My quest to create my own olive oil to light our menorah  

Photos: Elbinger Family

October 2019

“You see that building,” said Tamar, pointing to a squat, ‘60s-style house, as we walked through the grounds of the kibbutz. “That’s the Children’s House where I grew up. Now it’s just a kindergarten.”

We paused for a moment, picturing Tamar as a little girl, living there among her peers — learning, playing, and sleeping by their side — while her parents inhabited a bungalow five minutes away.

Then we hurried on toward our destination: the olive trees. They were the reason we’d woken up at five a.m. to drive all the way to Kibbutz Mesilot in the Beit She’an Valley.

Tamar was my neighbor in Ramat Beit Shemesh; she’d made the journey from secular kibbutznik to frum suburban mommy. When Tamar told me she gets olive oil from her father, who picks and presses it himself, I saw an opportunity. For years I’d wanted to produce my own oil from the beautiful and abundant olive trees that surround me here in Eretz Yisrael.

To my surprise, Tamar immediately warmed to my suggestion of an olive picking road trip. Another neighbor also asked to join us, and that’s how Chana, Tamar, and I found ourselves meeting up with Tamar’s father, Yaakov, by a cluster of olive trees deep inside the kibbutz grounds one autumn morning.

Though her father was the image of a classic kibbutznik, Tamar informed us that he’d been born in Iraq into a religious family. Conditions were difficult in those early days of the State of Israel, so his parents sent him to Kibbutz Mesilot, hoping he’d gain a stable education and future.

Sixty-something years later, Yaakov’s weathered face broadcasted his skepticism as he surveyed the three of us with a dubious eye. No doubt we didn’t present a picture of promising farm laborers. Three frum mothers from the city, one among us expecting good news, our hands lily-white, our nails smooth, our clothes pristine.

A man of few words, Yaakov led us to a shady spot and showed us how to remove olives from the branches he’d pruned off the trees. We sat down and began combing the stems industriously, using little plastic rakes that looked like they’d been borrowed from a kindergarten sandpit, enjoying a good schmooze as we worked.

An hour later, we’d finished combing all the branches, separated out the twigs and leaves, and bagged the olives in woven sacks. Yaakov thanked us for our work, before remarking, “I’m sure you girls want to go off now and enjoy a coffee. They opened a mehadrin café in Beit She’an, you know.”

I was chagrined that he took us for princesses. I wanted him to know I’d gone to bed at two a.m. as I struggled to meet a deadline, then risen at dawn to drive over two hours to this distant valley. I was ready to prove myself as a strong, hard-working, capable olive picker.

Why couldn’t he see that?

He led us to another group of trees and allowed us to comb the olives directly off them.

The olives growing in Mesilot’s well-tended, grassy grounds were plump and juicy. It was satisfying to comb ten or twenty off with each stroke. I knew this wasn’t exactly “real” olive picking, but at least it was progress toward my dream. For the rest of the day, I enjoyed the mild weather and the fresh air, my mind free while my hands worked.

When Yaakov later gave me a few liters of the olive oil from our harvest, I was intrigued by the taste; more pungent, fresh, and alive than store-bought oil. When my husband lit our Chanukah menorah with our olive oil, the feeling of satisfaction was incomparable.

I was hooked. I knew that I’d do olive picking again next year. This time for real. What I really wanted was to pick enough to supply my family with olive oil for the whole year.