8/VI EWPOINTS
VOLUME XX, NUMBER 3, 1S9 2
SOLOMON'S GARDEN Continued from page 7
"i:autdmne, st-sauveur#4 by uluane roth gallery shbia roth, toronto
way. I got lost several times before I learned the route, but there was always someone to ask ("Slicha — Pardon me"...); in the vicinity of the University, almost everyone speaks English.
The Jerusalem Botanical garden was established in ' 1964, but it is only in the last 10 years, under the directorship of Dr. Michael Avishai, that it has developed into a world class institution, the most important botanical garden in the Middle East. The 65 acres, formerly a barren rocky slope, bounded by the Knesset, Israel Museum, and the University, is now terraced and divided into geographic sections representing the plants of the world: shrubs, trees, and flowers from tropical Africa grow adjacent to those from China and Japan, for instance. This is a unique arrangement (botanical gardens are usually organized by plant types), one that draws on the unusually favorable climatic conditions in Jerusalem. Dr. Avishai, known familiarly as Michael (Meekal) is energetic, ebullient, and undaunted by the recurring Ra'anarma-like crises from which the Garden suffers: lack of money, staff, and water.
I was very lucky to have a chance to go on a field trip with Michael, a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide, and three horticultural students from abroad. "I think you deserve to see this," he said, swerving the car off the road and bringing it to an abrupt halt while drivers behind us honked and: yelled. We all rushed across the highway to a nearby field to examine the latest find: Acanthus, dusky rose and pale yellow bracts, spiny le;aves, used in ancient times as amodel for decorative stonework. All around were the red flowers of spring, the anemones, buttercups, tulips, poppies, adpnisy and underfoot the still-budded white flowering Morning Bride, scabious.
Just ahead, having passed fields yellow with wild mustard, we stopped to look at the Jezreel Valley below, the largest diagonal valley in Israel, laid out before us like a jewel, in patterns of sown land, groves of fruit, fish ponds, and trees. We passed the turn for Meggido, the site of Solomon's stables ("No time for that how," said Michael) and we ascended Mt. Gilboa in search of the wild iris, one among several types for which Israel is famed. "See the iris!" a student in the back seat called out. The car swerved off the road again, and we all laughed, a near disaster in the service of floral beauty. We rushed out to a clump of the stunning Gilboa Iris: large and fluted upper petals, veined and flushed burgundy with darker lower petals, the whole head about 5 inches across, the plant about 21/2 feet tall, a magnificent flower in nature that would be hard to improve in appearance, but is notoriously difficult to cultivate.
As the car started up again, Michael surveyed the scene before us, beautiful wildflowers everywhere, dominated by clusters of the magnificent iris, Solomon's Garden at its height of seasonal bloom. "I think the Almightly stopped here for a moment," he mused, "and while he wasn't paying attention, his pockets spilled open with all these wonderful things."
During my last days in Israel I stayed in Ramat Gan with Sara and Yacov. I met Sara three years ago in the airport in Montreal, when she was heading for the West Coast to do some research on the strawberry virus (her field) and I was returning from my first visit to Israel. During the war she and Yacov were one ot the four out of 30 families who stayed in their apartment complex, refusing to leave for safe havens
elsewhere. In mid-February she had written, "During the day we are brave and go to our work, but at night we are like frightened mice in our sealed rooms."
It was here, in Ramat Gan, that the effects of the war-were most apparent, not just in bombed sites, but strikingly in my friends' need to recount the anxieties of the 43 days. I slept in the former sealed room and looked out the same window from which Sara had seen a fireball falling from the sky, a Scud missile. Together we looked at the place nearby where 10 apartment buildings had been, now bare ground. In the evening, when we all walked through Ramban Square — brightly lit, thronged with people enjoying the summer-like weather — I tried to iniagine it as it had been not long ago, dark and silent.
Sara and Yacov also gave me the keys to their apartment, and during the day when they went to work, I took the bus to Tel-Aviv to visit the Museum of the Diaspora, where I seemed to be the only Diaspora Jew. Tourists were conspicuously absent he^e and everywhere, which may explain why Tel-Avivians actually stopped me in the street to inquire, "Can I help you?", as if I deserved special protection.
