Planting the Land and the Child

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
01 February '10

Seasons in Israel are so different than they were in the United States. In the US, they seemed to gently glide, one into the other. Summer gave way to cooler nights and then the leaves began to turn all manner of wonderful colors. Fall had arrived. The frost came and the nights became colder. Winter. And so it went, season after season, each marked by a gradual changing of the weather. Each season came with a bit of warning, a taste before the fury of the cold or the heat. Fall and spring were welcome breaks from the extreme and provided the glide into the next.

In Israel, like life itself, the seasons are less defined, more drastic. One day the cold comes; winter...but what happened to the fall? And then it suddenly gets hot and summer has arrived; somehow spring never really comes to Israel. Of course, the temperatures are less extreme than they were where I lived in the States. Snow here is rare; summer's typically hotter and drier.

One thing that marks the transition between winter and summer is Tu B'Shevat - it's the new year of the trees. Yes, that's right - even the trees can celebrate their own fresh start. Tu B'Shevat is when the almond trees start to blossom and you know that though winter hasn't finished, the land is reawakening already. In America, Tu B'Shevat was the time we donated a few dollars to have someone plant a tree in Israel.

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