Living on the Edge

It has been nearly eight months of war, death, and destruction in Israel. I experience fear, then calm, and shattered hope. I cycle between these feelings, finding refuge in my garden where nature continues to teach me lessons. Here exists a predictable world as the reliable seasons cycle. 

With this war raging, there is no predictability other than reading bad news daily: death of our young soldiers, imprisoned hostages, and an intense hatred of our state worldwide. 

There is an uncanny reverence for our brutal enemy. Reality has been inverted, lies are being honored while truth has been trampled.

And so I cycle into frustration and anger followed by hopelessness – until I was dealt a scary lesson via my garden. I go outside for hours every day with a little basket as if I am waltzing through a Disney movie. The birds are singing, the sun shining, a breeze is blowing, and the fruit trees are flowering. For me, this is perfection in a world shrouded by darkness.

 
My basket contains my weeding tools: secateurs, a knife, and gloves. I prefer not to wear the gloves and usually go out in sandals or barefoot. I hop from tree to tree and bush to bush pulling out the weeds around them and trimming back dead growth. 

This act is an example of my favorite permaculture principle called The Edge. Starting with a tree that has been engulfed by weeds, some six-feet-tall, I pull back the strangling plants and clean out the base to reveal a neat circle around the trunk. 

 
This is the edge between wild and cultivated, jungle and garden. It creates a balance that gives me a sense of harmony. I was feeling down, angry, and hopeless that day as I went out to an overrun area of the garden, eager to create edge in chaos, when I was stung by a bee.  

 
It hurt a bit but I continued to work for a while. It was my ring finger and I was wearing two rings on that finger. It started to swell but I ignored this as I thought a sting from such a little bee could not do too much damage.

I eventually went inside, washed the area, applied aloe gel, and took an antihistamine. I could still twirl the ring around my finger, although I could not remove it as the sting as on the joint. I went about my activities for the day and went to bed. 

And then it started to swell even more. I did deep breathing, went outside to apply more fresh aloe vera, did some visualization, and kept massaging the area to encourage circulation. I did not sleep at all. Then I saw a black line develop across my lower finger joint.

At 3am, I calmly got dressed and woke up Amir. “We’re going to the hospital,” I told him calmly and made him a coffee. We got there quickly and the emergency room was empty. I sat and waited for the nurse to find an instrument to remove my rings. 

The swelling worsened and huge blisters of blood started to develop. I sat and did some more deep breathing. They finally found a cutting instrument.  Simply inserting it under my finger was excruciatingly painful.  They pulled it and turned it and nothing happened. 

The situation quickly became critical. A surgeon soon arrived with another tool. The doctor and nurse tugged my finger, sawed and pulled and finally one ring broke off. The second ring would not budge so they frantically pulled and sawed. I was in intense pain. And finally the second ring broke off. 

I was told to lie down, keep my hand elevated, and try to bend my finger. My finger was a purple balloon with barely a tingling sensation. They sent me for an x ray and the surgeon’s last words were, “Force your finger to move and it if turns black, it is dead.”

I imagined a world with nine fingers and started to bend my finger as if it were practicing for gymnastics at the Olympics.  I went home and lay there in fear, afraid to look at my finger, holding it upright and moving it incessantly.

“What did you today?” my daughter asked me sympathetically when she came home from work.

“I lay in bed with my hand in the air,” I replied. For someone who is active almost every second of the day, this in itself was humbling. 

This night and day felt like a living horror movie, especially for someone queasy like me. The good news is my finger did not turn black and the pain is subsiding, although the swelling from the bee sting turned my hand into a baseball mitt.

My romanticized Disney image of the garden has shattered. There are scorpions out there and killer bees (for those allergic to bee stings such a me). Shoes and gloves and a positive attitude is what I need.

My evacuated neighbor who lives in my garden has an amazing attitude. She does not know when she can go to her home in the north and if she needs to move again, she is calling it an adventure. 

There are so many homeless families wandering around this country not knowing what tomorrow will bring, but they dig deep and cope by transforming challenges into opportunities. I am humbled by these people. 

I bend my wounded finger and realize that I too must dig deep and appreciate what I have. I now have intense gratitude for my ten fingers and appreciate how important that one finger is. This finger helps me type, cradle my morning coffee, and assist me with every two-handed task. It is such a simple gift to be able to stretch and bend a finger.

The jets continue to rumble over night and day, there are huge explosions nearby, the news rattles on with loss upon loss, and the situation can worsen at any second. 

My garden teaches me to appreciate seemingly small things in life. This gratitude propels me forward as I learn to live life on the edge.

