Seed-saving, once an essential skill passed down from generation to generation, is almost a lost art. By growing and saving seeds, each of us become a link to restore food and farming traditions in our community.

Seder Zaraim

Holy Chametz

Five Ancient Grains of Eretz Israel

HOURANI & JALJULI-
Discovered at Masada, stored 2000 years ago by King Herod, baked in Beit HaMikdash sacramental breads

Macha

1. Ohalo Wild Grains - c 23,000 years ago
2. Natufian Bread Mix - 14,400 BCE
3. Holy Chametz - Einkorn, Emmer, Durum, Barley
4. Beit HaMikdash & Masadah - Jaljuli & Hourani
5. Sephardic Gold Age of Spain
5. Shtel - Landrace Polish Rye Bread
6. Poltavka - Jewish Farmers in Ukraine
7. Caucasus Mountain Ancient Grains

Plant a Seed Sanctuary

Seed-Shul

Youth Saving Guidebook

Seed-saving, once an essential skill passed down from generation to generation, is almost a lost art. By growing and saving seeds, each of us become a link to restore food and farming traditions in our community.

Palestinian-Israeli Cooperation

to Restore Ancient Grains

Poltavka
Collected in 1915 from

Jewish Farmers in Ukraine

Poltavka is a voluptuous landrace wheat collected in 1915 from Novo-Poltavka Jewish village in the Ukrainian steppes. Poltavka was the site of an ancient Neolithic farmers where grain goddess figurines were found in grain bins and bread ovens circa 3000 BCE.

The first Jewish farming settlements in Russia were originally from Lithuania where my great-grandfather was born. During 1830s Tsar Nicholas forcibly relocated Jews to western Russia to farm.

Novo-Poltavka grew to two thousand Jewish farmers who earned great respect for their high culture of farming and highly literate farmers. In 1902 Novo-Poltavskaya Jewish Agricultural School was founded. Only 5% of the Jews of my great grandfather’s village survived the Holocaust, and less from Novo-Poltavka. These seeds are living memories, bearing their legacy to our hands and hearts.