Tu BiShvat, birthday of the trees
I planted a tree for my grandfather in the Jerusalem forest the Summer before my sixteenth birthday. I found out from a call home, on a yellow payphone outside the Wailing Wall, that he had taken his life.
The soldier in line behind me offered water from his canteen as I wept into the receiver.
I was on a summer arts program filled with angsty American teens, and we were visiting the Old City — our first trip to the Kotel.
Even our just-post-college-grad counselors had held an air of jadedness, and warned us that we’d most likely feel nothing visiting this remnant of the ancient temple: It’s just a wall, they told us, a bunch of stones that had outlasted other stones, where people crammed their prayers, tiny folds of paper into the cracks.
I didn’t tell anyone. Not until decades later did I tell anyone, and then just my husband and one trusted friend: I felt something that day, moments after finding out my grandfather died, when I pushed my hands onto the smooth wall, wet with tears.
I felt the wall push back.
And even if I never feel God that physically again, I felt it then — as real as anything — those stones, as if alive, pressing back into my palms.
I said the Mourners Kaddish the best I could with my limited Hebrew from a prayer book with no transliteration. And then someone, a couple of days later — I can’t recall who (but I hope I thanked them) took me — alone — to the hills of the Jerusalem forest to plant a tree.
And it’s still there. Though I have no idea where, exactly, and I could never point out which one, I know it's there - somewhere in that forest- this tree I planted with my hands, and it’s the height of over twenty-five years. Happy birthday tree.
This morning I thought, which California tree will I use to illustrate Tu BiShvat, the birthday of the trees, which begins tomorrow night: Cypress, Redwood, Eucalyptus?
But just now, a blue bird perched right outside my window in front of the bare Apple tree.
And, yes, of course, that’s the tree.
The one I’d overlooked because of its empty branches. The one that will blossom again in Spring and bear fruit by Fall. This tree that on either coast looks like Winter.
Thank you blue bird for reminding me of this consolation, of the thing we can’t quite see but is here, and will again come alive.
Wishing you all a connection to our trees and forests and each other.
Prayer + Action: There are a staggering number of people - including the very young - taking their own lives during this pandemic. Please help spread awareness: Suicide Prevention Lifeline