Homeless

A pair of barn swallows decided our back porch would be a place to call home. They set to work without losing a moment. 

We sat outside with our morning coffee as they pirouetted in flight, a dizzying full-time job of gathering twigs, dirt, and grass. 

Soon enough they had a nest complete with eggs and before I could blink, four sets of tiny eyes were peering out at me.

The pirouetting took on a new frenzy as the parents brought food to place in the hungry mouths of their young. The chicks’ beaks were wide open in ‘feed me’ mode all day long and the dedicated parents obligingly complied. 

At times, one bird would guard while the other went shopping. Our cat Olive was often on the prowl and I would detect their ‘alert-danger’ tweet when Olive came too close. 

One day, the babies were perched on a light near the nest; it was time for flying lessons and they were fast learners. They would fly to the nearest branch, rest, and come home. When they became expert flyers, they even dive bombed Olive the cat, a reckless act typical of the brazen young with new-found freedom and too much confidence.

In our present world of sadness and tension, this became my happy nature success saga: a devoted pair of swallows build a home together and hatch four fledglings, creating a beautiful, healthy, and safe family unit. 

And then the nest fell down. I came home and saw a mat of feathers and straw on the deck right outside my back door. The barn swallows were sadly perched on a nearby tree, trying to go home to no home. They could not believe it was no longer there. 

Nature often echoes human reality. Israel is experiencing almost seven months of homelessness. A day after the October 7 massacre, Hezbollah started targeting Israeli villages and towns along the northern border by launching rockets, suicide drones, and infiltrating raids. Fearing a repeat of the tragedy, the army evacuated 28 communities within two kilometers of the border, causing approximately 100,000 people to be homeless.

And this is just the north. Communities near the Gaza border were also evacuated and many families moved into hotels. Entire cities like Sderot in the south and Kiryat Shemona in the north became ghost towns with the total count of displaced Israelis peaking around 200,000. 

After nearly seven months, the hostages are still imprisoned, rockets are launched daily at Israeli civilians, and many people are walking around dazed without a permanent place to call home. Some civilians in the south have returned home, however, in the north the tension grows daily.

The once vibrant and beautiful mountainous northern communities are now places with empty, dusty homes, silent classrooms, and lonely playgrounds. The abandoned fruit orchards are filled with weeds.

Pre Oct 7 - pastoral life of a goat herder in the mountains

One family from the north is living in our backyard, glamping-style in a simple trailer. They too have been displaced for over six months and have had to move three times; first to a hotel near the Kinneret, then to a yurt, and now to our small ‘farm.’ 

When they came to our place, their 11-year-old daughter, already well-versed in her new nomadic life said, “Guess we will be here for a few months and then we’ll have to move again.”

They evacuated in a total panic and under siege of rockets, taking whatever they could fit into their car: clothes, a few toys and books for the kids, and their precious blender. They have since been back to get a few things, including Purim costumes and now summer clothes. Who would have thought this would continue for so long?

On one such trip back home, they discovered a huge hole in the ground between their house and a neighbor. It was a hit by a rocket and it was a miracle that neither house was damaged. The neighbor took the scrap metal from the rocket and forged it into a shovel, quoting the bible (Isaiah chapter 2, verse 4) “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

The mother of our evacuated family shrugged her shoulders. “I always wanted to plant a tree in that spot. So now there is a huge hole, I won’t have to dig.” She was too upset by the smell of rotting food in her fridge that had no power and spent most of her short visit back home scrubbing it out.

This family, along with other community members, moved their children’s school, set up a school bus and tried to continue living a regular routine life. But this is not home and this is not how they choose to live or want to live. 

On a tiny micro-scale nature echoes this right outside our door. Those barn swallows now want to go home but have no place to call home. I wondered what they would do that first night in the dark and scary wild, but they survived. Come dawn, they started to build again in the same place. 

Upon closer inspection of their favored spot, we realized their original nest had been lodged across one small nail. “Bad engineering and unsafe,” Amir commented as he dislodged the nail, the bird nest’s foundation. “I’ll build them a bird house,” he decided.

The birds sat on a branch as the tools came out. It ended up being a family event when my son-in-law and grandsons pitched in. After some sawing and hammering, they held up a beautiful bird house; a mansion ready for move in with no dirt or construction required. They hung it up under a rafter on the porch. We watched and waited. 

This bird family would not consider this fancy mansion even for a moment. They wanted to be back where they started their home and kept on trying to rebuild in that same spot, now without even a nail for a foundation.

