“Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb” (Genesis 30:32).
The largest flock of one of the most ancient breeds of sheep, the Jacob Sheep, is found today in, of all places, the Canadian town of Abbotsford in British Colombia.
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Gil and Jenna Lewinsky own 80 of these rare small spotted sheep that can grow up to six horns. Some say these are the very descendants of the breed that resulted from Jacob’s mysterious breeding technique that made him a wealthy man on the run.
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The Lewinskys’ hope to bring these sheep back to the place of their origin will soon be realized after Rafi Barak, Israel’s Ambassador to Ottawa, endorsed their efforts to bring the flock to Israel.
On February 23, CIJ News reported that “Ambassador Barak came to give an endorsement on the Jacob Sheep project and offered to continue to help facilitate their return. ‘The first thing I did when I heard of this [project] from Jenna was, I opened the Bible to see if this is a true story. We have been helping Jenna and Gil with connecting with the Agricultural Ministry and we found that it is right for the Israeli culture to give the green light for this and to help it.'”
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Barak has also said that the embassy follows “the project and do our best to help more than a year after the Lewinskys contacted us. Now there has been great progress in bringing the sheep and it is evident that the Ministry of Agriculture is trying to help the issue. We hope that all the bureaucratic procedures required to bring the sheep [to Israel] will be completed soon and will be brought to the ground.”
For their part, the Lewinskys have noted that “Israel currently only has Awassi sheep, which originated in the Syrian-Arabian desert. The Jacob sheep are an artifact of ancient Israel and prove that the story of Jacob and Laban took place.”
