Jacob Sheep – The story of the return of the Jewish people’s sheep

by Gil Lewinsky

Joined May 2019
Published Books 15

This is a unique story, one that should be told. A story that is while it is about two human beings, is also about a flock of animals. It is the animals nevertheless that the story is centered around.

These are not any ordinary animals. Their first mention is in the Book of Genesis in section 30 where the patriarch Jacob created the breed as a means of changing his wage contract with his uncle Laban. He agreed to work for his uncle for a wage of spotted and speckled sheep. Of course back then most sheep were one color or another, few were speckled or spotted. However as tradition has it, flocks of angels themselves intervened to change the mating patterns of the sheep. Jacob, in what is perhaps the world’s oldest recorded example of selective breeding, peeled white marks and placed them on where the sheep went to drink. The sheep became stimulated and mated always creating spotted and speckled offspring.

Over time the majority of Laban’s flock became his, he left back to Canaan with his sheep but the sheep. The flock followed Jacob to Egypt late in the patriarch’s life. Likely it was a Jacob lamb, one year old unblemished that was the original pessach offspring.

Nevertheless, an echo of a Jewish people’s sheep remained in the historical record. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel write full passages referring directly to “sheep”. The rabbinical commentaries claim that the sheep are rather us, the Jewish people, and the shepherds were our kings. However, it is also known that the bible is written in a duality: that what is spiritual must also be physical. While the sheep refer to a metaphor, the prophets may have very well been referring to a flock of sheep. “Look at those that come from the North”, Jeremiah prophesized…”where was the flock that was given you, the sheep of your glory?”. Ezekiel prophesized that the Jewish people would one day stop herding sheep:

“I will take the sheep from their mouth’s and I will cause them to cease herding sheep”, he wrote. Why? The shepherds were greedy and let the flock go astray. However, it was not meant to be forever. “In this place, which is without the seed of man or animal,” writes Jeremiah, “sheep will again pass before the one that counts them”. The rejoicing will be on many levels and in many places. The rabbinical commentaries, while not elaborating confirm that this phrase relates to the “last of days”, which many view as happening or will happen soon.

The Christians take it a step further. The New Testament describes a “lost sheep of the House of Israel”. While this phrase has spiritual connotations, it may have had a physical origin.

However, the Jewish people have long forgotten about their lost flock of glory.

This all changed several thousand years later when by chance a Christian farmer, knowing the myth of the Jacob Sheep contacted two Jewish farmers that were living in Western Canada. The sheep were slated to be butchered and the Christian farmer wanted the sheep to be back in Jewish hands.

Grudgingly the Jewish farmers took the sheep. However events quickly spiralled out of control and from an original flock of four sheep, the couple eventually collected dozens of the prized rare animals.

The Israeli Embassy soon became interested and a three year diplomatic campaign was launched to have the animals repatraited to Israel.

The pair succeeded in November 2016. However the animals had to be quarantined soon after arrival in the damp, wet, Israeli winter conditions near the Gaza border. Several of them died triggering an international outcry.

Nevertheless, the animals were soon released. Their first home in Israel was Moshav Nes Harim in the Judean mountains near Jerusalem. However the sheep had one problem: they or their owners did not own any land and the sheep became a wondering spectacle.

Eventually the municipality of Efrat in Gush Etzion agreed to provide them land in the West Bank. It is there where they are today, with the hope of once again populating the Judean mountainside with sheep.

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