Out came the hammer and saw and Amir set to work again. He built them another house and placed it where they wanted to be, securing it in place with a few nails. 

The barn swallows were curious. After a day or so, we saw straw sticking out the side. And this morning, Amir sat with his coffee and was greeted by four baby faces peering out a him from their new, secure home.

Meanwhile, our 18 rescue chickens from the north are so comfortable, they are eating everything in my flower beds, scratching at the earth, uprooting any plant that crosses their path, and pecking at the succulents. They too now feel at home.

I pray for happy endings just like this. I pray for peace and security in a region where, in addition to 100,000 homeless northern Israelis, there are another 100,000 Lebanese who fled their homes in the south and well over a million Gazans without stability. 

And I pray for all honest, peace-loving people to soon return to a community, a place where parks will be filled with playful kids and orchards bountifully filled with peaches, pears, and cherries.

And he shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples, 
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares 
and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift the sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war anymore.
Yeshayahu (Isaiah), ch. 2, v.4

We are united and all is ok

Following up on last month’s blog, the corrupt mayor in Tzfat (the one who bankrupted the city) lost to a Hareidi candidate who knows nothing about the city’s issues - he was parachuted in by Shas and his connection to the town is that his wife was born there.

All of the Tzfat Hareidim voted for him because the rabbis told their congregants to do so. When I arrived that evening to vote, the roads and polling stations were littered with election flyers that were thrown around like confetti and the religious kids were blasting music as if this were some kind of party.

“There goes Tzfat,” I thought to myself. I don’t know what kind of job this new unknown mayor will do, but he will favor the wishes of his Hareidi electorate and his Shas boss. Due to a poor population that can’t pay taxes, high unemployment, and nepotism, Tzfat has been thrown into a downward spiral over these last few years. It is so sad because this place could be a gem.

As for the refugee chickens, they are rehabilitated inhabitants and now pay their taxes by laying lots of eggs. Their trauma is a thing of the past as they now look like chickens, act like chickens, and cluck like chickens. 

The rain and cold temperatures have not let up so I am holding off on spring planting; good news for the broccoli, cauliflower, and leeks which prefer this wintry climate. 

The war continues and is heating up in the north. Life goes on until I hear a huge boom and look around like a disoriented deer, eyes bulging in the headlights, not knowing if I should run for cover or stand still, heart palpitating. 

As if it is not scary enough here, the world is turning against us, even our so-called allies. The universe has gone insane. All truth has been turned on its head while evil is gaining the winning hand.

We celebrated the holiday of Purim yesterday and as I read the megillah, I was shocked by the similarities with life  today. It is uncanny; the characters have different names but their roles are the same. The only difference is that we know the Purim story ends with victory, even though it looked dire for the Jews. For us today, we do not know how this slow-moving nightmare will unfold. 

Despite all of the ongoing sadness, tragedy, trauma, we celebrated the holiday across the country with costumes, dance parties, festive meals, and giving out sweet mishloach manot. This is because we must continue to live our lives. We must hope and believe in peace, happiness and security - thinking otherwise may manifest a terrible ending. As proof of this joy, war-torn Israeli was just named (again) fifth happiest country in the 2024 World Happiness Index.

To practice happiness in my own space during these uncertain times, I opt to work on unity, try to do good deeds, and weed. We heard about a family that was evacuated from a northern border village who were about to be homeless. We have a tiny two-room unit in the back of our property and wanted to help. This place was normally used for cooling vegetables, packaging the harvest, and storing gardening tools with hopes of having a farm helper live there one day.  

The unit is more of a glamping place than a home with an outdoor kitchen, shower, and toilet. But it is peaceful and has views of the flourishing market garden from a large wooden porch. The family decided this would be a nice place to call home and so they moved in with their two children. 

Even though we live in the same country, our families inhabit different worlds - and because of this, I feel it is really important to share our garden ‘sanctuary.’ When I say sanctuary, I mean it; the garden has been my quiet, private place, my place for meditation and prayer, and my nature therapist throughout the six months of this scary war. By having a family with two kids living there in the garden's center, I am changing the dynamics for myself, but I want to stretch by being open, kinder, and welcoming. 

After the disunity, hatred and countless demonstrations that divided this nation prior to October 7, I feel that embracing the other is the path if Israel wants to become a stronger and more united nation. 

So here we are: English-speaking, religious and politically right-wing people hosting a Hebrew-speaking, secular and wildly left-wing family. Seriously, someone should come here and make a reality TV show – if I am not entertaining enough, my Silkie rooster could take the leading role. 

