By the time you read this, Tu B’Shvat might have come and gone but the images of two trees will still be with me. Two trees that somehow encapsulate life on this beautiful, shimmering gem of a planet we live on. (Have you ever seen the photographs of planet Earth taken from a satellite? It’s the only green and blue glowing thing in the sky!)
As I look out my window this moment, Jerusalem is preparing for a wild winter storm. The country has mobilized, schools and roads are closing, shelves in supermarkets are emptying out and emergency preparations are full steam ahead. Since our snow rarely lasts for more than two or three days, you wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. All we need are a few snow shovels, but since snow shovels are not normally available in Israeli stores (since our snow only lasts for a few days…), we bring out tanks and snow plows instead. (If some bright, forward-looking entrepreneur had a few hundred shovels to sell today, he’d make a fortune!) Meanwhile, dark clouds are moving swiftly across the sky and the wind is shrieking around my porch, flinging things from side to side. It’s wild. Yet it brings me back to a more serene winter scene from long ago and far away.
It was in the American Midwest. I was a young girl, perhaps ten years old, when I awoke one winter morning to a silent, white wonderland. The world was covered in a blanket of pristine snow. Streets, sidewalks, cars, fences and gardens – everything had disappeared from sight. Only trees and buildings were still visible, frosted and glistening.
One lone tree stood next to my house. Its spindly branches were covered with snow and spread out as if to embrace the lustrous white gift that had descended from Heaven. I pulled on my winter garb, grabbed my trusty Kodak Brownie camera (the kind that looked like a truncated shoe box) and ran outside before anyone else got there and ruined the celestial scene.
The street was empty. Not a soul to be seen. There was no traffic; there were no birds. No wind disturbed the radiant, icy masterpiece. My tree reigned in splendid isolation, peaceful, shimmering and blindingly white. I viewed it from all sides, framed it carefully, wondered if it warranted a bracha, and finally snapped my picture. (In this pre-digital period, one didn’t waste expensive film on duplicate photographs. You planned, framed and shot it right the first time around!) Then I stood back and gazed, spellbound at the breathtaking beauty of it all.
The photo was magnificent. Not as magnificent as the tree, but magnificent enough to keep the image clear and alive in my mind these many years. I pasted it into my album together with the famous poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmore. At ten years old, I felt the poem was the epitome of poetic expression until someone ruined it for me by saying it was silly and soppy. Maybe it was, but I still think the last two lines are superb…. Poems are made by fools like me, but only G-d can make a tree. It was true then and it’s true now, and anything that can stay true for so long in this changing, relativistic world of ours is nothing to sneeze at!
Despite the passage of years, the feeling of awe that snow-covered tree inspired has remained with me. It was a perfect sample of G-d’s Very Own Winter Handiwork. Alas… the memory remained, but the handiwork did not endure. An hour later the entire street was a colossal, slushy mess.
Fast forward decades later to my first shkeydiya in bloom. The almond is the first tree to bloom in Israel. In the midst of the winter, when other fruit trees are just stretching their arms and feeling the sap rising in their trunks, when microscopic buds have barely made a bump in the branches, the shkeydiya is bursting with white blossoms, turning the tree into balls of fluffy, white cotton candy (spun sugar for those of you who don’t know about such delights!). On the road up to Jerusalem, hundreds of wild, flowering shkeydiyot line the highway, creating a frothy white fairyland filled with ambrosial fragrance and the promise of growth, beauty and life. It’s enough to make one dizzy with delight.
Images of two trees, both so very striking and so very different. One a stunning, frozen portrait of winter; one a soft, silky promise of spring. But what a wonderful, comforting thought emerges from these contrasts! Even in the deadly cold of winter, life is pulsating, germinating under a protective cover of white. Even when things look bleak and dreary, time passes, the seasons change and the sap rises in the trees. Unseen, new life makes its way up from the bowels of the earth and pushes a tiny bud, a finger up into the sunlight, as if to test the weather. It’s something to remember as we plow through the winter trying to keep warm. And it’s worthwhile to remember as we plow through the hazards and hardships of life.
Here in Eretz Yisrael, winter and spring, cynicism and hope intermingle. I think of our forthcoming elections in March, the first month of spring. No one expects great miracles to occur. (Moshiach does not seem to be among the candidates.) All-knowing surveys endlessly inform us who will win and who will lose, but unlike the sure, steady growth of a tree, the only sure thing is that nothing ever turns out as foretold.
Yet despite gloomy forecasts on all possible horizons, life moves happily on. Surrounded by a world of enemies and fully cognizant that the future may be difficult, life here is optimistic and full of faith in the future, not fear. When were things ever easy for the Jewish people? The economy, against all logic, is doing well. Wedding halls are full and must be booked far in advance; maternity wards are overflowing; schools and yeshivot are burgeoning. Buildings are going up, stores and businesses are opening; roads are being built. And the ever-growing number of shiurim across the country is phenomenal and growing!
Does that mean that everything is perfect? Of course not. (Was it ever?) Is it livable? Absolutely. Is it good? Yes… even more than good. It is very good. Jews love to complain, but according to one international survey, the degree of satisfaction with life in Israel, as expressed by its citizens, is among the highest in the world. (You would never know it by reading the newspapers!) Marvels of goodness and positive activity fill all spheres of life. Kupat Cholim, our health fund, seems like a dream when we read about Obamacare!
We may argue and disagree (it’s hard to get Jews to agree), but as we argue, we keep moving. Challenges are met, decisions made, problems solved. The Land – and State – continues to grow. For each proverbial step backwards, we take two giant steps forward.
Like the Jews during the forty years in the desert, we live under the protective cloud of the Shechina and like the daily mahn they received, Divine blessings are left at our doors. It’s not always easy, but Eretz Yisrael nikneis b’yissurim – the Land of Israel is acquired by difficulties – and the product is well worth the price.
That beautiful snow tree of my childhood still glows in my mind. It was a perfect picture of a moment frozen in time. But the blossoming almond trees along the road to Jerusalem are alive… growing, changing, and coming to fruition as we ascend to G-d’s Holy City.