[COLD OPEN] You know, everybody flocked to Jurassic Park to see these dinosaurs coming back from extinction. And here are these two scientists who actually brought back something from extinction.
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlet, mostly, I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. The Miracle Seed is Martin Lemelman's nonfiction graphic novel, about how modern science brought the Judean date palm back to life after a thousand year extinction. It turns out that Martin is my neighbor, so we met in person at the local public library's recording studio to talk about his book, his art, and the truly amazing story of how seeds found at an archeological dig at Masada were able to be germinated after centuries, and about the significance of the Judean date palm in Jewish history. Speaking of stories with an Israeli connection, I recently did a blog interview with Noa Nimrodi, author of Not So Shy, as part of the 2024 Sydney Taylor Book Award blog tour. It's the story of an Israeli girl adjusting to life in California. You can find it at BookofLifepodcast.com.
Martin Lemelman, welcome to The Book of Life.
Glad to be here. And I'm honored to be interviewed by you, Heidi.
Oh, thank you very much. You have illustrated many books and also created quite a few graphic novels. So tell us about your work and how you found your way to the graphic novel format.
Well, 60 years ago, I was a little kid living back of my parents candy store in Brooklyn. I loved to read comics, Spider Man and Superman. My brother and I could read them, but we always had to put them back. I couldn't keep any of the comics, I couldn't play with any of the toys in the candy store. So there was a store from the '30's, a candy store before, and all of the stuff from that store was in these little closed shelves underneath. And they were all broken or used. And so I looked through the shelves to see what I can get that I could own. And I found a cache of paints. So I started painting on the floor on cardboard. My mother would say "Mottele..." - that's what she called me, Mottele. First, she thought I was crazy wasting my time. But besides that, she said, "Why do you paint six in a day? Take your time and paint one thing in two or three days and think about it." And so that's kept me through my life. One other anecdote about as I was growing, I read somewhere that real artists paint with canvas. But there was no canvas in the candy store. We lived across diagonally from the Prospect Place Market in Brooklyn in Brownsville. You could get pickles and you could get shoes and you could get kol ma'tamim but you couldn't get canvas. So we had a window shade in the back. And I took a scissors and cut the window shades up and started painting my first whole oil paint on this window shade. And I'm really surprised that my mother and father didn't kill me at the time, so I wouldn't be speaking to you right now. But that was the beginning of getting interested in art. Somebody recommended when I was in college about being an illustrator. So I got my portfolio together. At the time, I couldn't afford 8x10 color shots of my paintings. So I had black and white photographs. And one of the first jobs I had was doing Esquire Magazine for a short story. And so that kind of got me rolling. I started doing children's books, but I wasn't a writer, I was more of an illustrator for hire. I went to the Jewish Publication Society and they gave me the book, The Wise Shoemaker of Studena, which I illustrated, and that was very exciting. And then I went to UAHC press. I did many, many books for them. One of the books I did was The Tattooed Torah, which has a life of its own, was made into an animated movie with Ed Asner as the narrator So I've been involved in creating Jewish themed things because I'm very affected by my heritage and I want to have my children know and my grandchildren connect to being Jewish as well. Becoming a writer was like a different kind of thing for me. It was, in essence, pulling teeth to write something. My mother who was a Holocaust survivor, didn't tell me her story when I was growing up, she would say "Feh, who needs to know this." The whole neighborhood that I lived in when I grew up, they were all Holocaust survivors. But nobody ever wanted to speak about it. When my mother finally told me her story, and she had passed away a number of years, I decided that I would write her story as a graphic novel called Mendel's Daughter. And so finally, it was published. Simon & Schuster Free Press had translations into French and Spanish and Polish, and my mother who thought her story was nothing would probably be very surprised. And I think she'd also be very happy that her son who was an artist, "Oy vey," that brought her story to life. That was a very important thing for me. So that's kind of how I started with doing graphic novels.
So I want to talk about your latest graphic novel, The Miracle Seed. And this is a true story. So tell us what is The Miracle Seed?
