in Jerusalem, their cultivation in Judea
1446 Janick et al. — The Cucurbits of Mediterranean Antiquity must have been common, as there was a special word in Hebrew for a field of them, miqsha (Isaiah 1:8). Moreover, these qishu’im or qishu’in, or in the singular form, qishut, are the most frequently mentioned cucurbit in the Jewish commentary, reflecting their relative importance and widespread culture in the Israel of Roman times
Vesling (1640), in his supplement to Alpini’s De plantis Aegypti liber, presented an illustration, labelled Chate, which was clearly based on a plant of Cucumis melo having rather elongate, nearly rhomboidal fruits. The epithet ‘chate’, a blundered rendition of qatta (Loret, 1892), is used at present to designate a cultivar-group of C. melo that is distinguished by fruits having a length-to-broadest-width ratio of around 2 : 1 or 3 : 1 and that are not sweet, but are used when young, like cucumbers, raw, pickled or cooked (Pitrat et al., 2000). Feliks (1967, 1968) and Zohary (1982) concurred that the qishu’im of Biblical times were chate melons."