Fruit and Hope

The teaching below was posted by Akiva Gersh, an Israeli who is on a list-serve that I am part of.

It is a comment about the law that says we are forbidden from cutting down a fruit tree in the midst of war and siege. The teaching is all the more poignant as war permeates the days and nights of the middle east.

The fruit tree of the field during war stands as a memorial to a very special and important tree in the history of the world...the Tree of Life in Gan Eden...it stands as a reminder to what the world once was, of a time when harmony, peace and perfection were tangibly present in this world...seeing the fruit tree during wartime, which itself is a sign and a result of the downfall of humankind since we were forced to leave Gan Eden, is meant to move the heart of the soldiers on the battlefield, to pause for a moment and to lift their heads up above the reality of conflict and fighting that they and their people (and all peoples) are enslaved to, and remember that there once was a time when things were different, things were better...this remembrance, even if for but a few seconds, can give those fighting on the battle field of yet another war the hope and the belief that such a reality will return to Earth once again...may it be in our lifetime...

the teaching continues with this beautiful thought...that there is an example of Hashem (God) also keeping this mitzva of bal tashchit in the Torah...where?...after the flood of Noah's generation...how do we know?...because the dove comes back with a living branch from an olive tree...how did this olive tree survive the destructive waters of the Flood?...because Hashem kept [the law of] bal tashchit [do not destroy the fruit trees] and didn't harm the trees!...he quotes a Hazal (the traditions of the rabbis of old) that say that the waters of the flood soaked the Earth only to the level of the roots of the vegetation, but not of the trees...amazing...

May this teaching indeed bring hope to all who are forced to fight.

Bittersweet days

We have entered the sweet but slightly desperate part of summer.

The days are bookended by mid-summer's antiphony of cicadas and crickets, the former's concerto beginning alone in the morning and slowly growing throughout the day, the crickets picking up a gentler saw toward evening, with katydids coming in on percussion.

Their songs are earnest and mournful, for they announce that the summer has crested, the days are shortening and the cold and more interior life will soon return. They remind us of how short and fleeting the longest and brightest of times are.

Of course there are the glories of autumn to anticipate: the symphony of leaves, the potpourri of fall fruits and vegetables, the cuddling in front of the season's first fires, warm cider, the splitting and stacking of wood for the winter.

With so much yet to do while the skies are still light til sometime past eight, it is easy to rush past the low ache of diminishing summer. But it is not good to do so.

For oddly enough, it is the ache in life's goodness that sharpens its joy; the preciousness of these moments that fuels their power.

August is the time we seem to dash about, trying to chase down and capture all the summer that got away in June and July. We seek to slow down time, or hold it still, by speeding up.

Yet sometimes - not always, but sometimes - the best way to slow down time is for us to slow down first. To sit on the porch, or the beach, or the edge of the woods with no more than a cool drink or a lover's hand in ours, and just watch. Let the words, thoughts and hours float. Three hours, from 6:00 to 9:00, will feel like a slice of eternity.

May this bittersweet time of summer - on the eve of the mournful 9th of Av and in the midst of a tragic war at home - somehow be  a harbinger of peace.