{"id":38329,"date":"2022-02-25T01:52:15","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T09:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=38329"},"modified":"2022-02-23T16:16:49","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T00:16:49","slug":"tree-poses-quandary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2022\/02\/25\/tree-poses-quandary\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree poses quandary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Sherman wanders through an Israeli pine forest in search of his tree. (photo by John Minh Tran)<\/em><\/p>\n

My Tree<\/em>, a film by Jason Sherman on his moral dilemma over having had a tree planted in his name in a Jewish National Fund forest, screens at the Salt Spring Film Festival March 6, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

Sherman grew up in a Jewish home in Toronto. \u201cLike my brothers before me, I had a bar mitzvah\u2026. On that day of my becoming a man \u2013 at the age of 13 \u2013 I was given a number of presents,\u201d writes Sherman in his director\u2019s statement. \u201cThere were books of Jewish learning and culture; there was money; and there was a tree. Or rather, there was a certificate telling me that a tree had been planted in my name in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

He forgot about the certificate until about 40 years later, on his first trip to Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I wandered the tourist sites, traipsing around religious Jerusalem, secular Tel Aviv and mystical Masada \u2026 I felt the pull of kinship and familiarity,\u201d he writes. \u201cBut I also felt a kind of disconnect, wondering if my feelings for the place were genuine or imposed. I got to wondering what my real connection was to the land. It was then that I remembered the tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

After much research and metaphorical digging, he determines that the likeliest location of his tree is a conservation area called Canada Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere, I learn a disturbing new fact about my tree: it\u2019s part of a massive forest that\u2019s covering up the remains of an Arab village that was destroyed in 1967, its thousands of inhabitants sent on the road, never permitted to return.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also learn that this covering up of depopulated Arab villages is part of a pattern that stretches back to 1948, during the war that established Israeli statehood. These revelations lead me to ask a number of painful questions with people back in Canada. Did my parents know about the village beneath the forest when they donated a tree for me there? What is my responsibility for that tree?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherman, who is an award-winning playwright, says his aim is not journalistic. \u201cThis is not a muckraking, finger-pointing documentary about the dark history of Israel\u2019s tree planting program but rather a personal story \u2026 that asks its audience to confront uncomfortable historical truths, and to decide for themselves how to respond to those truths.<\/p>\n

For tickets to My Tree<\/em>, visit artspring.ca\/event\/salt-spring-film-festival-my-tree<\/a>. For more about the film festival, which runs March 1-6, go to saltspringfilmfestival.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Courtesy Salt Spring Film Festival<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Sherman wanders through an Israeli pine forest in search of his tree. (photo by John Minh Tran) My Tree, a film by Jason Sherman on his moral dilemma over having had a tree planted in his name in a Jewish National Fund forest, screens at the Salt Spring Film Festival March 6, 7 p.m. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[4668,21264,60,21271,21272,6706],"class_list":["post-38329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-israeli-arab-conflict","tag-jason-sherman","tag-jnf","tag-salt-spring-film-festival","tag-ssff","tag-trees"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}