I was ready to prove myself as a strong, hard-working, capable olive picker. as I struggled to meet a deadline, then risen at dawn to drive over two hours to this distant valley. I wanted him to know I’d gone to bed at two a.m. I was chagrined that he took us for princesses. They opened a mehadrin café in Beit She’an, you know.” Yaakov thanked us for our work, before remarking, “I’m sure you girls want to go off now and enjoy a coffee. We sat down and began combing the stems industriously, using little plastic rakes that looked like they’d been borrowed from a kindergarten sandpit, enjoying a good schmooze as we worked.Īn hour later, we’d finished combing all the branches, separated out the twigs and leaves, and bagged the olives in woven sacks.
#Retrace my family tree how to
Three frum mothers from the city, one among us expecting good news, our hands lily-white, our nails smooth, our clothes pristine.Ī man of few words, Yaakov led us to a shady spot and showed us how to remove olives from the branches he’d pruned off the trees. No doubt we didn’t present a picture of promising farm laborers. Sixty-something years later, Yaakov’s weathered face broadcasted his skepticism as he surveyed the three of us with a dubious eye. Conditions were difficult in those early days of the State of Israel, so his parents sent him to Kibbutz Mesilot, hoping he’d gain a stable education and future. Though her father was the image of a classic kibbutznik, Tamar informed us that he’d been born in Iraq into a religious family. Another neighbor also asked to join us, and that’s how Chana, Tamar, and I found ourselves meeting up with Tamar’s father, Yaakov, by a cluster of olive trees deep inside the kibbutz grounds one autumn morning. To my surprise, Tamar immediately warmed to my suggestion of an olive picking road trip. For years I’d wanted to produce my own oil from the beautiful and abundant olive trees that surround me here in Eretz Yisrael. When Tamar told me she gets olive oil from her father, who picks and presses it himself, I saw an opportunity. Tamar was my neighbor in Ramat Beit Shemesh she’d made the journey from secular kibbutznik to frum suburban mommy. to drive all the way to Kibbutz Mesilot in the Beit She’an Valley. They were the reason we’d woken up at five a.m. Then we hurried on toward our destination: the olive trees. We paused for a moment, picturing Tamar as a little girl, living there among her peers - learning, playing, and sleeping by their side - while her parents inhabited a bungalow five minutes away. “That’s the Children’s House where I grew up. “You see that building,” said Tamar, pointing to a squat, ‘60s-style house, as we walked through the grounds of the kibbutz. My quest to create my own olive oil to light our menorah
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