Dan D is serving with UMass-Amherst Hillel and JDC Short-Term Service in Israel.

Dan D, left, takes a moment to pose for the camera after planting a coffee tree

Planting a tree in Israel is something that every American Jew is familiar with.

From a young age my mother told me that planting a tree in Israel was a very important mitzvah to do. When I was born, she said, our family friends bought a tree that was planted in Israel in my name.

As a child, I couldn’t comprehend the significance of this, let alone understand what I had to do with Israel. My picture of Israel was only the one painted by my Sunday school education which was of a very religious land far far away. But as time past and as I grew up, my connection to this far far away place grew. I eventually found out that in addition to having a lot of family in Israel, my parents lived there and had a life there.

To make a long story short, I traveled to Israel on a Birthright trip last May and experienced the country my parents fell in love in and where their life started together. On my current trip, through the JDC, unlike the Birthright trip, we are doing community service, working in an underserved community outside of Tel Aviv. The work included painting inside apartments, planting trees, working with kids, and becoming educated on other JDC projects throughout the country.

It was on the third day of work, when I planted a coffee tree, that it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was actually planting a tree in Israel. Unlike before, the tree that was planted in Israel 20 years before, I actually planted a tree in Israel with my hands! It was this mitzvah that my mother had mentioned to me so many years ago that had coming to life. It made me think about her, and her mother who pioneered the land in a Kibbutz in the north. How I was continuing my family’s connection to the country and to the land itself.