To help the farmers, My Tree intensified its adoption program. For $275 a year, people can adopt a tree, a grapevine, or a whisky cask, and benefit from gifts of olive oil, wine, or whisky.
ByGREER FAY CASHMAN. AUGUST 30, 2025 22:10
I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a treeA tree whose hungry mouth is pressedAgainst the earth’s sweet flowing breast.
These are the opening lines of a religious poem written in 1913 by Joyce Kilmer. The poem was set to music and is sung to this day.
Trees have many uses and are also symbolic. They provide shade, give fruit, are used for the construction of buildings and furniture, and are even used in diplomacy.
The olive tree is a symbol of peace. Heads of state who come to Israel almost always include a visit to Yad Vashem, after which they go to the nearby Grove of Nations – established by KKL-JNF – to plant an olive sapling.
When King Charles III visited Israel in January 2020 while still the Prince of Wales, he and then-president Reuven Rivlin planted a sturdy British oak tree on the grounds of the President’s Residence. An olive tree was also planted there in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI with Rivlin’s predecessor, Shimon Peres.
Planted in honor, destroyed in dishonor
Groves of trees are also planted in the name of a country or an individual, and can be found throughout Israel. However, at least one of them was destroyed, according to the tale told by the son of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who defied the orders of his Foreign Ministry while serving in Lithuania and saved thousands of Jews from certain death.
n 1985, a tree grove was planted in Beit Shemesh in honor of Sugihara, who was too ill at the time to attend the ceremony. He was represented by his son Nobuki, who planted seedlings there with his own hands.
In 1990, he brought his mother to Israel to view the forest, but they couldn’t find it because the whole area had been bulldozed. Nobuki decided to investigate. Both the trees and the monument to his father had disappeared.
Instead, the area was covered in garbage thrown there by haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) from an apartment complex that had been built on the site.
That was how Israel honored someone recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. In the final analysis, the Jerusalem Municipality in 2021 dedicated scenic Sugihara Square in the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood to Nobuki’s father.
In the 1920s, malaria was rife in the Land of Israel, and the way to prevent it from spreading was to drain the mosquito-infested swamps. To achieve this, eucalyptus trees were imported from Australia by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
Trees also draw people closer to Israel, regardless of whether they are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.
In the spirit of necessity being the mother of invention, when the COVID pandemic hit Israel in 2020, many of the foreign workers went home. Some of those who remained were stricken with the virus, and others were more or less isolated.
It was a very tough time for Israeli farmers: They had trouble harvesting their crops, and even more trouble in bringing them to market. Income was very sparse.
Treefully connecting to Israel
Kobi Assaf, co-founder and CEO of an initiative called My Tree, was convinced that many people of different faiths believe that the Land of Israelis special and want to have a part in it that is not related to politics or religion. Rather, they want to tap into this very singular part of the world, which has been documented in the Bible and continues to excite interest and attention.
Together with American-born Yishai Gelb – who came to Israel in his late teens, served in the IDF, and opted to live permanently in Israel – they founded My Tree.
My Tree is a program that enables individuals and communities to connect with Israel without making any sort of statement – to simply connect with nature in a country with one of the longest and oldest documented histories in the world.
The idea caught on quickly, more so since October 7 when Israeli farmers, especially those in the Galilee, were left in an even worse bind than they had been during COVID. Israeli farm and orchard workers were called to serve in the IDF; foreign workers were scared, and some again returned home.
To help the farmers, My Tree intensified its adoption program. For $275 a year, people can adopt a tree, a grapevine, or a whisky cask, which they can visit when they come to Israel, and from which they can benefit at Passover and Easter or Hanukkah and Christmas, receiving a delivery of six bottles of private-label olive oil, wine, or whisky.
There’s a certain snob value in being able to offer guests in one’s home a glass of top-quality wine or whisky poured from a bottle bearing the name of the host on the label.
Among the adoptees are synagogue and church groups whose congregations as a whole adopt a grove or a certain number of vines, and then individual congregants adopt from the congregation’s trees or vines. The same principle applies to the whisky, which is adopted by the cask.
Touring with My Tree
At a recent press tour in the Galilee, a group of Israeli and foreign journalists were introduced to people with whom My Tree operates.
Our first stop was Moshav Hayogev in the Jezreel Valley, where Gal Ashush and his family built what is believed to be Israel’s most technologically advanced olive press.
Many olive grove owners bring their olives to the moshav to be processed, said Gelb, adding that the plant processes 6,500 tons annually. We were given a taste of oils seasoned with various spices; it was difficult to stop dipping the breadsticks.