On one level, the news seems to worsen here and abroad; the newly elected Tzfat mayor takes office and world hates us even more. Our brave soldiers are putting their lives on the line by fighting an enemy who is now shooting at them while hiding in a Gazan hospital maternity ward.

My new neighbor is baking  sourdough bread from freshly milled flour in the outdoor kitchen. The smell wafts over to the market garden as I fill my harvesting basket with fresh sweet peas. 

The sun warms my face, the bees are buzzing from flower to flower, and I hear the squawk of a hen laying an egg. In this small place, at this very moment, we are here, united, and all is ok.

War time offers strange opportunities

Our garden in February.

It is municipal election day today and the skies are filled with jets screeching non-stop. I sit with my morning coffee and practise chicken therapy by relaxing with the hens. 

I suddenly hear a barrage of explosions nearby – and so do the hens. In synch, we move our necks, ears to the sky. “The sky is falling,” observes Henny Penny as she peeks up at the heavens. I agree.

War time offers strange opportunities. Our newest venture was adopting evacuated chickens from the northern front. Not only did these northern chickens suffer stress from rockets, explosions, and being transported en masse, they lived their whole lives in a factory farm stuffed into a cage no larger than a piece of paper. 

So when Amir arrived home at night with 13 chickens stuffed into cardboard boxes, we received trauma. I am now seeing first-hand how cruel and debilitating battery cages are for chickens. When we opened the coop door the next morning, we had 13 bedraggled chickens cowering in silence. They were filthy and had patches of red skin where feathers should be. 

We gently coaxed them outside into the sunshine and onto the soft earth. They shuffled out and immediately tried to cram into a cage that had metal bars for flooring. We shooed them out and presented them with fresh water, lots of grains and some organic leaves to boot. 

Skinny and weak, they just sat there. Their combs were downcast (a condition called comb collapse), and when they tried to take an uneasy step, their claw curled up into a tight ball before they placing it on the ground. 

Being cooped up in in tiny cages, these chickens had never walked, had never touched soft earth, had never spread their wings, and had never tasted a leaf or blade of grass. They were eerily silent. It was like watching chicken zombies.

They are now shedding non-stop, filling up our yard with white feathers. As their wings have only long flight feathers (probably due to the other feathers being rubbed off from the metal bars in their battery cage), they look skeletal. 

Fence patrol

We had to separate these newbies from our own tiny flock (three chickens and a verbose duck) with a fence. Our guys patroled up and down the length of this fence studying them with curiosity, probably wondering if these were chickens or not. (Our duck now thinks she is a chicken, so anything goes.)

It has now been close to a week since the factory farm hens arrived in a huddle on the coop floor, practically immobile. Their chicken instincts are slowly returning; they are now walking around, exploring more of the area each day. They still curl in their claws with each step but are moving a bit faster. 

The hens are now doing chicken things like scratching the ground, pecking, and fluttering their wings. We also offered them dust baths in various locations, but no takers so far. Compared to their former imprisonment and slavery, this could be a veritable chicken spa.

At night, they are not strong enough to fly up to the roosting  bar – and how would they even know about a ‘roosting bar’ when their life was lived in an area that was 94 square inches? When we introduce Penny our Pendesenca hen to the new flock, she will show them how to get up there (our duck and two Silkies will not be useful roosting role models).

King Albert the Silkie

We are hoping to make the big introduction later today. The grand tally will then be one Silkie rooster to a harem of 14 hens plus a duck/wannabe hen. Who would have thought that this once battered, bullied Silkie rooster would today be king of the roost? 

This newfound power has gone to his pea brain and he is now a bully. Puffed up, he asserts himself by strutting along the fence. When the new hens find their strength and can cluck, they may just tell him where to go and I hope they do!

I am procrastinating about voting in the elections today as I seriously feel that my honest and upfront duck could do a better job as mayor than the two sketchy candidates we have in Tzfat. 

The jets rip through the sky above. Henny Penny and I are cock our heads in unison. Unruffled and free, the northern rescue flock softly cluck to themselves, “Been there, done that,” and happily scratch at the damp earth with newly outstretched claws.

A Meditation on Weeds

There has been an abundance of rain this winter, especially in January. The soil is wet, heavy, fecund. The rain water gathers and forms small rivulets that meander down the slopes, gargling as they go. 

As soon as the rain pauses (and even during a light rain), I am out there, astounded by the rapid rate of growth, be it the vegetables, buds on the trees, wildflowers, mushrooms, and weeds. It is as if this much needed rain has placed nature on steroids rushing forth shoots, stalks, leaves, and flowers. To keep this abundance in check, armies of caterpillers squirm from their cocoons right onto a buffet of huge, juicy leaves. 

