The Jewish Power Blog: Ruling the Earth
Tu BiShvat offers an opportunity to reflect on Zionism’s ambivalent relationship to human power in nature. As I sit in traffic on the ever expanding network of highways, next to a shopping mall parking lot that I’m sure wasn’t here last time I drove by, I often find myself humming “Big Yellow Taxi:”
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. (Joni Mitchell,1970)
Which brings to mind “Morning Song,” (1934) by the great 20th century Israeli poet and songwriter Nathan Alterman, that was sung unironically by generations of school children:
We’ll dress you in a gown of concrete and cement,
And we’ll spread for you carpets of garden.
The Zionist pioneers of the turn of the 20th century were driven by two back-to-the-land visions that only later were seen to be in conflict: back to nature – and back to work. The settlers of yore were smitten by the beauty of the landscape and its historical echoes. They saw themselves as returning to a pure, primeval, existence in the landscape of our collective memory. One of those pioneers, Zalman Shazar (1889-1974, third president of Israel), remembered a hike above the Kinneret with Rachel (Bluwstein, the poet), who climbed up into a carob tree and raised her voice in song… “We heard not only her voice but a powerful echo responding: the whole landscape sang in ancient Sephardi Hebrew… as if our far-off ancestors … who went out into these mountains on some day of joy or mourning…had hidden those…sounds in the crevices of the rocks to be preserved there till the day of deliverance came.” (Morning Stars, 1967, p. 219)
The young Zionists were obsessed with hiking the length and breadth of the land; the annual school [camping] trip became a sacred national institution. Whole curricula in “land-knowledge” were translated from German, following the lead of romantic European homeland studies. A century later, my children, in high school, had to pass a test in wildflower identification.
However, another important component of the Zionist vision was to nurture a “New Jew” – strong, self-reliant, brave, sun-tanned, rooted in the soil, and productive (as opposed to the stereotype of the “Old Jew” – the luftmensch). And while to city dwellers agriculture feels like a return to nature, in fact, agriculture is about battling against nature: diverting streams, draining swamps, clearing land for crops, building roads and villages, depleting soil, killing predators. Thus, the vision of productivity – and the hubris of thinking we could “conquer” the natural characteristics of the land – collided with the love for the natural landscape, and led to a number of costly mistakes; for example, draining the Hula swamp, and planting extensive monoculture forests, and encouraging the planting of water-intensive crops. And that same vision and hubris, it seems, continue to guide us in constantly expanding the highway network while giving public transportation short shrift; and allowing suburban and exurban sprawl of single family homes (full disclosure: like the one I live in) to gobble up still more precious green space so some of us can live “in nature.”
Israel is a microcosm of the globe: We humans tend think that we have unlimited power to shape the natural world to meet our needs – until we run up against the limits. Whatever we break, or use up, we assume we can remedy by a new technology, so why turn back? So here we are with the highest traffic density in the OECD – which is intuitively obvious to every driver (we even invented WAZE to tell us how late we’ll be to wherever we’re trying to get to); polluted rivers and air; sinkholes around the receding Dead Sea; dying coral reefs in Eilat; trash mountains rising above the Galilean horizon.
For a while (2001-6), Israel had a “Commissioner for Future Generations,” whose office was tasked with advising the Knesset on the long-term consequences of legislation, and recommending new legislation to preserve the land and its resources. Those who argued (e.g., Yariv Levin!) that our legislators are perfectly capable of watching out for future generations without professional help succeeded in eliminating the position. Looking around, I wonder if those future generations will thank them.
In 1908, the JNF and the Teachers’ Union initiated the custom of festive tree planting outings by school children on Tu BiShvat. Today, we mostly celebrate Tu BiShvat in our restored homeland by eating dried fruits (most of which are imported from Turkey), commemorating the diaspora custom of eating the fruits of Israel that could only be obtained there in dried form; meanwhile, the markets here are full of a variety of fresh local seasonal fruit. In any case, while we’re enjoying them, it would be well for us to remember this midrash:
When the Holy One Blessed be He created the first man, He showed him all the trees in the Garden of Eden and said to him: Behold how beautiful and pleasant are all my creations. Everything I created – for you I created it; take care not to destroy or spoil My world, for if you do, there is no one to set it right after you. (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13)
… because you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.