The Tree of Life

Ariel Sharon's dream. Special for Tu BiShvat

Future Head  (Source)

Burning but Not Consumed

You didn't expect this, did you? Wrong. Who knows better than I... After we grew so much together, after I climbed to the top in a Sisyphean ripening process, just before the final peak from which I would leap and transform the world, in a critical state - yet remarkably stable - you abandoned me. You reduced my mighty figure to a ball in the hands of Dr. Brain. You locked me in a room. You didn't feed me enough. I tried to fight. I tried to console myself. For man does not live by bread alone. Man is a tree of the field. But you put me in a pot and laughed until your stomachs hurt. Fat potato. Vegetables, man, vegetables. Take a fruit and be healthy for me. Would you believe it? A potato doesn't make you fat. Believing and sowing. Please do not uproot what is planted. Opposing uprooting. Contending with a green leaf. He doesn't snore, he saws. Want to hear a wooden joke? My bony self, laugh laugh, my bony self. The cynicism! You threw me in my old age into the dustbin of history. You named the Hiriya dump after me. And you snickered, all full of delight. You thought I didn't know? He would surely be turning in his grave, haha. Fools, I'm turning in my bed! I sleep for all of you. You repressed me deep in the subconscious of this country. So I dream its dreams, those you don't dare to. Its great dream, which turned into a nightmare. And your greatest nightmare is that I'll wake up. Sleep sleep children, the etrog [citron] is in the hospital, it didn't stop growing, and look at its br... Now who's disconnected here? Who lost their head? You thought you forgot, but my roots are already deep within you. The vast void I left in you refuses to be filled. I am here. Did you miss me?

Our Father Still Lives

Liars. Even Pinocchio the wooden puppet misses his grandfather. Perhaps you assumed I would simply wither and perish without you. Well, I have news for you, you pathological news lovers: I'm blooming! Tu BiShvat special - the country's most famous plant breaks silence and reveals the forbidden fruit. Maybe it's a late bloom, some would say too late, but I have seed for you. Who knows better than I that for you, as usual, everything is shit, but that's actually the best fertilizer, the most fertile soil for such ideas. And you will welcome me. If before you blessed the Creator of the fruit of the earth, now you'll bless Shehecheyanu [blessing for new experiences]. Because this time it's not you who changed. It's me. I, who all my life was so close to the living, suddenly found myself in the world of plants, and you treated me as inanimate. But silence is not an obligation, it's a right! It's a pity that many jump directly from the living to the inanimate, skipping the vital and so fertilizing stage of the plant. Yes, I know I was unripe for many years. My children's teeth were set on edge. The sabra [prickly pear, also slang for native Israeli] became a thorn in the ass. But the truly bitter disappointment is that nothing else grew here. Maybe because a completely different growth direction is needed, one that will make the desert bloom. Even my enemies would admit that I was always a wild, cancerous, predatory, and groundbreaking growth. I just needed the final mutation. Some will call the result a monster, but that's always what they call the next stage in evolution. Fools! For years I was your great unknown, your mythological X. But the righteous man knows the soul of his beast. It's the black hole I left behind, pulling you all into the abyss. So come, come to me. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. Vineyards and fields will still be planted from me. You will all still come to me in bed. So bring forth seed from me. Otherwise, you'll be like me: buried alive. Plants. You thought ill of me, but maybe we'll yet discover that you were right when you confined me to the coop. Because we're not talking about an old sleeping man who has become obsolete, but about a baby about to wake up. And now bring your ears close. I want to scream -

One Last Story Before Bedtime!

Have you ever thought what you would do in my place? You're wrong, you didn't think without a brain. So put yourself in my place, when everything was cut off at once on one Tu BiShvat. A holiday for trees. Only one who understands what I lost - everything I grew and elevated became an unbearable burden - can understand what I found. What seed remained of me, which turned into a bomb. I, the bulldozer who knew no walls or boundaries, found myself in a prison with no exit. Without possibility of pardon, in a bottomless pit, the depth of the fall equal to the height of the leap. A head without government, without day and without night, without man and without beast, and worst of all - without cattle. No more grabbing and devouring and grabbing and growing as much as you can. From all-consuming I rolled into a lump of flesh, like a log. I, who never stopped at red, or at orange, stopped at green! With no chance of seeing light again. Tearing webs within webs of sleep, but where is the spider? And I internalized that I would no longer wake up in reality, but I could - as sometimes happens - wake up in a dream. And beyond any ideological or other territory that can be conquered, I turned to the last direction someone like me is capable of turning. What doesn't go by force, and certainly not by brain, doesn't go on foot, doesn't go anywhere. It takes root. If every page is a branch that's cut, from me you can make a book. And since I was so limited in physical growth, and even intellectual, I was pushed with absolute unwillingness to the absolute final solution. Because even if I was expelled from all space, I still move in time, and with dizzying ease at that, and precisely because all ends have been exhausted, to the edge of the last page in history! One can be trapped in the unknown space between life and death. But maybe it's also an opportunity to match them up, and see what offspring will come from the union of these two. What infant will sprout beneath the sidewalk. How in terrible helplessness, and in a no less terrifying lust for life, it will break through the thick and endlessly black asphalt. Heavens! And you step on it. Again I was ahead of my time. But a leader's role is not to show others the way, but to be the way himself. After me: forward! Into the earth. When you wake up it will be too late. Only if the roots are deep in hell does the head reach paradise, and vice versa, for the roots to reach heaven the head must be in the ground. Someone needs to be the Nachshon [biblical figure known for bravery] who jumps in first, and therefore also takes the hardest hit. I'm asleep, but my brain is drilling! Because a prime minister must precede the body of the nation. Be the pioneer of the camp, the visionary who dares to dream before everyone. The prophet of a new way, and perhaps even - a new Torah.

