Olive trees of over 900 years

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After seeing the Garden of Gethsemane from outside its Franciscan walls in the previous post, some readers wished to see the inside.

Olive tree trunks' rings are difficult to count.
So recently carbon dating was used to determine the age of these venerable trees in the garden where (tradition says) Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion.

Three of the trees were found to be from the years 1092, 1166, and 1198.
 The study was made by the National Research Council of Italy Trees and Timber Institute and by academics from five Italian universities.

See the pillar of stones supporting this leaning tree?
You can enlarge the photos to see better.
It was 7:45-8:00 in the evening when I was there.

The garden is next to the Church of Gethsemane, properly known as the Basilica of the Agony, popularly known as the Church of All Nations.

These olive trees are among the oldest known to science.
But to the pilgrims who pray there, a century more or less is not what moves them, sometimes to tears.
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Here is more about the recent study, and Wikipedia has more about Gethsemane.
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Our urban park, thanks to German friends

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 Back where I came from, the Jerusalem Hills, you never see olive trees in orderly rows.
They just grow scattered all over the terraced hills.
So when I saw these long rows in a wadi in my new home of Meitar in the Negev, I had to investigate.

Fortunately there were plaques.

So!  It is the Olive Tree Park of Meitar, funded in 2009 by the Friends of the Keren Kayemet/Jewish National Fund in Germany. 

They wrote WITH LOVE AND IN RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL'S PLANTING NEW COMMUNITIES IN THE NEGEV.

 German friends Ingrid and Hans-Dieter Roth of Wiesbaden gave Meitar another important gift--a fire watchtower.
I still have to find the tower but meanwhile here is an article about it and its dedication.

The blessing on the sign is from the Torah,  Numbers 6:24:
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ
 "The Lord bless you and keep you"  (keep as in keep you safe, e.g. from forest fires!).

As a resident told the visiting Germans, "The Olive Tree Park creates a real bond between the people who live in Meitar and the people who feel connected to Israel in Germany."
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The olive branch, birds, and St. Jerome

. "Noah's Ark" . It's part of the Bible Stories exhibit still going on at Mamilla mall. Genesis 8: 8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth; and he put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her in unto him into the ark. 10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. 11 And the dove came in to him at eventide; וְהִנֵּה עֲלֵה-זַיִת טָרָף בְּפִיהָ and lo in her mouth an olive-leaf freshly plucked; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. . . An interesting tidbit from Wiki:

In his 4th century Latin translation of the story of Noah, St Jerome rendered "leaf of olive" (Hebrew alay zayit) in Genesis 8:11 as "branch of olive" (Latin ramum olivae). In the 5th century, by which time a dove with an olive branch had become established as a Christian symbol of peace, St Augustine wrote in On Christian Doctrine that, "perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch (oleae ramusculo) which the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark." However, in Jewish tradition there is no reference to an olive branch in the story of the Flood and no association of the olive leaf with peace in the story of the flood. 

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Flowing olive oil

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Pure, beautiful oil running from the press, extracted from the countless olives I helped my nun friends pick.
This was a magic moment!
It was my first time (2006) to see the whole process with all the modern Italian machinery.
You can see how our region's olives are pressed there, at the Latrun Monastery, in my earlier post.
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And see here how smiling expert olive farmers come from Italy to prune some of our local olive trees.
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Any food eaten with or cooked in olive oil has to be good.
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You're invited to join Rob and Mandy's fun new FOOD meme at Barcelona Daily Photo.
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Floating in oil

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Yet another batch of soofganiot frying in hot oil!
What would Chanuka be without them?
Today I caught sight of these jelly-donuts-in-progress as I walked down Jaffa Road, near the shuk/souk/market.
The smell of calories attracted my attention.

(Enlarge the photo to see the finished product on the left.)

Soofgania comes from the Hebrew word that means sponge, sfog, which comes from a similar Ancient Greek word.
And indeed this dough absorbs hot oil like a sponge, as do latkes (grated potato pancakes), that other traditional Chanuka treat.

