Tu b’Shevat and memories of Israel
The tragic veteran of World War I, Joyce Kilmer, wrote the lyric and words in his ode to trees, with the phrase, "Only God can make a tree" – the perfect prayer for the holiday "Tu b'Shevat" – (however you choose to spell it).
This Jewish arbor day gives me an occasion to share a memory: my very first summer sojourn in Israel. I was working on a kibbutz near the border with Lebanon. It bore the name "Sasa" and my daily job was to plant trees at sunrise. Volunteers visited from various points of departure: there were Swedish and Danish youths among the guests, seeking inspiration from the youthful new nation. I was one of 'em...before spending the rest of my sojourn teaching English in Tel Aviv. Putting down the roots of the arbor and then seeking respite at dawn breakfast, impressed me with the ideals of kibbutz society.
On the kibbutz nothing belonged to anyone, everything was shared. You didn't possess your own job, not even your own child! EVERTHING belonged to everyone, and I thought Russian communism had directly molded these values. I wrote a travelogue and I was embarrassed to see it in print in the RISD alumni magazine, fearing I had violated some unwritten code about separating religion from art. But I was not punished for the work of my pen, and quite the reverse occurred. In that postwar decade of the early mid 20th century, Israel was a country put together with various survivors seeking fresh hopes...like planting trees, like launching a "Tu b'Shevat" for a fresh concept, and it brought me luck and good fortune.
Unlike Joyce Kilmer who was killed in action aged 31 at the second Battle of the Marne in 1918, I survived another six decades. And through my RISD career, with my degrees in liberal arts, poetry and documentary filmmaking (rather than the drawing or print-making or industrial design usually associated with the school), his tree poem stayed with me, hand in hand with my kibbutz experience.
If you drive or stroll along Blackstone Boulevard these days, and don't get caught unhappily by the speed camera, you may catch a glimpse of a wounded tree. It forms a cave, and there is a kind of folk tale about a doomed princess who hides inside the hollow "cave" within the trunk, a poor girl who manages to make a fulfilled and adventurous life, from that tree! It seems to constitute some sort of sense that trees can save us all. And that is my toast to our holiday on the brink of springtime - in late winter here, and early spring in our spiritual Holy Land. That line from Joyce Kilmer's line in verse and music, assures us that the land itself is prayer incarnate, it can rescue us and bring us hope. It’s a reminder that we can turn to our calendars or even merely to the view from our windows and bless the boughs, the leaves of long-ago or a restless anticipation for the buds and the return of the abundant birds!
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