Or Maybe Name Them

When I was working on the kibbutz back in the Eighties, I saw an interesting tree. I was working in the almond fields at the time. Almonds are close relatives of peaches, cherries, apricots, plums, and so on. Before you get an almond, you get a green fruit that looks like a plum. The fruit has almost no flesh; it dies and falls off, and then you have a pit, and inside the pit is the almond.

One day on the way home, the kibbutzniks made a stop. I and another volunteer were in the Jeep with them. We got out and approached a tree. It had peaches on one side, plums on another (I think), and apricots on another. The kibbutzniks started eating the apricots. They told us to have some, too. They called them “mish mish.”

Once Mish Weiss was done with the chemo and radiation that will prepare her for her bone marrow transplant, I felt it was appropriate to ask her a question in her comments. I.e.:

Does this mean you were named after a piece of fruit? If so, why?

Finally, why an apricot and not something more impressive, like a watermelon?

She has posted a reply on her blog.

Incidentally, Israelis are nuts about watermelon. I remember when the melons got ripe. All over the country, there were little trucks loaded to the top with round green melons, on their way to happy Israelis.

Yesterday Aaron told me that Jewish tradition holds that the Gentile Yom Kippur starts on Sunday night. I thought that was nice, in view of my recent good news.