The Master of Dreams

It is not good for the tree to be alone. I dreamed that my bed was lined with evil intentions - and this is, of course, the way to paradise. And this time it's allowed to steal from the tree in broad daylight, why not? Just not at night. If so, what are they hiding there in the dark, so alluring. Love? Bribery? Activity beyond borders? What could be so conquering - heart. By day they hate me, but at night... conquest of desire corrupts. Because when aspiring to rise above the highest, one must also know how to descend to the lowest, beneath the underwear - I just fall asleep and already they can't contain themselves. And in the darkness I discover that the snake is a branch of the tree, what a trick. And he challenges: What about the expulsion? Missing Eve? - No, just the calves. Vegetarianism is killing me. It's not the stomach turning, but the sword. And he softens: So did you come just to touch or to eat? And I try to reach out, to grab, to attain, to take, but it's already too late, all is darkness. The garden is locked. Of course, it's not who's inside that's trapped but who's outside. Outside the earth? I'm startled and wake from the slumber. I'm missing a critical branch, and the fruit, where is it? Thieves! I just fall asleep and already they can't contain themselves. And I look in all directions, 360 degrees - can't see anything. You wrapped me like an etrog, precious precious but so covered. And you buried me in the ground. Another would die, but I grow. My voice comes out to you from the ground, cursed is the ground for your sake, for you didn't cover me, but your nakedness. One leaf wasn't enough to cover your shame, you needed a whole tree, you're uncomfortable seeing an open garden. All my life I'll eat dust, but I just need to wait for you from below. For from dust you came and to me you shall return. The seeds of calamity were hidden here from the beginning, so keep burying your head in the sand. Every nation gets the leaders it deserves, and vice versa. You are my weeds and I am your rotten fruit. And our love will bloom forever. Idyllic, huh? A body without a head and a head without a body, what would you do, a wedding? No, a funeral. And I loved you!

Hear, O Israel

I am lonely, I am one. I am other gods, who brought you out of the house of masters. Make for yourself gods of masks on my face. I have eyes and you shall not see, you have a mouth and I cannot eat. You shall bear your neighbor's wife in vain. You shall murder your father and your mother that your days may be long under the ground which I give you, for I visit the iniquity of children upon fathers to those who love me, and do thousands to those who hate me. You shall afflict your neighbor until he lies. You shall have no other thieves before me. You shall covet your neighbor. You shall commit adultery on the Sabbath night to keep it holy. Six days you shall rest and be refreshed and on the seventh day you shall work. You, your servant, and your daughter your beast, and your son your stranger within your gates. Prune and get drunk in one entertainment. For in six days he made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day he slaughtered and tore: And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host, and he finished on the seventh day all his work. And he said, let the earth eat living creatures according to their kind, cattle and creeping things, and it was so. And he said, let the waters swallow swarming living creatures and let birds fly beneath the earth. And he extinguished the two great lights and the stars. And he said, let the waters rise from under the heavens and let the dry land vanish, and it was so. And he tore the firmament in the midst of the waters and did not separate between waters and waters. And he said let there be darkness and there was darkness, and he joined the light and the darkness. And he saw that it was bad, and there was evening and there was one last night. In the end, the abyss swallowed the heavens and the earth.

The Mouth of the Abyss

And now hear the word of the abyss, give me a stage! Bring me a great calf. More than the cow wants to kill, the calf wants to die. This is the statute of the cow, take for yourselves a red Torah: Go forth to your birthplace to your father's house. Take now your father, your only one whom you hated and bring him down to me to Sheol beneath one of the mountains which I will not tell you, lest I make an end of you. For all these things he will bring you to judgment - blessed is the judge of the dead.

The Fat Land of Israel

And I will betroth you to me with a ring of handcuffs, and I will betroth you with forbidden love, and I will betroth you with life imprisonment. I have forgotten for you the kindness of your youth, your following after me in the wilderness, only 40 km. Therefore, you shall yet give me drink with tears. I will yet embrace you with my branches and give you my sweet fruit. You shall be to me as a body and I will be to you as a brain. I will help you forget. And you will use force. You had mercy on me, you judged me, you had mercy without judging and judged without mercy. But I will judge you with mercy. I sentence you to euthanasia. A second Holocaust. Listen to the wooden prophet. A second Holocaust. A second Holocaust. Holocaust, Holocaust, second Holocaust. Who's coming? A second Holocaust. Coming coming a second Holocaust. Come Holocaust, come great one. Come bride, come bride.