It’s a far cry from the bustle that unfolded on a daily basis here prior to Rosh Hashanah holidays of years past, when the chatter of Thai farmhands competed with the rumble of idling tractors — the kind Toweg drove in TV ads for Strauss, one of Israel’s largest food distributors, back when he was the company’s exclusive eggplant supplier.
That came to an end in 2014, when Toweg deliberately destroyed his entire eggplant crop. He injected their irrigation lines with poison in a dramatic effort to comply with a biblical commandment requiring Jews to let their fields lie fallow every seven years.
“Strauss thought I’d fallen on my head,” Toweg said about the distribution company after he announced his plans to comply fastidiously with the rules relating to the commandment to give fields a sabbatical, called shmita.
The company severed ties with him. His other customers, contractors and creditors were far from pleased, as well. READ MORE