Well, The Miracle Seed is this amazing story. The seed found on Masada, the Judean date palm seed, fruit that hadn't been tasted in 1000 years, because the tree became extinct. It was supposed to be the sweetest fruit and also it was supposed to cure disease. Dr. Sallon in Hadassah Hospital was interested in ancient and indigenous peoples' medicines to kind of create new things for our world. The Israel Antiquities gave Dr. Sallon a few seeds. And so she went to Dr. Elaine Solowey, Director of Sustainable Agriculture at the Arava Institute in the Negev desert, and said, "Here are some seeds, do you think this could be revived?" She did revive it. And it was a miracle, the rebirth of the seeds.
So how did you learn about Judean date palms in the first place? And what made you want to write about them?
Well, I read a lot. I just happened upon it. And I thought this is an amazing story. It has history. It has science. You know, everybody flocked to Jurassic Park, to see these dinosaurs coming back from extinction. And here are these two scientists who actually brought back something from extinction.
And it was true!
And it was true. Exactly.
I love that comparison to Jurassic Park. Why was the Judean date palm the symbol of the kingdom of Judah?
There are a number of things. First of all, it's said that it's the land of milk and honey. Some people believe that it wasn't honey from bees, but it was the syrup of the Judean date palm dates, which was the honey. When the Jews revolted against the Romans, and sadly, lost, the Romans made a coin. And on the coin, there's weeping woman who is the symbol of Israel, and she's sitting next to a Judean date palm, and so that to me is just so powerful a symbol that, you know, you have to write about that, kids have to know about that. Herodotus wrote about the Judean date palm, Pliny the Elder wrote about it, Josephus wrote about the Judean date palm. They found a 6000 year old carbonized Judean date palm seed near Jericho in Israel. And so it has such a history to it. And in this day and age of things becoming extinct and talking about global warming, one of the questions that scientists have brought up is, how did the Judean date palm become extinct? There are two versions of why: one is because of the Romans destroying the trees, but the other thing was the Crusades coming in about 1000 years later, destroying the land of Israel. Another concept that people think is that there was global warming at the time, a drought or something, and that might have been the cause of it. So there's a connection there between the extinction of it at the time 1000 years ago, and what's happening to a lot of plants and animals today.
That's interesting that they are not sure why it went extinct but that there are several theories...
Yeah, that's correct.
...to explain that. So you wouldn't think a story about germinating seeds would be so engaging, but it really is. Tell us about how you found ways to make this story exciting.
I wanted to do two things: a historical element to it, an element of hope within the destruction of the temple by the Romans, and resilience of the Jewish people. That's a powerful and exciting thing that I wanted to convey. And the other thing is the creativity of scientists. So there's creativity in almost all fields. People think you're an artist, you're creative, but there's creativity in science. I mean, Dr. Solowey had to figure out how she was going to make this seed grow. It's kind of interesting how things develop as you work. This book took me about two and a half years to write and illustrate. I was ready to send it to my agent and there were actually two parts: it was the historical part, the loss of the Judean date palm, and the second part was how Methuselah came to be. The thing is, Methuselah is a male Judean date palm. Just like people there is a male and a female to get dates. And so I actually finished the book saying, hopefully one day there will be dates produced from the Judean date palm. That was the end of my book. Then I read something, I believe it was in New York Times, and it says, well, they are harvesting Judean date palms. I said, "What? I have to change my ending." They found another Judean date palm seed near Jericho that was older than Methuselah. It actually flowered. And it was a female. They pollinated it. And they picked, I think, 110 dates from it. And Dr. Solowey and Dr. Sallon, they were the first ones to taste this date in 1000 years. They said the Shehecheyanu bracha and they split it and they ate it. So for me that was just part three, the rebirth and bringing into the world, the truly-alive-again Judean date palm.
So they named the original seed that they germinated Methuselah, and then they gave names to the other seeds that they subsequently germinated. Why, why did they name them?
That's a great question. I would think that it is the connection between the Judean date palm and the Land of Israel, and the Bible. And so all those things kind of mixed together. You had to give it a name.
And so they gave them a biblical names.
Right. Correct.
