Gardening in the Time of Genocide

The seeds: 

[1] Martin Luther is often quoted as saying something like, “If I knew the world were ending tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today.” Luther didn’t say or write that,[i] but it is a variant of a longstanding saying in both Judaism and Islam: the tradition of the sapling. Different versions are attributed variously to the Prophet Muhammed, to a rabbi who converted to Islam and became a companion of the Prophet Muhammed, and to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, among others. The precise nature of the apocalyptic event varies: the world might be ending, the Antichrist might be coming, or the Messiah may appear.

[2] Bilal Muhammed and Jessie Davis, writing for the Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies, argue, “It is reported …  that the Prophet Muḥammad said: ‘If the [Day of] Resurrection were established upon one of you, and in his hand is a sapling, then he should plant it.’” They write that another source attributes the saying to “… ʿAbdullah b. Salām, the Medinan rabbi-turned-Muslim companion of Muḥammad. He reportedly says: ‘If you hear that the Antichrist has appeared, and you were planting a sapling, then go ahead and plant it, for people will still have livelihood thereafter.’”[ii]

[3] Muhammed and Davis also point to the Jewish tradition that attributes a similar saying to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai (30 BC – 90 CE): “If you are holding a sapling in your hand and someone tells you, ‘Come quickly, the Messiah is here!’, first finish planting the tree and then go to greet the Messiah.”[iii]

[4] Lesli Koppelman Ross also tells this story of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, and she adds, “As the Talmud relates, the righteous man Honi once encountered a man planting a carob tree. ‘How long will it take to bear fruit?’ he inquired. ‘About 70 years,’ the man replied. ‘So you think you will live long enough to taste its fruits?’ The man explained, ‘I have found ready-grown carob trees in the world. As my forefathers planted them for me, so I plant for my children.’”[iv]

[5] Muhammed and Davis observe, “Regardless of who got the saying from where, the cross pollination that existed between different religious communities during the so-called Islamic Golden Age reflects an interconnectedness that is often missed by those who only specialize in one religious tradition.”[v]

[6] Although Jesus doesn’t offer much horticultural advice specific to trees (other than cursing a fig tree in Mark 11:14), he does have some things to say in Matthew 25 about seeing our vocation to care for others against the backdrop of the eschaton:

[7] “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”

[8] In each of the Abrahamic traditions, the obligation to care for others does not dissipate during turbulent times; instead, it intensifies. Some instances are more straightforward than others: we can respond when access to safe drinking water for thousands of people has been eliminated by a hurricane. We can help a struggling loved one pay their rent. Reorganizing our already-divided communities so that everyone can eat is significantly more complicated. Protecting our neighbors who live halfway across the world can seem almost impossible.

[9] Luther is perhaps not our best guide in this process of discerning our vocation to love our more distant neighbors. The misattribution of a Jewish and Muslim saying to Luther might or might not have pleased him. Luther is remarkably frank in his anti-Semitic tract “On the Jews and Their Lies”; as I’ve observed to students when assigning that text in class, you could read it aloud during Kristallnacht — an event that coincided with Luther’s birthday — with no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. It is a road map for cultural and bodily genocide. The ELCA issued a statement in 1994, and reaffirmed it in 2001, denouncing anti-Semitism and addressing this text in particular.[vi]  This statement reads in part, “In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther’s own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations.”[vii]

[10] Luther’s writing on Islam is not much better; Volker Greifenhagen writes that although Luther advocated for publication of the Qur’an, and even wrote the preface to a German translation, “…it should come as no surprise that Luther was not motivated by any irenic or pluralistic notions to insist on the publication of the Qur’an. … In his preface, he explained the benefits of studying non-Christian religions: not to genuinely learn about one’s neighbour’s faith, but rather to confirm the faith of Christians over against the perversity of other religions, which were all presumed and prejudged as stratagems of Satan.”[viii] This is hardly a model for contemporary interfaith engagement, and we now recognize it as wildly misguided.

