The Book of Trees

by Leanne Lieberman

Torah—the law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures; the first part of the Hebrew Bible

  Tu B’shvat—“New Year of the Trees,” a Jewish holiday celebrated by planting trees and eating dried fruits and nuts

  yeshiva—a seminary or school for the study of Jewish texts

  Yiddish—a language spoken by Eastern European Jews

  zeydi—the Yiddish word for “grandfather”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Like many young North American Jews, I grew up knowing very little about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. As a teenager I thought Israel was unpopulated until the Jews returned in the early twentieth century. When I visited Israel in 1995 as a university student, I had just read Leon Uris’s Exodus, and I was thrilled to think of my visit to Israel as a homecoming. During my stay, I gradually became more aware of the political realities plaguing Israel, especially as terrorist attacks increased. However, it wasn’t until I took a graduate course exploring the memory of Jews and Palestinians that I started to understand how Israel was created, and how the Jewish return to Israel uprooted native Palestinian populations. I was appalled to learn that more than 600,000 Palestinians had been forced into exile in 1948 and that many were still living as refugees in what had once been their own homeland.

  I struggled with my new knowledge. I loved Israel and I wanted to believe Israel had a heroic and honorable history. How could I, a Jew, criticize the state after the centuries of oppression Jews had endured? Eventually, I decided to embrace the Jewish tradition of fighting for social justice and write this book. I believe Israel will be a stronger, more peaceful country when it follows international law and protects the human rights of all peoples within its borders. I pray for peace, but I believe it will only come when the occupation is ended.

  Although I read many different books and articles during my research, I was particularly influenced by Carol Bardenstein’s article “Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory” (in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, edited by Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer), Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree and Jasmine Habib’s Israel, Diaspora and the Routes of National Belonging.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to my talented Toronto writing group: Elizabeth MacLeod, Dianne Scott, Roswell Spafford, Ania Szado, Elsie Sze and Anne Warrick. In Kingston my friends Dorit Naaman and Sarah Tsiang also gave me valuable feedback.

  I am indebted to Professor Lorenzo Buj for his course on memory, which got me interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

  Thanks to my editor, Sarah Harvey, for helping bring this book into focus.

  I am extremely grateful to the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

  Special thanks to Tawfiq Zayyad’s widow, Naela Zayyad, for granting me permission to quote from her husband’s poem “On the Trunk of an Olive Tree,” originally published in al-A’mal al-Kamila (Complete Works) by Dar al-Aswar Publishers.

  Lastly, many thanks to my husband, Rob, for enduring many conversations like this:

  Me: So I’m thinking about Mia.

  Him: Who?

  Me: You know, the main character of my book.

  Him: Her again? Still?

  Rob, your patience and support is much appreciated.

  LEANNE LIEBERMAN is the author of Gravity, a Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Teens. Leanne is from Vancouver but now lives in Kingston, Ontario, with her husband and two sons. She lived in Israel in 1995 and again in 1999.