The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan

Selects
  • 5.0 (3)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE

Originally aired on Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan’s documentary is hauntingly prescient nearly thirty years later. It tells the story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. This war, known to Israelis as the War of Independence, is, to Palestinians, the Nakba, or Catastrophe. This 10th anniversary re-release also includes a piece by Melissa Robbins exploring the longing for land and home by Palestinian refugees. Paired with Tolan’s documentary, listeners can hear a powerful, reflective, and even hopeful tone at a moment of incredible sadness.

Episodes

  1. 04/24/2024

    The Lemon Tree (1998)

    Tolan explores the story of Palestinian Bashir Khairi’s relationship with Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a Bulgarian-born Israeli who moved into his childhood home. Bashir’s father had planted a lemon tree in the backyard of that home. Its continued growth was a symbol of Palestinian dispossession and occupation to Bashir, and a symbol of hope for a devastated Jewish people to Dalia. The story starts when Bashir knocks on Dalia’s door and a friendship blossoms. Listeners are swept up in their intertwined lives and the fates of their communities. We hear Dalia and Bashir begin to understand each other, and later struggle with how complicated their friendship has become. When Bashir is jailed for his alleged role in a supermarket bombing, the friends stop speaking. Eventually they reconcile and begin working together to convert the house into a daycare for Arab children in Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. A dialogue is exactly what the production achieves. With minimal narration, listeners go back and forth between Bashir and Dalia speaking about the slow process of accepting one another without always finding common ground. The documentary is a masterclass in nuance, offering voices that are introspective and loving, but also doubtful and angry. More importantly, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and all that is still possible in a region that is ever more divided. Listening in this moment feels imperative. The stories of Dalia and Bashir form a personal microcosm of the last sixty years of Israeli-Palestinian history. This documentary was the seed of Sandy Tolan's book of the same name: https://sandytolan.com/the-lemon-tree#new-page-1

    58 min
  • 1 Episode

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Originally aired on Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan’s documentary is hauntingly prescient nearly thirty years later. It tells the story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. This war, known to Israelis as the War of Independence, is, to Palestinians, the Nakba, or Catastrophe. This 10th anniversary re-release also includes a piece by Melissa Robbins exploring the longing for land and home by Palestinian refugees. Paired with Tolan’s documentary, listeners can hear a powerful, reflective, and even hopeful tone at a moment of incredible sadness.

Information

  • Channel
    Selects
  • Creator
    Selects
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    1
  • Provider
    ROOM TONE SELECTS LLC

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