The Joy of Tu Be’Shvat on Hanukah!
By Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar

Autumn is behind us, and the leaves shed by now-bare trees are blown to the four winds by the gales that sweep the crests of the Judean Hills. Winter takes hold insistently with thick fogs and white frost that cover fields and car windshields alike. And, finally, the rain, which each year is more fervently longed for and more rarely and meagerly seen

This is the backdrop to our small but contemporary Hanukah tale of olive trees planted, with the help of generous lovers of Israel, on the night of the sixth candle on the hills between Alon Shvut and Elazar, where Judah Maccabee waged a fierce battle.

There’s nothing like a winter’s night — bitter cold, with pouring rain and slashing winds that no umbrella can resist, thick fog, and deep mud — to turn Hanukah night into Tu Be’Shvat in Netzer. In weather like this, there’s no danger that those seeking to prevent Jews from planting will be out and about. So we exploited these optimal conditions and set to work, bringing in the tractors and ten mature olive trees for planting. Our purpose was two-fold:

1. To replant the trees that Arabs uprooted in bright daylight last Friday as the happy culmination of a family “chafla” or feast.
2. To do our own “tag mechir” or “price tag operation”: for every tree the Arabs uproot, we plant two.

The work is hard. First our shoes disappear in a thick mud that feels like cement. Soon after, we loose the feeling in our feet that are numb with cold. Gradually, the heavy rain soaks our overcoats, our fleece jackets underneath, then our sweaters, shirts and undergarments. Add to this the strong wind chill factor, and there’s no defense against defeat except to allow physical misery to be banished by the joy of seeing the old trees replanted together with the new ones. And how beautiful they are: glorious in their fullness and maturity, standing upright like proud Jews in Mattityahu’s army, fighting for a proud and independent Land of Israel.

And our trees are indeed soldiers because the tree that grabs the land with its roots is what decides if this land is ours. This tree is our literal soldier in the field, striking a stake in the earth and holding our ground for us. To our shame, trees planted by Arabs are protected whereas trees planted by Jews are like the Jews themselves frequent terror victims. All of Europe has been drafted to plant Arab trees. Signs of the European Union adorn the area, boasting of Europe’s generous donations that enable the Arabs to wage agricultural jihad and steal the land from the Jews. The U.N. patrols the hills around Netzer so that no harm should come to the precious Arab trees.

And our trees, despite the persecutions, fight valiantly to strike roots in the land of our fathers. They suffer repeated and brutal, uprootings, seizures, and impoundings. The road is long, hard, and painful, like the way of all things true that try to assert themselves against vested falsehoods.

“Rabbi Yochanan said: Why is Israel compared to an olive tree? To tell you that just as an olive tree only releases its oil by pressing, so too Israel only returns to the proper path by way of suffering and persecution.” (Tractate Menachot 53) And it further says in the Midrash: “Israel is called a leafy olive tree since it creates light for all.” (Shmot Rabba 36)

May it be His will that the People of Israel avoid a painful pressing and that what was planted won’t be uprooted.

Attached are pictures of the trees uprooted by Arabs- the Jewish tractor planting in the middle of the stormy night- and the trees planted by Women in Green during that stormy night of the sixth candle of Hanukka –

Yehudit Katsover 050-7161818 Nadia Matar 050-5500834
www.womeningreen.org