What is a Jewish seed? This is the question that sparked the Jewish Seed Project, a project of the Jewish Farmer Network through which a collaborative of Jewish growers, seed keepers, organizers, storytellers, and researchers are stewarding culturally relevant seeds.
Jews are a diasporized people. Our intersecting histories of displacement, legal restriction, genocide and forced migration have made it hard to develop long-term intergenerational relationships with land and the practice of seed keeping.
One of us (Masha) has Ashkenazi ancestors who lived in the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement in modern day Belarus and Ukraine. They fled their shtetl (Jewish village) before it was bombed by the Nazis and later settled in Moscow, from which my family moved in the 1990’s to New Jersey in search of a better life.
The other (Spencer) has ancestors from the Pale of Settlement and Austria-Hungary (Vilna [Lithuania], Ukraine, Galicia [Poland], and Carpathian Ruthenia [Slovakia]) who fled during the pre- and inter- World War periods. Eventually, they settled in cities on the East Coast with populations that felt like home.
While these are pretty typical stories of Ashkenazi Jewry, the branches of the Jewish diaspora are seemingly endless, and every family’s story is different. Our collective ancestors have moved throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, South America, and beyond.
Even as our relationship with land has been disjointed, the land-based foundations of Judaism are still present. Our prayers, rituals, and cycles of time are rooted in the flow of the agricultural movements through the seasons. Even if tangible seeds were not handed down from generation to generation, this connection to land - even when reduced to mere metaphor - has sustained us. At times this has manifested through connecting to land and the local environment, other times it has manifested through storytelling and dreams. The journey of the Jewish Seed Project helps us remember lands that our ancestors have lived on.
We began our inquiry with the hairy qishut, a melon eaten at a young stage like a cucumber. This seed was selected for its connection to biblical times and power to unite all branches of the diaspora together. In the story of exodus, as the Jews were wandering the desert, they yearned for the foods of their past. In the parched, dry desert, they cried out “We remember the foods we used to eat in Mitzrayim (Egypt), the fish and the “Quishua” and melons and garlic and leeks. And now, our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all!” (Numbers 11:5) Later on, botanical and linguistic texts have linked the biblical word qishuim (plural of quishua) to the ‘chate’ group of melons, sp. Cucumis melo (In modern Hebrew, qishuim means zucchini) (see Janick et al. 2007). It is also mentioned various times in the Talmud, ancient teachings and commentaries that serve as the basis of Rabbinic Judaism (see a Talmudic tale). Today, the various descendants and diverse varieties of this melon species are grown and stewarded in the Caucasus, Mediterranean, Middle East, and Europe, and are called by many names including Armenian cucumber, fakkous, adzhura, and carosello, among others
According to our ancestral texts, this was a seed that our ancestors were forced to leave behind. We are estranged relatives, meeting each other again.
This project began in 5781/2021 at the instigation of K Greene, prominent Jewish seed keeper and cofounder of the Hudson Valley Seed Company. We spent that first season getting to know each other and the seed while six varieties were grown out by growers across North America/Turtle Island. We looked for phenotypic traits that closely resemble the descriptions of qishuim provided by botanical texts – a hairy, oblong fruit. We recorded how the plants and fruit looked, smelled, tasted, and felt, as well as our reflections on the experience of growing this ancestral seed.
In the second growing season, 5782/2022, we defined two branches of growing projects: single variety trials and diaspora gardens. For the single variety trials, growers isolated, tended, and saved seeds from one variety in order to increase our seed stock. For the diaspora gardens, growers tended a mix of varieties to cross-pollinate. Just as modern Jews are reconnecting across different branches of diasporic history, so too are the seeds reconnecting after milenia apart.
In our third and fourth growing seasons, 5783/2023 and 5784/2024, we focused more attention on diaspora gardens and intentionally mixing seeds from past years’ grow-outs, previous seed exchanges, and the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN). We also developed curriculum for the various educators who grow with us, from Jewish summer camps to high schools.
Our collective developed a guiding values document, which affirms that we approach the seeds with intention and the desire to share in their sustained life. These values guide how we choose, distribute, share, and care for seeds, as well as how we build relationships with other stewards and tell stories. We do not claim ownership or exclusive access to these seeds and understand that we are just one of many groups who have spiritually, historically, culturally, and geographically significant relationships with them. As such, we aspire to share these seeds with others who are connected to honor their full stories. We recognize that we grow these seeds on colonized land in North America/Turtle Island and honor the many Native peoples who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.
Defining our values shifted the way we thought about our work. At the onset of this project, we were focused on selecting seeds from plants that most resembled the descriptions we have of the ancient fruit. We have since shifted towards cultivating a variety that both honors the past and is adapted to our present. We select specific varieties to cross-breed in the diaspora gardens, in order to eventually develop stable varieties that preserve elements like hairiness and sweetness, while being adapted to local growing conditions. This project is carrying our history into the present, and from it creating something for the future.
Seeds are a throughway, weaving together people and stories from across time. Seeds help us think of ourselves as future ancestors, leaving a legacy that descendents can mold to their needs and contexts. Only time will tell how we – and our seeds – will evolve.
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