[11] Despite this, Luther’s name has become attached to a piece of wisdom that originated amongst Muslims and Jews. In the Christian version, the sapling has become an apple tree, presumably to align with the gloss on Genesis 3 that identifies the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil as an apple. Historically, it was Katherine von Bora Luther, Martin Luther’s wife, who tended their family’s garden and orchard, so it’s unlikely he would regularly have been out on tree-planting duty.[ix] Luther deciding knowingly on the day before the end of the world that now is the time to start his vocation as a gardener is counterintuitive; this is the point. In the face of total disaster, the saying suggests, continue to work for a peaceful and abundant future.+

Planting:

[12] Apocalypse aside, why would anyone plant a tree, or a tomato plant, or okra, or cilantro? Gardening serves different purposes for different people: it can provide food, beauty, solace, good exercise, and sometimes community. I started gardening alongside Muslim, Jewish, and Christian gardeners — who quickly became friends — in the spring of 2023, when I became a volunteer at a donation garden hosted by a local interfaith organization. Members of a mosque, a synagogue, and a church, respectively, share the work in this garden, along with community members who want to join in. Participating in a donation garden, where all the food is grown for others, is one way to respond faithfully to the obligation to feed the hungry. A donation garden resembles a community garden, where gardeners share space and resources to grow whatever they want. Many community gardens also include opportunities to grow food to be donated, or to donate the food that you’ve grown for yourself when you have extra —the categories and practices are flexible. This interfaith garden also aims at establishing cross-religious relationships: sometimes we say, aware of how trite it sounds, “The garden also grows friendships!”

[13] I went because I like gardening but also because I was lonely and sad. I felt like much of the social fabric I’d relied upon for conversation, mutual support, and friendship had unraveled completely during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’d also moved to a new neighborhood, and I felt isolated. I was hedging my bets, however: I wanted to make only the most minimal commitment, and this seemed like a good choice. “I can go and someone will tell me to weed,” I thought. “I bet I can just weed for a while.” (Spoiler: I did go and weed, and I kept weeding, and it did not end there.)

[14] There is a lot writing about spirituality and gardening, and there is plenty of biblical support for engaging in agriculture. There is even more scripture emphasizing the duty of Jews and Christians to care for their neighbors by feeding the hungry, including the strangers and immigrants in their midst – particularly vulnerable women and children. Consider the book of Ruth, where Boaz, the prosperous farmer whose relationship with Ruth, the poor immigrant, begins because he is a generous man. His goodness is clear in the text; he follows Jewish teaching in permitting Ruth and other poor people gather food that he and his farm workers have planted and tended. He even ensures that she is safe and has access to water during the hot days of harvesting.

[15] Muslims have similar scriptural edicts. To give just one example of this teaching in action, SAPA, an organization of physicians of Sudanese descent living in the U.S., argues for the value of its hunger relief programs: “The Holy Quran says, ‘Or to give food in times of famine, to an orphaned relative, or to a poor person in distress, and — above all — to be one of those who have faith and urge each other to have perseverance and urge each other to have compassion; these are the people of the right.’ (Al-Balad, Qur’an 90: 14 – 18).”[x] The organization lays out a compelling argument for the importance of charity to Muslims, including this hadith from the Prophet Mohammed: “Whichever believer feeds a hungry believer, Allah feeds him from the fruits of Paradise on the Day of Resurrection.”[xi]

[16] But I started volunteering less from a spirit of generosity than because I thought it might help me see my way out of a dark place. I was not thinking very carefully about who would eat the food that the garden produced.

[17] One day in April, a week or two after I’d shyly showed up for the first time to volunteer, I set to work transplanting seedlings. Onion seedlings are tiny in the early stages, and my job was to move them from the substrate in which the seeds had been planted into a larger seed container with richer soil. Although the other gardeners chatted and the atmosphere was friendly, I became transfixed by these little, fragile plants that required so much care if they were going to survive to the summer’s harvest. I handled each plant with extraordinary caution.

[18] I was feeling raw. Earlier in the month, a student at the Lutheran college that both of my children were attending was arrested based on evidence that he may have been planning a mass shooting. (At the time of this writing, some felony charges have been dismissed, but the young man is still expected to stand trial for other charges.) I wasn’t thinking about Luther at all, but about the end of my world: even the terrifying reality of a global pandemic was not as crushing to me as the news of a young person planning to kill others, possibly including my children and their friends and classmates and sweethearts and teachers. One aspect of the story was especially devastating: the news reported that the arrested student had written down in a notebook his findings that shots successfully aimed at the target’s pelvis would ensure that the person bled to death before help could reach them. I could not stop thinking about this young man, his family, and my children’s brave faces when we FaceTimed. Later I visited my kids and heard that the quick response of the college community — and specifically the first person to see alarming evidence, a member of the campus’s custodial staff — had rightly been identified as acts of love that had possibly saved many lives.

[19] No one was hurt, at least physically. Many students had previous direct experience with an active shooter event, and of course many of them had been trained since early childhood in strategies that supposedly increase their chances of surviving a school shooting. It was difficult to go back into my own classroom that week, and learning that the mother of the student arrested at my children’s school was also a college professor made all of my anxiety turn in on itself: I kept thinking how about how terrible it would be to worry for years about your child’s safety at school, to worry about the students you teach and about yourself and your co-workers, only to get the news that your own child has been arrested.

