{"id":51260,"date":"2019-03-12T19:28:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=51260"},"modified":"2022-10-04T12:27:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T09:27:53","slug":"trees-and-human-beings-three-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/trees-and-human-beings-three-scenes\/","title":{"rendered":"Trees and Human Beings: Three Scenes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[383,401,553],"acf":{"old_id":"51260","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":49857,"related_cahpter":"174","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Trees of Life, Trees of Death","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the first, we are in the middle of a war. Death is rampant, and necessary&#8211;it is part of the dark bargain of conquest. And in this moment, in the middle of the siege, in the middle of a story of destruction and death, we are pointed to a fruit tree. In the middle of chaos, of violation of all human norms, we are told: this is the boundary. This <em>etz hasadeh<\/em>, the tree of the field is untouchable&#8211;specifically because a tree is not a human being. It is a fun-house mirror retelling of our first, most basic story of human sin in the Garden of Eden&#8211;there we lived lives without violence, and our taking of the fruit introduced death to the world. Here we are surrounded by the death we have introduced, and the fruit may, even should be taken, but the tree alone is untouchable. When all else falls away, the fruit tree, our first boundary, reminds us once again that some things are inviolable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the second, we are outside a city in peacetime, and we encounter a body lying in a field. The tree of the field and the body in the field stand in contrast to each other: whereas in the last scene the tree was inviolable because a tree of the field is not a human being, here the text stresses that here, in peacetime, it is the single body lying in the field that is the ultimate horror, the ultimate violation of boundaries. In linking the two with the word \u201c<em>sadeh<\/em>,\u201d field, the Torah almost begs us to toggle back and forth between the two pictures and to consider how precarious our boundaries are: the lines between war, when human death is necessary, and peace when it is a horror, the boundaries between murder and lawful killing, between the moments when felling a tree and killing a person is the ultimate crime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the third, the body and the tree are finally brought together: And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree, \u00a0his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is a reproach unto God.\u201d The human body here, visually, mimics the fruit of the tree mentioned in the first scene, the symbol of life and sustenance that made that first tree inviolable even in the midst of war and death. Thousands of years before Billy Holiday\u2019s \u201cStrange Fruit,\u201d we are told that juxtaposition of these symbols: inviolable life and sustenance and human death&#8211;even the most lawful and necessary&#8211;cannot exist together, that the very image is an affront to God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The text, here, offers no answers to how to live in a world where boundaries shift, where violence is sometimes necessary, where the ultimate inviolable object is sometimes a tree and sometimes a human being. But at the end of the whirlwind, there is one clear voice: there is a point here, when this all collides, where the very image becomes too much. There is a moment here where we might, if it is possible, imagine that it almost too much for God as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":51261,"id":51261,"title":"dt21-hanging","filename":"dt21-hanging.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/dt21-hanging.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/trees-and-human-beings-three-scenes\/dt21-hanging\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"dt21-hanging","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":51260,"date":"2019-03-12 17:28:14","modified":"2023-03-02 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