The Almond Tree, The

‘I tell my children, go with what you’re passionate about. My childhood taught me that steady drops pierce rocks. I’ve learned that life isn’t about what happens to you, but about how you choose to react to it.

‘Peace brings security. Security doesn’t bring peace.’

I thought of the Dalai Lama’s words which hung in Justice’s foyer. It went something like ‘If you want to experience peace, provide it for another, and if you want to feel safe, cause another to feel safe.’

‘As Bishop Desmond Tutu said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’

‘Good things make choosing difficult. Bad things leave no choice,’

‘When Einstein’s wife was dying, he wrote to a friend that intellectual work would lead him through all of life’s troubles,’ Menachem said. ‘You’d do well to follow his advice.’

I slowly sat up in bed.

‘Take it from me, the only way to overcome the complexities of human emotions is to delve into science and try to explain the unexplained,’ he said.

‘Success in life isn’t about the number of failures we think we have, but about how we react to those failures.

I’d marvelled that despite their exposure to beatings, arid landscape and fierce heat, the trees survived and bore new fruit year after year, century after century.

I knew that their strength lay in their roots, which were so deep that even if the trees were cut down, they survived and sent forth shoots to create new generations. I always believed that my people’s strength, like the olive trees’, lay in our roots.

‘Hatred is self-punishment. Do you think they’re feeling bad because you hate them?’

‘If we avenge their actions, we’ll be even with them, but if we forgive them we’ll be ahead.’

‘Only forgiveness will set you free.’