[20] I kept reminding myself that love had saved everyone from harm, including the terrible harm of engaging in violence against one’s classmates.

Tending:

[21] In the garden, things were moving along. I was familiar with growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and a variety of herbs purchased from the nursery, but I had not often grown food from seed and had no experience with eggplant or melons or potatoes or onions or a dozen other crops we were growing. When I was given the task of planting okra seeds, I was doubtful that the seeds I planted would germinate. Luckily no one told the seeds: they grew just as they were supposed to, although a little close together because I had planted them that way. Every time I went to the garden that summer, I spent time looking at the okra, astonished that seeds I had planted had become this beautiful plant, with gorgeous blossoms and delicious produce.

[22] In October 2023, the garden was winding down for the year while the gardeners — like everyone — watched the news stories about kidnapped Israeli Jews, attacked and held hostage by Hamas. It was heartbreaking. Jewish friends broke down, wondering if they and their children and grandchildren were safe. Relationships between people of different religious traditions felt more important and more intense. We kept harvesting and eventually put the garden to bed for the winter.

[23] As Israel’s military response to Hamas expanded into attacks on civilians, the gardeners kept watching. One of the gardeners organized the rest of us and we attended Friday prayer at the mosque to show support. We met in December for coffee and to exchange ideas for the upcoming gardening season: much of the planning for any garden happens when there’s hardly any gardening to do at all. We kept in touch with each other, but I did not know how to talk about the escalating war.

[24] Every detail of what happened to every person harmed in this conflict was as bad as anything I could ever have worried about for my children, and worse. My children continued studying in their safe, comfortable school while every university in Gaza was destroyed.[xii] All those people: friends and classmates and sweethearts and teachers, scattered and displaced, suffering or dead.

[25] This was realized apocalypse. This was cultural and bodily genocide. Journalists and ordinary people alike transmitted images and descriptions of the harm done to human beings that were so horrifying I could only absorb them a few at a time. Often a person’s story would gain attention and days later they would be dead, or their children would be dead. Even as Jewish hostages continued to be held captive, children in Gaza were facing limb amputations, often without adequate anesthesia or follow-up care.[xiii] Palestinian people were buried in rubble or burned alive. Places that should have served as shelter from bombing — like hospitals or houses of worship — could not, because they were relentlessly attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces. As of this writing, only half the hospitals in Gaza are even partly intact, and those have extremely limited access to necessary supplies.[xiv] It got harder to talk about. The word coming from both Jewish and Muslim friends was that this was an incredibly difficult time and that people needed space to comfort each other within the confines of their own communities.

[26] Early the next spring, another gardener, J, and I started Master Gardener training in our county. The Master Gardener program is available in every state, usually through the county extension office; people with some gardening or landscaping knowledge complete a course and a forty-hour internship to become Master Gardeners, who are then available as resources for the community. It seemed like a good way to improve my knowledge and skills. J and I were both following intentionally in the footsteps of A, a longtime garden volunteer who was the only resident Master Gardener at the donation garden. The course was interesting and challenging, the instructors and guest lecturers engaging and extremely well-versed in areas that I knew only a little about. I joined another donation garden for my internship, and when the academic year ended in May I began gardening four days a week—two days at each garden—usually for two or three hours at a time. It felt good to grow food for my neighbors.

[27] As the summer of 2024 progressed, J and A — Muslim and Jewish, respectively — began to talk. J was in constant distress about the ongoing attacks on civilians in Palestine, her husband’s home country. A was deeply concerned about the loss of innocent life and the lack of clear pathways for her, as a Jew, to express her point of view without alienating Jewish friends and loved ones. They started to plan. By midsummer they were gathering a group together from the participants in the interfaith organization – members of the affiliated mosque, church, and synagogue – and invited me to join as a moderator. I already knew both J and A from the garden and would have said yes on the strength of that connection alone, but their plan also seemed good. I joined the existing group and helped members plan for growth and outreach; we decided to spend four meetings teaching ourselves, and invited guests, about the last hundred years of history in Palestine, and then in the New Year to move toward action, in whatever way the group sees fit.

Harvest:

[28] We are a somewhat shaggy bunch: some folks from Jewish Voices for Peace, some Catholic nuns, a couple of professors, some Jews and some Christians, some Palestinian Muslims and some Muslims whose families originated in other regions, many but not all connected to the interfaith organization. More and more friends are joining. The group skews younger and younger each meeting, which I take as a good sign: having elders from a community is a powerful sign of wisdom and commitment, but having young people suggests there is hope for the future and energy for action.

