If Trees Could Talk!

I’m beginning to wonder if Israel’s ancient trees could talk, what they would tell future generations about living through this time of plague.

 

Would they confine themselves to discussing the horrendous effects of the physical Coronavirus Pandemic on its citizens or would they delve deeper and suggest that the disease is a striking metaphor for the growing social and psychological ills that beset the modern Jewish state?

 

I ponder this as we prepare to mark an odd confluence of international secular Holocaust Memorial Day followed swiftly by the popular Jewish festival of Tu B’Shvat – the so-called ‘new year for trees’.

The latter offers a singular opportunity for environmental groups like Greenpeace Israel to promote their campaigns while the Jewish National Fund, the charity most closely associated with land development and afforestation in Israel, wastes no time in urging supporters to help its work by purchasing ever more trees.

So this year, even as we discussed lighting a memorial candle on a day recalling the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, we bought trees for the JNF’s Gilon Forest.

This spot is, in truth, barely more than an oversized wood on the outskirts of Karmiel. But it is somewhere we have enjoyed a stroll and a picnic.

It is also a place where my husband has proved one may snap a decent photograph using a smart phone and further – it is yet another telling example of Karmiel’s prowess as ‘countryside in the city’.

 

So, as the above  illustration shows, our gift of trees has been made, not only to help beautify the outskirts of our adopted city but in the best tradition of the JNF – as a ‘living memorial’ to local victims of the plague. May their collective memory be indeed much blessed.

© Natalie Wood (26 January 2021)