Consider the lemon tree

Recently, as he promoted his “Restoring Courage” event in Jerusalem in August, Glenn Beck recalled the moving, meaningful and important movie Schindler’s List. His guests shared stories of courage in saving lives of Jews during WWII.

The safety and security of the Jewish people and the state of Israel is one near to American hearts for deeply human and compelling reasons, even if you sidestep the loaded topic of biblical history and prophecy that Beck is invoking.

Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree tells part of the history of the Jewish people during the establishment of the State of Israel and the central conflict in the Middle East through the very personal history one home in Ramallah, built by an Arab family who was later forced by events to leave it.

It tells the story of a Bulgarian Jewish family who fled Europe after the war to Israel with nothing but the dream of returning to their ancient homeland after the horror they had endured. In the tumult of politics, people and their imperfection, Jewish families were allowed to claim homes that had been left by fleeing Palestinians.

It tells of the lemon tree planted in the backyard of this home by the Arab family who had to leave it.

The adult daughter of the Jewish immigrants who had claimed the home would consider two histories of the land many years later after having been visited by the son of the family who had built the home: "I had to acknowledge that this is my childhood home, my parents lived here until they died, my memories are all here, but that this house was built by another family, and their memories are here. I had to acknowledge absolutely all of it." The visit was the beginning of a difficult, challenging friendship between the two.

The son returned to be questioned by his family about his visit to the home they had not seen since being forced to leave:

Did the light still stream in through the south windows in the afternoon? Were the pillars on the gate still standing straight? Was the front gate still painted olive green? Was the paint chipping? If it still is, when you go back you can bring, a can of paint to make it new again; you can bring shears and cut the grass growing up along the stone lath. How is the lemon tree, does it look nice? Did you bring the fruit? Did you rub the leaves and smell them, did your fingers smell like fresh-cut lemons?

The tragedy of the Middle East is deep and wide. It has planted much hatred which has since gone to seed. The Jewish people and the Palestinian people know both the tragedy and the hatred. In time, the victim becomes the aggressor, and back again the victim in an endless spin of loss, heartache, blame, retribution, repeat.

We cannot afford to look at the situation from a comfortable vantage point – one that starts the story from the transgression that most favors “our side” and pretends that what came before doesn’t exist; ignoring facts along the way that don’t confirm our righteousness. This is not a comfortable story if you tell it truly. Telling comfortable stories only serve ultimately to accelerate tragedy.

In his presentation Beck warned, as he is prone to do, not to blur the line between good and evil. A world view that places all evil over there (whether “there” is across the street, across the aisle or across the Israeli West Bank barrier) while all goodness resides here is self-deceiving, self-serving, belies the teachings of faith and only serves to pour gasoline on what is already well beyond combustible.

And what connects us? The same thing that separates us. This land.

"Our enemy," the Jewish daughter said softly, "is the only partner we have."

This is usually true in epic, entrenched conflict… if you look closely enough to see the lemon tree.


“Yes” on gain, “no” on pain

There’s some wisdom (and yes, some bad language) in this commentary delivered by Bill Maher last night:

Stop believing you can solve your problems by electing a superhero… Here in California, we experimented with making an action hero our leader. He was going to build roads and schools, cut taxes and balance the budget. How? Simple because he was a hulking man monster who could bend lampposts… Is it Arnold Schwarzeneggerâ€™s fault that California now has a worse credit rating than Louisiana, a state thatâ€™s half underwater and half in the bag? Not really. This is a man who came to America with nothing but a jar of protient powder and a nice jar of 36Dâ€™s and became a Hollywood action star despite never learning how to speak English.

No one can govern this state because itâ€™s illegal to do it. We govern by ballot initiative and we only write two kinds of those: Spend money on things I like and donâ€™t raise my taxes. We vote â€œyesâ€ on gain, â€œnoâ€ on pain. This is why Americaâ€™s founders wanted a representative democracy, because they knew if you gave the average guy a change, heâ€™d vote for a fantasyland with no taxes, free beer and [rated R].

And California used to be like the rest of America, following the instructions in the constitution and everything. But then we chucked that and now our state is governed by special interest people standing in front of the supermarket with clipboards asking â€œwill you sign this petition to make earthquakes illegal?â€ Theyâ€™re really starting to bother me. And Proposition 14C which mandates 2 weeks paid leave for hangovers. And universal teeth whitening paid for by farts. So California, which Iâ€™m sad to tell you is usually ahead of the rest of America, will probably go bankrupt. Weâ€™ll probably be closing the schools, but youâ€™ll want to keep your kids at home anyway because weâ€™ll also be closing the prisons and letting all the rapists out.

Truth is, Even a real superhero couldnâ€™t get us out the mess weâ€™re in now. Superman could stop bullets and crush coal to make diamonds between the cheeks of his ass, but he canâ€™t help us. He works for a newspaper, he needs a job. Batman canâ€™t help us because he canâ€™t get parts for his big stupid American car. And Wonder Woman canâ€™t help us because, well, we donâ€™t allow gays in uniform.