[29] Here is what I’m hearing, in the midst of this apocalypse: a young Pakistani-American Muslim man saying firmly that Diaspora Jews are not the same as the state of Israel and are not responsible for its actions. Grown men describing the loss of hundreds of Palestinian family members. A young Jewish woman writing a carefully reasoned letter to be read aloud, asking that no one be killed in her name. Christians advocating for a ceasefire; a professor at a local Jesuit university saying that he’s here to practice what he preaches when he teaches about ethical responsibilities. Everyone agrees that a ceasefire is necessary. Everyone agrees that the loss of life — Jewish life and Palestinian life — must stop. One man says again and again, “The people just want to live.” He means Palestinians, and the young soldiers drafted to serve in the IDF. Everyone wants the Jewish hostages to go home and wants Palestinians to be safe. At every meeting, at least one person cries.

[30] Although no one has quoted it during a meeting, my thoughts return every time we get together to this passage from Micah 4:

³ He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
⁴ but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid.

[31] Whether we imagine Luther planting an apple tree or listen to the words from the Prophet Mohammed and Rabbi ben Zakkai instructing us in the tradition of the sapling, our obligation to protect our neighbors and work towards peace and plenty is the same.

[i] “Luther in Eisenach.” Martin Luther in Eisenach. Accessed November 1, 2024. https://www.lutherhaus-eisenach.com/luther-in-eisenach-en.

[ii] Bilal Muhammed and Jessie Davis, “Planting a Tree in the End Times: An Analysis of an Islamic and Jewish Saying,” Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies, January 1, 2023, https://bliis.org/essay/planting-a-tree-in-the-end-times-an-analysis-of-an-islamic-and-jewish-saying/

[iii] Bilal Muhammed and Jessie Davis, “Planting a Tree in the End Times: An Analysis of an Islamic and Jewish Saying,” Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies, January 1, 2023, https://bliis.org/essay/planting-a-tree-in-the-end-times-an-analysis-of-an-islamic-and-jewish-saying/

[iv] Ross, Lesli Koppelman. “Planting Trees for Tu Bishvat.” My Jewish Learning, February 25, 2019. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/planting-trees-for-tu-bishvat/.

[v] Bilal Muhammed and Jessie Davis, “Planting a Tree in the End Times: An Analysis of an Islamic and Jewish Saying,” Berkeley Institute for Islamic Studies, January 1, 2023, https://bliis.org/essay/planting-a-tree-in-the-end-times-an-analysis-of-an-islamic-and-jewish-saying/

[vi] “Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish …” ELCA.org. Accessed November 1, 2024. https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Declaration_Of_The_ELCA_To_The_Jewish_Community.pdf.

[vii] Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish …” ELCA.org. Accessed November 1, 2024. https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Declaration_Of_The_ELCA_To_The_Jewish_Community.pdf.

[viii] Greifenhagen, Franzvolker. “Why Did Luther Want the Qur’an to Be Published?” Luther College University of Regina and Luther College High School Regina, SK. Accessed November 1, 2024. https://www.luthercollege.edu/university/academics/impetus/winterspring-2017/table-talks/why-did-luther-want-the-quran-to-be-published/.

[ix] Thigpen, Paul. “Martin Luther’s Later Years: A Gallery – Family Album.” Christianity Today, March 2, 2016. https://www.christianitytoday.com/1993/07/martin-luthers-later-years-gallery-family-album

[x] Mahnoor. “Importance & Rewards of Feeding the Poor in Islam [Quran & Hadith].” SAPA USA, October 1, 2024. https://sapa-usa.org/feeding-the-poor-in-islam/#:~:text=The%20Holy%20Quran%20says%2C%20.

[xi] Mahnoor. “Importance & Rewards of Feeding the Poor in Islam [Quran & Hadith].” SAPA USA, October 1, 2024. https://sapa-usa.org/feeding-the-poor-in-islam/#:~:text=The%20Holy%20Quran%20says%2C%20.

[xii] Fayoumi, Sondos. “Every University in Gaza Has Been Destroyed. so Have These Students’ Dreams.” The Nation, July 26, 2024. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-students-future/

[xiii] Métraux, Julia, and Sophie Hurwitz. “How the War in Gaza Makes Life Nearly Impossible for Disabled People.” Mother Jones, July 2, 2024. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/israel-palestine-gaza-war-amputees-disabled-people-humanity-inclusion/.

[xiv] “One Year of a War without Rules Leaves Gaza Shattered.” Doctors Without Borders – USA, October 2, 2024. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/one-year-war-without-rules-leaves-gaza-shattered.