The Bean

Jack and the beanstalk. A boy and a bean and dream. The story is ancient, and everyone knows it thanks to Joseph Jacobs who published it about 200 years ago. Jack outwits an evil giant who in addition to being stingy, is a bad poet:

"Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

In the end, Jack lives happily ever after with his mother in the shadow of the dead giant, who was clumsy and fell off the beanstalk and landed in their backyard.

The Russian language edition translates the giant's ranting thus:

"Ya choi blat!
I smell the blood of the working class proletariat.
Be they alive or be they dead,
I'll grind their bones to make my matzo bread."

This caption is next to an illustration of the giant bearing a striking resemblance to Yankle, the Jewish tinker in the market in Mimansaslav, Ukraine. Jacobs was Jewish, so it's little ironic that his works provided documented evidence for what the locals had always suspected, namely that the Jews use Christian children to make matzos. Of course, this is total nonsense; everybody knows that Jews grind up Christian boys and girls to make kneidelech. Not ones to be hindered by the facts, Russian Orthodox priests brandishing crucifixes and a copy of "Jack and the Beanstalk" at the head of a mob of ignorant peasants set off on yet another pogrom leaving burning Synagogues and terrified Jews in their wake.

It was time for European Jews to move on. Russian peasants are very convincing. But to where? How? One group of Zionist activists had the answer. A bean.

Called "Lovers of Zion", they planted the bean in a plot of land purchased in Zammarin, Palestine, which was then smack in the middle of the Ottoman Empire. It wasn't a giant that troubled them at first, rather the monster was very small. A mosquito. Entire families were wiped out by malaria and many of those who survived physically put an end to their lives broken hearted. Today, only rows of silent graves in a pioneer cemetery remain to tell their story.

Of course, a bean isn't enough to make dreams come true. You need a giant. The pioneers found a friendly one in Baron Edmund James de Rothschild who took it upon himself to supply funds and advisors to jumpstart the failing experiment in Jewish settlement. In return, he asked that they name the place Zikhron Yaakov in memory of his father, James (Yaakov - or Jack) Mayer de Rothschild.

With Rothschild's help, the community took off. They built small homesteads and a synagogue and a winery. Today Zikhron Yaakov is a bedroom community between Haifa and Tel Aviv. The 19th century stone houses are galleries and tourist cafes along the cobblestoned main street. The winery is still up and running, but better know for the drinking and dancing fests held in the old wine cellars.

And like every happily ever after, they live in the shadow of a dead giant. Edmund de Rothschild purchased an enormous estate just out of town on the chalk cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean for his grave site. Today there is a center dedicated to educating the future generations of Israelis. Designed to friendly to the environment and to the visitor, it is built underground with an air conditioning system that works by circulating air through subterranean springs. The grounds around Rothschild's mausoleum are immaculate, rivaled in Israel only by the Baha'i Shrine in Haifa.

Being a gardener by trade, I couldn't resist breaking away and admiring my competitors work. And indeed, there is no limit to what you can do when money is no object. A greenhouse on site to grow perennials, and fountains and pools with a recirculation system. The paths are cleverly designed to be accessible to the handicapped and there's even a section devoted to herbs and fragrant plants for the benefit of the blind. There's literally something here for everyone.

I bumped into a couple of the staff that care for the grounds. One introduced himself as Sidney. Do I smell the blood of an Englishman? Well, yes. But more remarkable is the fact that he's in his eighties and going strong. He used to work in the office, but filled in for a woman on maternity leave and stayed on when she didn't return. That was 15 years ago. Very encouraging, me wondering if I will be able to go on landscaping until retirement.

Jack and the beanstalk is an incredible story, even for a fairy tale. Of course, 200 years ago when Jacobs first published it, who would have ventured that a wealthy suburban tourist town would be sitting on the Carmel overlooking the sea in an independent Jewish state.

.

No, that's a bean too hard to swallow.