You basically gloss over the tragedy of Masada in the story. It's obviously a major event in Jewish history, especially Israeli history. So just quickly for those who don't know, can you explain what happened at Masada?
Well, Masada was the last stronghold. It was King Herod's, I believe, summer palace that was the last stronghold of the Jews in their revolt against the Romans. When the Romans stormed the fortress of Masada, the Jews at Masada decided, instead of becoming slaves to the Romans, they committed suicide. I really didn't want to have that in the book. But I wanted to explain the tragedy of it. So I did but without talking about the horror of it, but can I read something?
Sure, yeah.
Okay. "Sadly, the 967 men, women and children of Masada could not hold off Titus's army of 10,000 Roman soldiers. It was there the revolt ended." Getting back to the point of the suicides, I think this is a book of hope and of the future. I hope it will whet kids' appetites for history, Jewish history, and also science. So that's why I didn't really go into the Masada in depth.
Okay, well, that makes perfect sense. And I like that Masada is the site where these seeds were found that were ultimately germinated, and so although there was the tragedy at Masada and so much death, there is this life kind of emerging from that same setting, with the seeds being germinated again so many years later.
Tell us about the quotes that you include to set the scene before each section. Why include these quotes? How did you find the right quotes? Were there other quotes that you liked, but you ended up not using?
Yeah, there were a lot of quotes. There's one quote by Albert Einstein that I liked," you can live your life believing nothing is a miracle, or you can believe everything is a miracle." I think that's a wonderful quote, you look around, you walk around, it is a miracle how we live in this world and to treat it like that. The other quote that I really liked that I didn't put in the book was "you shouldn't rely on miracles." I believe it's in Pirkei Avot, I may be wrong. But "you shouldn't rely on miracles," which means we have the responsibility to make this world better ourselves, we shouldn't look up to the sky to make this world better. We are the miracle makers. And the third quote that I really liked, and again, you got me on the spot here. And I forget who said it. But it's like, "if you're going to plant a tree, and the Messiah is coming, plant the tree first, then go greet the Messiah." And I think that's the Jewish concept of it's in your hands, everything is in your own hands. And that's the responsibility of people in general. If you can make the world better, that's important.
Those are great quotes. From the quotes that you did end up using in the book., do you have a favorite that you want to read to us now?
Well, let me see. Okay, the quote, "there is no plant without an angel in heaven, tending it and telling it to grow." There was a thing with that, is it an angel, or is it the universe? So the translation is a little muddy with that, but I love that quote, where everything is important, to have things growing, to have things flourishing, is important.
I think the quotes really lend an atmosphere to the book, they uplift it beyond just the story itself to show sort of the universal themes.
That was my reason, and it was also motivating to me.
You've got a note in the book that says for updates, people can check out the work of the Arava Institute. So Dr. Elaine Solowey, who germinated the seeds works at the Arava Institute. Can you tell us a bit about Arava?
Yeah, Arava does a lot of different things. Dr. Solowey was the Director of Sustainable Agriculture, and so that's dealing with, in this climate-changing world and Israel and the Middle East in general, there's a drought. I mean, if you think about the Dead Sea, it's getting smaller and smaller. And so they're trying to figure out what kind of crops can grow with less water. It has a lot of educational programs where they have interns coming in. It's also a connection between Palestinians and Israelis connecting together, I believe now the head of the Arava Institute is a Palestinian man, a scientist. So it's trying to have connections, trying to make this world a better, it's like tikkun olam, trying to make this world better in some way.
Excellent. I love that. It's Tikkun Olam Time. So what action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?
Can I give you a little story first?
Sure!