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The holiday was instituted not to celebrate the 165 BCE military victory of the Jews over the Seleucid Greeks (who defiled the Temple with pagan worship), but rather to celebrate the miracle of the olive OIL.
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When the victorious Jews came to rededicate the Temple, they found only one small vial of still-pure oil (i.e. with the seal of the high priest intact). They needed to rekindle the menorah and keep it burning throughout the night every night; but to press, prepare, and consecrate a fresh supply of oil would have taken eight days.
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The Talmud (in tractate Shabbat) says:
"What is Hanukah? The rabbis taught: . . . The vial contained sufficient oil for one day only, but a miracle occurred, and it fed the holy lamp eight days in succession. These eight days were the following year established as days of good cheer, on which psalms of praise and acknowledgment (of God's wonders) were to be recited."
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So that's why our "days of good cheer" are now filled with oily tasty soofganiot.
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A modern olive press

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Exactly two years ago today I got to watch for the first time how olives are pressed!
This blog did not exist yet then. But now it does, and for That's My World Tuesday I'm happy to show you where olive oil comes from.

Olive trees have been cultivated here in the hills around Jerusalem for thousands of years.
My neighbor-friends have a few trees and I helped them pick the olives.
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We drove the full sacks to the Trappist Monastery of Latrun.
First they were weighed on the big scale.

Then placed in the hopper.

Quickly transported upwards on a conveyor belt.

Lots of noise. They were shaken and cleaned of any leaves or little stones.

Then the ~grinding began. (Not sure what the proper word is here.)

The workers wore ear protection.

The machine comes from olive-rich Italy.

Click to enlarge here--maybe you understand the Italian (or the Hebrew that had been added).

Just think how donkeys once had to go around and around in circles, pushing a heavy crushing stone, before this machine was invented.

Here it comes!

Beautiful pure olive oil!

The pomace, pulp left over after pressings, goes through the pipe into a wagon.

In Hebrew it is called gefet.

The Bedouin and Arabs have long known how to turn this gefet into fuel. Now Israeli Jews are learning too.

 In wood-burning stoves gefet becomes an ecologically perfect fuel, burning with 2.5 times more energy than a comparable piece of wood. And what is left after burning can be put on the garden as fertilizer.

Back home from the monastery, I felt deep pleasure contemplating the clear rich oil, the fruit of our labor.

With its long history, its use in the menorah and for anointing, olive oil is much more than just a food.
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Nuns in the olive branches

Judging from the lack of olives on the trees in my neighborhood, this seems to be an off-year.
Olive trees have what is called alternate-year bearing.

These Russian women, however, were diligently picking every olive they could find.

This nice scene was at the Gorny (or Gornensky) Convent for Women last month.
The woman in black is a nun but I'm not sure about the others. Maybe they were nuns in mufti (in civilian clothes). Sort of like in "play clothes."
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Gorny is a huge walled-in area built by the Russians in 1871. On the slope above Ein Kerem.

It is just 45 minutes walk from my house, but to enter the locked gate of the convent is to enter another world.
As if a village in old Czarist Russia had been lifted up and plopped down in the Jerusalem Hills.
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The olive tree and the laundry lines

Return of the rain!

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Rain! The sweet smell and feel of light rain finally returned to the Jerusalem Hills. We have not seen any rain for about half a year, which is normal. That's why it is so exciting to see it now, in its season. Here are some scenes from yesterday's walk through the woods, down just two terraces from my house.
The acorns and the olives were all wet and glistening.

The cypress had bright leaves, "bombelach" (cones), and even yellow flowers.

The thirsty lichens seemed to be drinking it all in.

Pines were dripping.

And the swirled wood of the ktalav (Arbutus) was even more shiny and smooth and dramatic than usual. (My earlier posts about this manzanita tree are here, here, and here.)

Let's hope and pray lots of rain will fall this winter.
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Olive blossoms

The olive trees here in the Jerusalem Hills have many tiny blossoms just now. Looks like this year it will be a good harvest in the fall.

Pruning the olive trees

On hearing a chainsaw somewhere down in the woods this morning, I grabbed the camera and quickly walked to the lower terraces to investigate. But, to my great relief, it turned out to be a beneficial cutting. Some Italian farmers had been brought to prune the olive trees. They snipped and sawed with the confidence that comes from skill, good judgment, and years of experience. The men spoke only their dialect of Italian, so with sign language and a smile I got their approval for picture taking.
The olive fruit needs strong sunlight in order to produce lots of oil. Ideally every olive should enjoy direct sunlight for at least part of the day. Pruning reduces the density of the foliage and lets sun penetrate into every part of the tree.