By the Rivers of Babylon
By the Rivers of Babylon
The date palm is mentioned in the
Tanach several times but following the Babylonian exile, the tree died out in the Israel. It was only in the 1930’s when Ben Zion Israeli, an ardent Ukrainian-born Zionist wanted to plant a Biblical garden in honor of Rachel Bluwstein, his late friend and fellow pioneer, that the date palm flourished in Israel again.
With a meagre amount of money and a truck assigned to him by David Ben Gurion, Ben Zion Israeli embarked on a dangerous drive to Babylon. His goal was to visit the impoverished and downtrodden Jewish community and bring back some offshoots of date palms.
Purim 2021 will be a tamer affair than what we’re used to. While 2020’s festival was the last dangerous gasp of the old normal replete with mixed drinks and droplets for many we now know what we’re dealing with. COVID is determined to put a damper on our typical revels.
But then, we’ve had a year to practice the art of socially distant events and we are a stiff-necked people.We’ve all got Zoom accounts by now, and so, the reading of the Megillah continues with a slew of virtual bacchanals. You can scroll (get it?) through a few of the options here.