There's a story of Honi HaMe'agel, Honi, the Circle Maker. He lived kind of a little after the Temple, I believe the Second Temple, and he's walking along and he sees somebody, this older man planting a carob tree. He says "why are you planting this tree? It's going to have fruit in 70 years you're never going to enjoy this fruit." The man said to Honi, "somebody planted a carob tree for me and I'm planting a carob tree for somebody else for the future." And so what is my recommendation? Two little things. You can, number one, simply donate to places that do help the world like the Arava Institute. You can also try to do things like planting trees. One of the things that I've done: the monarch butterfly is endangered. And my grandchildren Jason, Andrew, and Jeffrey gave me a milkweed plant which attracts monarch butterflies. Now I have like five milkweed plants and I have generations of monarch butterflies coming to my plants. They know the, the neighborhood and so they enjoy my milkweed plants. Again, there are so many miracles in this world. The caterpillar of the monarchs eat every single leaf, they go into the chrysalises, they become butterflies. But then the milkweed regenerates, every single time. They've been eaten totally, a dozen times, and it still comes up again. You know, so my suggestion is learn about the world. See what you can do, see how you can help the world in some way, by planting something by giving something.
Very nice. What are you working on next?
Uh, well, I have two books. One is actually out. It's called Goldie's Forest. And it's a younger version of my mother's story. But it's more of a comic book-y kind of thing. I also have a book called World of Trees that I'm just finishing up. I was working on this book, and it was like this big thing about trees in general. Then I got this call to do like 112 illustrations for the movie, The Tattooed Torah. And so I stopped that project altogether and did The Tattooed Torah, which I'm very, very proud of. And I came back to it, and I'm very excited about that, as well.
Where can listeners learn more about your work?
Well, I have a blog twocentcomics.com. I also have one that I don't do a lot with, it's lemelmanart.com. That's for some of the children's books I do.
Is there anything else you want to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you.
One of the things that's kind of interesting, and I just noticed it a couple of days ago, is like when I do an illustration. I do it with an intention that it's not only going to illustrate the words, but it's going to add more meaning to the words. For instance, on another page, I have two illustrations, "The Jews are defeated." And it's after their defeat by the Romans. "The Jewish people were scattered throughout the world. They lived in every country, a people with no land to call their own. They endure terrible trials yet through it all they survived." And on the top panel, I have the menorah on the Arch of Titus, where they're looting the menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem. And on the bottom, I have Jewish people with their arms extended in the shape of a menorah. And I did that intentionally because I wanted to show the connection between this hope of the Jewish people. On the page with the Masada, and I just noticed this, I showed the drawing of the Judea Capta, which is "Judea is captured," a Roman coin. And on the coin, the woman is sitting with her left arm on her brow and her right arm on her knee. And the drawing above that is a sad man with his left arm on his brow and his right arm on his knee. And I didn't mean, I didn't think about that, I just did it somehow, subconsciously. So the excitement of being an illustrator is to be surprised that your own work.
I had noticed that illustration that you just described, the one where there's a menorah on the top half of the page, and on the bottom half the people are raising their arms in the shape of a menorah. And I was going to ask you about that. So thanks for bringing that up. But it's fascinating that you're doing other pictures that are kind of symbolic without even realizing!
There are a lot of, like, parallels in this book. And the other thing about doing a children's book, kids look at a book more than once. And so I want them to discover things on the second go round or the third go round in a book. It's kind of this dance between text and illustration that work together.
All right, well, Martin Lemelman, thank you so much for speaking with me today.
It was just a pleasure to speak with you and meet you and talk about my book. Thank you.
[MUSIC, DEDICATION] Hi, this is April Powers, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Project Shema and co founder of Jewbian Princess. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast, and I'd like to dedicate my episode to the families of the hostages in Gaza, and anyone in any family who is suffering right now in the world.
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com Check out our Book of Life podcast Facebook page, or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through Bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookofLifepodcast.com Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading!
[MUSIC, PROMO] We start in a familiar place in contemporary Chicago, where Jennifer, a museum curator, is asked to go to Belarus to create a living installation of Jewish life there before the Holocaust. She invites a distant cousin to participate and she brings with her an old Yiddish literary magazine to use as a prop in the installation. In each chapter of this book, we move backward in time. As the settings become less familiar to us, we see the cousin relationships getting closer and see that there's a poem in the journal that's directed at three brothers in the family. Triplets had been separated at a young age. To find out why and what the poem has to do with it, we must travel back further in time. Join me on this journey of Our Little Histories by Janice Weizman at JewishLibraries.org/NiceJewishBooks.
