Well - that's fascinating! I really love seeing people that keep to this somewhat old ways of self growing food. I can tell you that the Jewish religion is very agricultural focused, and about 1/2 of the orders the Jewish book of laws contain are regarding people with agriculture land and farm animals - there is a strong belief in the Jewish philosophy that a person should be connected to the land and to the nature. Nowadays - not many people deal with animals and growing plants and so on in Israel. but there is a movement that tries to revive this and promotes the idea that every person should have at least a little piece of agriculture land and a few hens and so on (I would link to info about them, but it's in Hebrew :)