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.