Instead of breathing death, they could breathe in lavender – a rescue solution in the face of unbearable reality.
By Forest Rain Marcia
I don’t particularly like lavender, but a farm dedicated ONLY to lavender?! I thought that would be something worth seeing. I never imagined I’d hear about lavender saving Israel but then in Israel, you never know what you will discover.
Azizo Lavender Farm is located in the community of Kanaf in the Golan Heights. The name “Azizo” is inspired by a Latin inscription discovered on a lintel of the ancient synagogue in Deir Aziz, where modern Kanaf now stands. Farmer Dan and his wife Lilach chose this name to honor the deep historical connection to the land and the water source by the same name that sustained the ancient community and continues to nourish their lavender fields today.
The place is beautiful and full of purple accents – and fresh lavender smells much better than the lavender scent used in perfumes and detergents.
Farmer Dan happily explained the history of the business, growing and harvesting lavender. His lavender brought a small but crucial revolution to Israeli households. Everyone used to use moth balls to protect clothes – an effective but terrible-smelling solution. The first Azizo product was small bags of lavender to use instead. They work so well and last so long that some Kanaf residents still use the ones they bought in 1987!!
The farm now sells a large variety of products made with their lavender – everything from chocolate, liqueur, honey, and lavender ice cream to lavender-based toiletries.
Nice, wholesome, and a little boring until suddenly farmer Dan told us about October 7th.
We didn’t know to ask. Who would think that a flower farm in the north of Israel had anything to do with the horrors of the Hamas invasion in the south?
On October 7th Dan got a phone call from a woman begging for help. Her husband was among those evacuating bodies of the massacred to the Shura Camp near Ramla in central Israel for identification. Within hours, the rooms of the camp were piled to the ceiling with bodies and the smell was unbearable.
The soul could not deal with what they were seeing. The task needed to be done but the workers were becoming physically ill.
“You have to help me!” she pleaded.
The next day the Shura teams received Dan’s solution – small bags of lavender which they inserted inside their face masks and lavender oil they could drip on the masks themselves. Instead of breathing death, they could breathe in lavender.
The invaders massacred Jews to try to disconnect us from our land. Flowers born of the ancient love story between the Jewish People and our ancestral homeland, between this land and her People, saved the day.
Flowers protected those doing the unspeakably horrible and deeply sacred work of identifying the massacred. They enabled the families of Israel to get much-needed answers. We used sheer determination and technology too but we needed flowers, a blessing from the land herself to finish the job.
Think about that.
About the writer:
Forest Rain is an American-born Israeli who lives in northern Israel. She’s a branding expert and storyteller. Her passion is giving voice to the stories of Israel illuminating its profound events, cherished values, and exemplary role models that transcend borders, casting Israel as an eternal wellspring of inspiration and strength for a global audience.
Forest Rain made Aliyah at the age of thirteen. After her IDF service, she co-developed and co-directed a project to aid victims of terrorism and war. These activities gave her extensive first-hand experience with the emotional and psychological processes of civilians, soldiers, and their families, wounded and/or bereaved and traumatized by terrorism and war (grief, guilt, PTSD, etc). Throughout the years, she has continued to voice the stories, pain, and strength of traumatized Israelis to motivate others to provide support and counter the hate that threatens Jews in Israel, around the world, and Western civilization itself through the understanding that what begins with the Jews never ends with Jews.
Inspiration from Zion: https://inspirationfromzion.com/
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
I loved this story of the Lavender farm ( though tragic) and would love to visit this wonderful place. How far is it from Raanana? I’ve always found peace in the beauty of nature. Thank you for sharing your story.