Observing this life force is a walking prayer of awe and gratitude. Within seconds, I bend down to pull out a weed, and then another, and another. I crawl through garden beds, hands muddied, knees soaked, flinging grass and dandelions over my head. 

I try to make made space around the bases of the trees and plants to give them light and nutrients that are hijacked by those uninvited weedy lodgers. It feels gratifying to have a tiny window of order and edge in this natural chaos, although with the next rain, those weed hijackers pop back. My weeding is a meditation practice. I hear bird song, touch and smell the rich soil, observe the insects busily working the earth and study new plants that shoot forth with incredible energy. 

And as I weed-meditate, I think. I hear jets screeching over my head, the occasional helicopter headed to the border or, G-d forbid, to a hospital. I am weeding in a war zone, and I head to this garden like a therapy couch. I weed for today and I plant for tomorrow. I do not know what this day or the next will bring, but nature keeps sprouting for the future, and I will follow suit. 

I often wonder if perhaps more people could benefit from being out here. Historically, the Jewish nation was connected to the land of Israel as farmers but were expelled. The European Jews once lived in small agricultural communities – and after the shtetls were obliterated, they fled to cities. And after time, they would always have to run for their lives. 

In many places, they became trades people as they could not own land. In the contemporary Jewish world, most children grow up indoors in classrooms and tread the pavement of city streets and play in plastic playgrounds. Parents push strollers along concrete and buy food in plastic packages. But what about connecting to the Good Land that we pray for several times a day and mourn for and fast for?

Here I am, plucking weeds and thinking. When the Jews returned to this same land, the kibbutzniks were farmers. They worked hard preparing the soil, tilling, and planting and watched the land come back to life with abundance.

Yet something, somewhere broke. We lost the connection and I don’t know why. Is it because most arable land here is disconnected from the owner’s home? Is it because land here is too expensive? Are we too urbanized? Too cerebral? Are Israelis searching for the Western dream of high tech for fulfilment, living in high-rise apartments? Connecting to Hashem’s natural bounty does not need a big piece of land: a small garden, a terrace or a balcony will do well.

All I know is that this land is filled with the goodness of G-d and is yearning for us to reconnect. One interesting repercussion of this war is that farmers no longer have Thai workers to help (I also wonder why Israelis do not like to do this work so we must bring in foreign agricultural workers). I think Sri Lankans are on their way to help, but in the interim, there was a call for help which was answered by all; yeshiva students were out in the fields picking citrus fruit while middle-aged women were tending to the strawberry fields and picking ginger. And they loved it!

Other foreigners arrived to help, including eager American cowboys wearing Stetson hats. I met Chris the Farmer, who came here from Ohio to help permaculture farms. He is not Jewish and has never been to Israel, yet here he is during the war, stopping his own work for months so he can offer a helping hand to organic farmers. This is true, brave giving.

I weed and I wonder. There are so many Jewish laws that deal with the land, yet religious students study them on a page sitting in a building. After time, they become a thin line on paper as opposed to a living furrow of seedlings in the ground. 

However, Judaism is connected to nature, and there is even a birthday just for the trees. On Tu B’shvat, which we celebrated one week ago, people plant trees, others enjoy fruit, nuts and wine at a seder, while most Jews know nothing at all about the holiday. 

Tu B’shvat comes at a time of cold, wet, and darkness. Leaves have shed from the deciduous trees leaving them naked, vulnerable, and barren looking. Unlike the other Jewish holidays that celebrate miracles and salvations, Tu B’shvat mysteriously celebrates a seemingly ‘dead’ tree and fruit that is not even in season. 

And here is the beauty. I learned here from Rov Daniel Katz that this is the time of year when the parched trees have received enough rain water to grow for the next year. The sap inside is rising, promoting buds, leaves, and fruit. 

We are that tree. And especially now, during the darkness and tears of war, death, and hopelessness, we too must dig deep and connect to an inner light akin to that sap. When we eat the fruit, we must envision that future time of abundance and connection right now. And it can only come from darkness and pain, symbolic of the trees’ hibernation.

The rain is still falling as I weed and I am observing the tiny new buds forming on the branches. I pray for a future of peace and abundance and for all to connect to that inner tree. 

And I envision a time when all with have the opportunity to connect with and ‘touch’ the beautiful Land of Israel with its budding trees, tap into its potential, and its miracles, hidden and revealed.