When I lived in Israel, Palestinians taught me to forage for mallow, to roast the seeds, and to make khubeiza with its superfood leaves.

The Israelis taught me to weed this wild, non-native plant out of vegetable gardens by digging up the extremely deep taproot.

climate change, adapting landscapes, meadows, natives, perennials, fromsoil2soul, tips

Being chosen heaves the weight of generations onto my shoulders like a thick, grey, wool cloak. An oath sworn to ancestors that being chosen is the ticket into a covenant between Me and You. Something I’m obliged to receive, and to bequeath. Had my Aunt shown up at my Bat Mitzvah she probably would have told me we were chosen for train or for work camp—pogrommed, branded, shaven, lamp-shaded.

Kicking off the first month of our Hebrew calendar with Nisan’s new moon, we usher in a time of seasonal rebalance and realignment.

Amid a pandemic of untold anguish, grounding in ancestral wisdom and practice becomes more relevant than perhaps ever before. Passover seders at once become more accessible as we shift out of constriction and agitate toward collective liberation. Here’s a reminder: We come from a long line of survivors.