Among the celebrities who have adopted trees or whose names are on trees adopted in their honor by relatives, friends, or admirers are US President Donald Trump; US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who together with his wife, Janet, has visited their trees several times; and Israel-American mega-philanthropist Dr. Miriam Adelson.
Huckabee, when he was still a TV host in Arkansas, had Assaf and Gelb on his show to talk about their project. He has been an ardent advocate for My Tree ever since.
On a sad note, there is a tree adopted in memory of the three Bibas family members murdered by Hamas, and of fallen soldier Reef Harush, who was still in training when he was sent to Gaza to fight.
We met Harush’s father, Avi, for whom this was his first visit. It made him feel very emotional. He told us about how he and his wife had won the battle to harvest their son’s sperm and are now looking for a woman who will make a suitable mother for their grandchild. They are not looking for a surrogate. They don’t want to be the baby’ parents but his grandparents, who will help to support the child and his mother.
Our next stop was the Jezreel Valley Winery, which was established in 2012 at Kibbutz Hanaton, where in addition to tasting wines, we enjoyed a delicious meal of yellow and white cheeses served on large wooden platters. Freshly baked bread rolls that came straight from oven to table in the winery’s garden were also served.
The concept behind the winery, according to Tal Raviv, a member of the winery’s team, was to make real Israeli wine and to have Israelis of all social strata drink it at home, not only in fancy restaurants, at banquets, and on Jewish holy days.
We got to sample one white and one red wine. The white was Gewutztraminer, a refreshing, aromatic, semi-dry blend with notes of ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and pepper. It was much lighter in texture than the dark red wines, and tastier to anyone who prefers exotica with less acidity on the palate and the tongue.
Although it has a German name and is very popular in Germany, Raviv said that the wine originated in Italy. Now it’s being produced in Israel with Israeli grapes.
Planting for joy, planting to remember
Stop No. 3 was to the Avivim Winery on the Lebanese border. This was a less pleasant experience – not because of the wine, which was excellent, but because of what happened to the winery.
The Avivim Winery was founded by Moroccan immigrant Shaul Biton, who moved to Israel in 1953 and started in a very small space. Over the years, another room and then another was added, growing into the huge Avivim production plant – which was reduced to ashes in 2024 when hit by four Hezbollah rockets.
Most of the wine in stock was ruined, but 30,000 bottles were salvaged and are being sold to provide seed money for rebuilding the winery.
What met our eyes when we arrived were piles of charred debris that had been swept up from the concrete floor. We got to taste some of the salvaged wines, which was very good, as was the most wonderful arak that was almost like a liqueur – not too strong, with a delicious fruity, spicy flavor.
Gelb told us that one of the farmers in the area had gone down the hill to attend to his crops a week prior to Oct. 7, 2023. When the farmer reached his crops, he saw a man only a few meters away on the other side of the border holding a rifle pointed directly at him. The farmer had an uneasy feeling that something catastrophic was in the air. Fortunately, he was not a target on that day and immediately returned home to report the incident to the army.
Just as the female observers in the South had been ignored when they reported suspicious activity in Gaza, so was the farmer ignored when he reported what he had seen. He was told that he has a vivid imagination.
The Avivim Winery had passed from generation to generation, and the quality of the boutique wines kept getting increasingly better. With help from My Tree, the family is rebuilding the winery, this time as a full-fledged complex.
It is selling the 30,000 bottles saved – 10% of the original 300,000 – for around NIS 400 per bottle, to raise money for the new winery and the planting of new vines.
‘Whisky will flow free’
Our final stop was the Golan Distillery in Katzrin, which is the dream come true for David Zibell.
Zibell was born in Paris and grew up in Montreal, where he ran a real estate business. But he loved drinking whisky, which he thought he should produce – instead of becoming an alcoholic, he quipped. Whisky had long been his passion, he said, and once he decided to come to Israel, he was going to turn that passion into a profession.
That was a little over a decade ago.
Having been in real estate, where the gift of the gab is an important asset, Zibel is well equipped to deal with the public – in French, English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
He greeted us wearing a brown T-shirt with a parody of the Palestinian motto “From the River to the Sea” printed on the back. It has a white map of Israel flanked by a message in gold letters: “From the River to the Sea Israeli Whisky Will Flow Free.”
It may flow free, but whisky is somewhat more expensive than olive oil, with six bottles of private label selling for $75 to $450.
After being introduced to all the complex processing involved in whisky making and distilling, and learning about how wheat and barley are fermented and later separated from water, one of our group remarked, “That’s why it smells like fish and chips!”
It turned out not to be a joke. It was already twilight, and Zibell put out a great spread of tempura-coated fish and chips plus yummy dips, which we washed down with two kinds of whisky as we sat around the bar.
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