BOOK: The Lemon Tree

By Sandy Tolan | Amazon.com | 400 pages
Published in May of 2007

SUMMARY: With the ceaseless fighting between Israel and Palestine and individual’s inert opinions on the conflict it is easy to forget the humanity of the hundreds of thousands of Christian, Arab, and Jewish citizens that live in the region. There is little coverage in major media outlets on the psychological effects of the endless rocket barrages from Hamas or the dehumanizing tactics employed against the Palestinian people. Author Sandy Tolan cuts through the tired generalizations and talking points as he tells an intimate story of how one Palestinian family and one Jewish family’s lives intersect as they grapple with friendship, disagreement, and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The story begins with the Al-Khairis, a Palestinian Arab family, who live in al-Ramla and trace their family lineage in the region back for generations. The family is forced from their home by the Israeli army in July of 1948 during the Israeli-Arab War. Palestinians call this war the Nakba, or Catastrophe, as over 700,000 Palestinians were forced to move from their land.

The empty houses are soon occupied by Jewish immigrants, many of them from Europe, following the Holocaust. One of those families is the Eshkenazis who move into the home of the Al-Khairis.

Nineteen years later in 1967 Bashir Khairi and his cousins travel back to their hometown to visit the house they grew up in. There Bashir meets Israeli college student and Bulgarian Jew Dalia Eshkenazi, who is unaware of the history of the former family, and invites the cousins into their previous home. Dalia offers them lemonade made from a lemon tree planted by the Al-Khairis in the 1930s. The lemon tree becomes a powerful symbol of shared heritage, resilience, and the possibility of peace. The duo strikes up a decades-long friendship as they seek to find common ground.

The book alternates between the families’ pasts: Ahmad, Bashir’s father, carefully built their home in Palestine, planting a lemon tree in the backyard. Meanwhile, Dalia’s family escaped deportation to Nazi concentration camps in Bulgaria.

Sometimes context is lacking from some of the major historical events, but what the book lacks in context, Tolan makes up for with the personal narratives of Dalia and Bashir. Bashir longs to return to his homeland while Dalia struggles with living in a house not of her own making, but also having no other place to go.

“Is it either us or them? Dalia thought. Either I live in their house while they are refugees, or they live in my house while I become a fugitive? There must be another possibility. But what is it?”

The Lemon Tree is an excellent, easy-to-read introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with themes of compassion, empathy, hope, dialogue, and the search for peace in a seemingly impossible situation.

KEY QUOTE: “You say everything is all Palestine and I say everything is the whole land of Israel, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere. We share a common destiny here. I truly believe that we are so deeply and closely related—culturally, historically, religiously, psychologically. And it’s so clear to me that you and your people are holding the key to our true freedom. And I think we could also say, Bashir, that we hold the key to your freedom. It’s a deep interdependence. How can we free the heart, for our own healing? Is this possible?” – Dalia Eshkenazi

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BONUS: Listen to Tolan talk about The Lemon Tree on The Neil Haley Show.

DID YOU KNOW? Sunday to Saturday has a Good Reads page where we post all of the books we have read – even the ones that didn’t make the cut.

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