The Book of Trees (24 page)
I nodded. Andrew leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. He pressed his lips together. We sat looking at each other. Then he smiled and squeezed my hand. “You always do what you want, don’t you?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. He was right. I was the kind of person who jumped into things, who knew her mind. I nodded, and Andrew sighed and looked away from me, out at the waves.
The light was fading around us and the air was warm and balmy. I went into the room and got Andrew’s guitar and started strumming “Crazy.” I felt both nervous and excited.
Already my mind was humming with new lyrics about trees. Not decorative or planted, but trees that bore fruit, lost their leaves in the fall and made shade in the summer. I wanted to write music to evoke their holiness, or maybe the sound of wind in their branches. The words would make you think of God, of a creator of the most beautiful things. You could sing the song under a tree and look up and see the sky through the leaves and branches, and if other people sang with you, you could feel the same spiritual buzz as singing on Shabbos. I thought about sitting under the trees at Don’s cottage with Andrew, playing Don a song Andrew and I wrote together. And maybe the song would be on banjo, a kind of low twangy sound. It could be called “Catch Your Breath.”
“Do you know how to play mandolin?” I asked Andrew. He shook his head. “I’ll have to teach you.”
Andrew watched me, amused, as I did some old country picking.
“Do you know this song?” I played and sang “In the Highways,” an old Maybelle Carter tune Don had taught me.
Andrew shook his head.
“You will soon. It goes like this.”
Please note: Alternative spellings exist for many of these terms.
ba’al teshuva
—literally “one who has returned,” a formerly nonobservant Jew who returns to the traditional ways of Judaism (also means reborn Jews)
beit midrash
—“house of learning” or study hall
Birkot Hashahar
—morning prayers
B’nos Sarah
—“Daughters of Sarah,” fictional name of the yeshiva or seminary Mia attends
bracha
—blessing
b’shert
—Yiddish for “destiny,” refers to one’s future spouse or soulmate
bubbie
—the Yiddish word for “grandmother”
challah
—braided bread eaten on the Sabbath (plural—
challot
)
chassid
—a member of the ultra-Orthodox branch of Judaism
chevruta
—a study partner for learning Jewish texts
Eretz Yisrael
—the land of Israel
frum
—Yiddish for “religious” or “observant”
gemilut hasadim
—“giving loving kindness,” refers to charitable acts
hamotzi
—blessing recited before eating bread
haredi
—ultra-Orthodox community
Hashem
—God
havdalah
—a ceremony using candles, wine and sweet spices that marks the end of the Sabbath
horah
—a type of circle dance
Ir Hakodesh
—“city of peace,” refers to the spot in Jerusalem where the first temple was built
kadosh
—holy
kibbutznik
—a member of a
kibbutz
, a collective farming community
kippah
—religious head covering traditionally worn only by men
Kotel
—part of the massive remaining stone walls of the Second Temple; the
Kotel
is also called the Wailing or Western Wall and is the most sacred site in Judaism
kumzitz
—from the Yiddish “
kum
,
zitz,
” meaning “come, sit”; refers to a sing-along
mameleh
—Yiddish for “mother dear,” a term of endearment
mellah
—Arabic for a walled Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco
Mitzvot
—“the commandments,” the 613 principles of law and ethics outlined in the Torah
Moshe
—Moses
Moshiach
—the Messiah
Nakba
—Arabic for “the catastrophe,” when 650,000 to 750,000 Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948
Rashi
—Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, foremost commentator on the Torah and Talmud
Ribbono shel Olam
—“Master of the Universe,” a way of referring to God
Shabbos/Shabbat
—the day of rest and worship; for Jews this is Saturday
shidduch
—a system of matchmaking where Jewish singles are introduced to each other for the purpose of marriage
shtetl
—a Jewish town in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe
shuk
—market
shul
—Yiddish for “synagogue” or “temple”
Shulchan Aruch
—literally “The Set Table,” a book of Jewish law composed by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the sixteenth century
tikkun olam
— Hebrew for “repairing the world”
Torah
—the law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures; the first part of the Hebrew Bible
Tu B’shvat
—“New Year of the Trees,” a Jewish holiday celebrated by planting trees and eating dried fruits and nuts
yeshiva
—a seminary or school for the study of Jewish texts
Yiddish
—a language spoken by Eastern European Jews
zeydi
—the Yiddish word for “grandfather”
Like many young North American Jews, I grew up knowing very little about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. As a teenager I thought Israel was unpopulated until the Jews returned in the early twentieth century. When I visited Israel in 1995 as a university student, I had just read Leon Uris’s
Exodus,
and I was thrilled to think of my visit to Israel as a homecoming. During my stay, I gradually became more aware of the political realities plaguing Israel, especially as terrorist attacks increased. However, it wasn’t until I took a graduate course exploring the memory of Jews and Palestinians that I started to understand how Israel was created, and how the Jewish return to Israel uprooted native Palestinian populations. I was appalled to learn that more than 600,000 Palestinians had been forced into exile in 1948 and that many were still living as refugees in what had once been their own homeland.
I struggled with my new knowledge. I loved Israel and I wanted to believe Israel had a heroic and honorable history. How could I, a Jew, criticize the state after the centuries of oppression Jews had endured? Eventually, I decided to embrace the Jewish tradition of fighting for social justice and write this book. I believe Israel will be a stronger, more peaceful country when it follows international law and protects the human rights of all peoples within its borders. I pray for peace, but I believe it will only come when the occupation is ended.
Although I read many different books and articles during my research, I was particularly influenced by Carol Bardenstein’s article “Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory” (in
Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present
, edited by Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer), Sandy Tolan’s
The Lemon Tree
and Jasmine Habib’s
Israel,
Diaspora and the Routes of National Belonging
.
Many thanks to my talented Toronto writing group: Elizabeth MacLeod, Dianne Scott, Roswell Spafford, Ania Szado, Elsie Sze and Anne Warrick. In Kingston my friends Dorit Naaman and Sarah Tsiang also gave me valuable feedback.
I am indebted to Professor Lorenzo Buj for his course on memory, which got me interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Thanks to my editor, Sarah Harvey, for helping bring this book into focus.
I am extremely grateful to the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.
Special thanks to Tawfiq Zayyad’s widow, Naela Zayyad, for granting me permission to quote from her husband’s poem “On the Trunk of an Olive Tree,” originally published in
al-A’mal al-Kamila
(Complete Works) by Dar al-Aswar Publishers.
Lastly, many thanks to my husband, Rob, for enduring many conversations like this:
Me: So I’m thinking about Mia.
Him: Who?
Me: You know, the main character of my book.
Him: Her again? Still?
Rob, your patience and support is much appreciated.
LEANNE LIEBERMAN
is the author of
Gravity
, a Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Teens. Leanne is from Vancouver but now lives in Kingston, Ontario, with her husband and two sons. She lived in Israel in 1995 and again in 1999.