The Farmer Who Poisoned His Own Fields — Doron and Ilana Toweg, Moshav Azaria

Doron Toweg was Strauss's exclusive eggplant supplier. His face was in their TV ads. His farm ran like clockwork — long days, before dawn until after dark, the way it had been for three generations of his family.

Then his wife Ilana said: let's keep Shmitah.

Doron was not easily convinced. The farm was his life. The idea of no income for an entire year was terrifying. But then, visiting a neighboring farm, he heard a yeshiva student say something that stopped him: "For two thousand years, Jews sat in exile waiting to keep this mitzvah. And now — we have the opportunity to actually do it."

He came home and made the call.

In 2014, Doron Toweg injected poison into his own irrigation lines and destroyed his entire eggplant crop. Strauss cut ties with him immediately. His other customers and creditors were not pleased.

And then something unexpected happened. Word spread. People began arriving at the farm — first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Within the first two weeks of that Shmitah year, over 3,000 people had come to Moshav Azaria seeking a bracha from a farmer keeping Shmitah. Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt said "I had instructed anyone in need of a yeshua to go to a Shmitah farmer " because there is, in his words, "no one more faithful."

‍Every Friday night after candle lighting, Ilana Toweg spent hours reading through the handwritten notes and requests that had been left at their door. A child. A shidduch. A refuah. She davened for them all.

The farmer who gave up everything to trust H'shem became the address that thousands turned to — because that kind of emunah is rare, and people recognize it when they see it.