Atlanta Hawks vs. Boston Celtics: NBA Free Pick

XMAS TREES AREN’T KOSHER IN HOLY LAND

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) December 20, 1999 | CHARLES M. SENNOTT, GLOBE STAFF JERUSALEM – We just wanted to buy a Christmas tree.

My 2 1/2-year-old son, Will, is starting to get the idea of the holiday season. And when his mother asked him what to put on his wish list for Santa Claus, a tree was No. 1.

A Christmas tree in the Holy Land. Nice image, especially this year as Christianity closes the millennium in the land where it began.

We had no idea what we were in for.

In this arid land of conflict and memory, even Christmas trees bend with the weight of history.

Many religious Jews here view them not as a warm holiday tradition, but as a pagan German symbol that speaks of a menacing past. The Chief Rabbinate even ruled it would rescind the “kashrut,” or kosher certification, of any hotel displaying one in its lobby.

So I called Rabbi Yaakov Sabag, chief of the kosher division of Israel’s rabbinate, to find out how a yuletide fir would violate Jewish dietary laws.

His response was, “There are some Jews who find the Christmas tree offensive. It is a symbol, a symbol like a swastika . . . a symbol of the grave history of Christianity in relation to Judaism.” Whoa! We’re just talking about a Christmas tree here, right?

Many Israeli friends, religious and secular alike, assured us this rabbinical ruling was absurd. To them it was one more infuriating example of the Chief Rabbinate overextending its authority. My neighbor, the learned theologian Rabbi David Hartman, called it “just plain stupid.” I asked Uri Mor, who handles relations with the Christian community for Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry, if he thought the Christmas tree ban was a sign of intolerance. He did not really answer. go to web site christmas tree store see here christmas tree store

But he informed me that the Jewish National Fund provides free Christmas trees as a gift to all foreign correspondents. The Globe does not allow reporters to accept gifts, so that was out.

Beyond that, Palestinian friends pointed out that the Jewish National Fund carries its own historical baggage. Since the founding of Israel the JNF was the powerful agency carrying out “land reclamation,” as Israelis refer to it, or, in some instances, “land confiscation,” as the Palestinians call it.

OK, so what about going up to see our kibbutz friend, Uri Zelzion? Perhaps he would allow us into the beautiful orchards to take a small tree.

“What?” he shouted. “You don’t cut down trees in Israel, you plant them.” Chopping down a perfectly healthy sapling pine tree, to put it mildly, cuts against the grain of Zionism. An army of believers in Jewish congregations throughout America pay $10 to plant a tree in Israel.

At this point, we were confused. And desperate.

My wife, Julie, Will, his little brother, Ry, and I set out for the 10-minute drive to Bethlehem, where the real Nativity story took place.

There my wife and I did what we never thought we’d do in our lives. We bought a fake Christmas tree – the kind that comes in a box and has to be assembled. Buying a simulated pine in a town with such a profoundly real connection to the Nativity story made the experience even more humiliating.

Our sons, who actually loved the fake Christmas tree store, were mesmerized by the blinking lights and shiny bulbs on the floor models. We chose a “Fox Tail Fir” complete with plastic pine cones. At $50, we made a healthy contribution to the suffering Palestinian economy.

We brought it home. We struggled to assemble it, and we had fun decorating it. In the end, it looked enough like the trees our son had been drawing in nursery school. He loves it. And in the end, that’s what a Christmas tree, real or plastic, is all about.

CHARLES M. SENNOTT, GLOBE STAFF