Letter from a literalist reader of the Bible (Katrina McHyde)

dear Loved of God fellow humans,

(I'm sending this out to all subscribers.)

This is Tim's former wife, Katrina McHyde. 

Yay, I finally got my head around the Holy Days for 2022. I have the firm intention of doing better next year.

Do you know the story of why Tim and I use this particular calendar? What does it all have to do with Barley?
Back in 2001 we met Nehemia and Devorah Gordon in Israel, more precisely in Jerusalem. Nehemia Gordon was acting as a tour instructor. He was (and is) a Biblical scholar and especially proficient in uncovering ancient Hebrew sources of faith. Years before we met him, he was the first one in Israel to decide to look for the barley to be sufficiently ripe to proclaim the beginning of the Biblical New Year. Up until that time, everyone in Israel used the Hillel 2 Calendar to tell them when the New Year and the Holy Days would be. Nehemia Gordon being a literalist of Scripture, was not satisfied with that outdated Calendar, now that the Jews were back in The Land.

But coming back to how we met him: as I said, he was our tour instructor and became our treasured friend in our 14 days in the Holy Land. From that time on we kept up with Nehemia and actually you can thank him for inspiring Tim to make a website that you now all enjoy.
There were 40 people in the tour. Out of those 40, Nehemia enjoyed asking Tim and myself to accompany him in his private car to the sites we went to. We had respectful and wonderful discussions. He, being a Karaite Jew, not believing in Jesus and not following the traditions of the Rabbis, only basing his belief on the Tanakh, opened his knowledge and convictions to us.

Nehemia, on the other hand, was also very open to our ideas and beliefs. We had wonderful hours of discussions in his car, cruising through the Holy Land.
After the time in Israel we kept up with one another, especially Tim and Nehemia, as they were both building their ministries.
A few years later he and his wife would divorce but are still good friends until today.
As Nehemia was the first to instruct himself about the Barley being "Aviv", other people started getting curious and learning from him.

What is "Aviv" barley, you may wonder? It is a maturation point of this grain. The barley must be at this point at a certain time at the end of a Biblical Year to proclaim when the next New Year would begin. But many of you know this, for sure.
As time went by, many other people decided that they were the "knowledgeable authorities" on Aviv barley. Nehemia stepped away because he had sufficiently trained his former wife to continue searching for the Aviv barley. It is because of this, we use Nehemia's and Devorah's wisdom on when the barley is Aviv. They have more years than anyone in learning about and searching for it.