Take a look at this photo I took in the summer among the olive groves of the village of Beit Jann, high in the Galilee.
Among the village’s olive groves I encountered for the first time a traditional farming custom that vividly explained an ancient biblical expression:
The prophet Isaiah comforts the mourners of Zion and promises them that they will yet have:
“A garland (pe’er) instead of ashes (efer), the oil of joy instead of mourning” (Isaiah 61:3).
Well, in Beit Jann I learned that farmers customarily cover the base of olive trunks with a layer of fire ash. They do this so that unwanted branches will not sprout from the trunk — a very common phenomenon in the olive tree, which sends up dozens of shoots from the trunk; if left untended, they can overwhelm the entire tree.
The meaning of Isaiah’s expression “pe’er tachat efer” — “a garland instead of ashes” — is not merely a play on words. In my view, this phrase draws on that ancient custom, which the prophet Isaiah knew. The word pe’er means a branch of a tree, as in the famous song ‘Shtaltem Nigunim’ (You Planted Melodies):
“Now they rise and grow, now they send forth boughs (pe’orot) in the blood of their roots, in their intertwined veins” — and as in the verse in Ezekiel: “And it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth boughs (po’rot)” (Ezekiel 17:6).
Isaiah knows the custom of trying to suppress the “pe’orot” — that is, the branches — with ash from a fire, but he also knows that there are especially stubborn branches that manage to poke through the ashes. The phenomenon is common chiefly in olive trees, which also explains the continuation of the verse, which speaks specifically of oil.
Dov Lieberman drew my attention to the fact that the custom also appears in the Mishnah, in Tractate Shevi’it (2:4): “and they ash (kotmin) the trees,” which Bartenura explains: “to place ash at their roots, for the Aramaic translation of ash is kitma.”
If so, the pe’er — that is, the branch — is physically beneath the ashes.
And thus Isaiah likens the return to our land to that stubborn shoot that managed to break through centuries in which ash was poured upon it. And Isaiah continues, saying that those pioneering shoots — “shall build the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall renew the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.”
