Even though I am not a gardener, I like to plant things and watch them grow. Have tried a mixture of seeds, plants and other evolving species with mixed results. But there is something magical about the process of growth that fascinates me. Getting my hands dirty is another pleasurable by-product. That is why I find the picture above so inspiring. Planting an olive tree is of course the ultimate fulfillment, since it might give us fruit and oil and shade after many years, and it is characteristic of the region in which I live. Jerusalem has very old olive trees and, as a matter of fact, I live just a few hundred meetres from the Valley of the Holy Cross, with its many ancient olive trees. They have been here many centuries before us and they will probably remain long after we have left. That is where I take my dog for a walk and where I get inspiration from the combination of biblical times and the present contemporary world. In the late autumn, I pick the olives, smash them and put them in salty water so that we have something to eat in the winter. It is the old custom of this region, which has seen so much bloodshed throughout history. But I believe that growing olives also may hold the secret for a longlasting peace, if we can only learn how to extract the bitternes from this tasty fruit. After all, we are all descendants of olive growers and olive eaters.
Natan P F Kellermann, PhD is a clinical psychologist, an international trainer of psychodrama and sociodrama and an author of books and papers on various subjects. He was the chief clinical psychologist of AMCHA/Jerusalem between 1996-2000, its executive director between 2001-2004, and has been its project development director ever since. For more than ten years, he has been lecturing on Holocaust trauma in the International School for Holocaust Studies in Yad Vashem. Kellermann is a fellow of the ASGPP (Zerka T. Moreno award 1993) and was the elected chair of the psychodrama-section of IAGP 1998-2000. He was born in Sweden in 1953 and lives in Jerusalem with his family since 1980.
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