I walked through Jaffa with Yacov and went to a service at Yacov and Sara's local Orthodox Italian synagogue, small, elegant, high ceilinged, with white interior, and Hanukah lamps on the wall that priginal-ly belong to the Finzi-Contini family The evening before I left^ Yacov, a geriatrics psychiatrist, took me to see one of his patients, Osias Hofstatter, the most famous painter in Israel, now in his 80s, whose every work reflects his preoccupation with the Holocaust. He lives with his wife Anna to whom his book is dedicated: "My help / My love and comfort / Anna Hofstatter-Shebestova / My wife and my muse / This book is for you," She converted to Judaism "for the old folks' sake," Hofstatter told me, "and then the Nazis murdered them all."
The next morning at the airport a security officer asked the purpose of my visit to Israel. "To see the spring bloom," I answered, not thinking how strange ii must have sounded. "I'm a garden writer;" I added, to establish my credibility "Let's see some cjf your published work," he challenged. Since all the material I had with me was packed away, i told him about my research into the significance of m«ror, the bitter herbs of Passover, naming the five weeds described in the Tklmud; "whose beginning is sweet and whose end is bitter," a mirror in their growth cycle of the jews' experience in Egypt. The officer shook his head in wonder and appreciation. "So much meaning in such trivial things," he smiled, and waved me on,
I don't know what to make of my latest encounter With Israel from a purely Jewish perspective. I experienced no spiritual awakening. The Passover Seder on the kibbutz combined a pagan celebration of the grain harvest with amateur theatricals, complete with sound system. What was Jewish about my experience? What is Jewish about Israel? Israelis are no closer to deciding whether they define themselves solely by place or by a combination of place and their Jewishness, which for many is an irrelevant vestige of the past. Is the Jewish greenhouse' a place for Jews to gather where they can choose not to be Jewish?
These are legitimate questions, but they obscure the fact that Israel is a fascinating country (judged by any standards), appealing in its diversity, energy — apathy is virtually unknown — and struggle with its destiny. Diaspora Jews, the vast majority of whom have never been to Israel, take note: I am not ashamed to say that I go there because I enjoy the experience, not because I regard It as an obligation.
Are we one? Probably not, but does it matter? Discover the land behind the glib slogans, behind the slick packaged tours, and the people will draw you in, and without even thinking about it, the gulf will narrow, the bonds will deepen.
The last sight from the plane window is Tel-Aviv in the sun, blocks of houses with solar panels, patches of green, the Mediterranean coastline, waves lapping against the shore... then just blue sky and clouds.
A man in the seat next^to me tells me he can solve the country's water problem. He hands rne his card: Scientific Products & Tfechhblogy Limited. He tells me about his roof garden in Tfel-Aviv, where he grows avocados, grapes, willows, olives, and wild snapdragons in tufa, a volcaruc soil from the Golan.
"Next time you're in town,'' he says, "come see my garden...".
POETBY by DVorah Ellas
: Anl'. ■. ■ lam
some woman's cast off " abandoned in a garden on a cold, January morning in Seoul, Korea.
I am Jung-Ran Lee
who flourished in a French orphanage,
nurtured by many mothers
who was chosen from the rest
by parents
haljf a world away.
I am Lee Ann Kobata
who learned her catechism without fault,
who knelt before the altar
every Sunday morning
but who could not swallow the dogma
as easily as the bread
and who felt like a cannibal
for drinking Christ's blood and
eating his flesh.
i am Lee Ann Elias
who lights six candles every Friday eve and walks to shul on Shabbos with four children by my side.
I am D'vorah
who wears white on Rosh Hashannah,
who shivers in the succah,
who fries latkes every Chanukah,
who dreads the ritual cleansing of Pesah.
D'vorah, who never makes it through the fast on Yom
Kippur.
Ani D'vorah
who rejected the Trinity
and kowtowing before graven images
but who, ten years later,
still longs for mistletoe and holly,
glass globes that shine
on fresh pine boughs
and on soaring pagodas.
Niddah Only Means Separate
The room is stark white, almost sterile.*
In the quiet evening I drop the towel
from my body
a virgin once more
and step into the wailing pool.
Spread my fingers wide
pull my feet up to my breasts
and sink down into near nothingness.
One, two, three times.
Reaching back into antiquity
I hold hands with Jewish women
with each inmiersion.
We are commanded by ancient custom and though few indulge today oh, I revel in it.
A retreating step for womankind think some who do not know the peace
of a leisurely bath once a month
in a place where there are no telephones;
no children banging on the door.
In solitude I recall my wedding vows,
the promises made to me
and those I pledged in return.
Keeping a tight rein on my husband's love
I ask that we not touch,
except hearts,
twelve days a month.
D'Vorah Ellas /5 a poet living in London, Ont.