I am sickened by the daily images of brown people being shoved, beaten and disappeared by men wearing masks into unmarked cars. I fear that tomorrow they will take my friends and after that come for me.
Where I live, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 265 miles from the Mexican border, people have migrated to and from Tenotichtlan, now known as Mexico City, for 1000 years.
I spent the winter of 2023/24 in Mexico City and I think I experienced a little of what it must feel like to be a recent immigrant: estranged, unable to express myself well, disconnected, out of place.
In an effort to make a connection with the place, I found out the name of the tree growing in the courtyard of the building where I rented a tiny rooftop apartment. I learned to recognize its form, the texture of its bark and the shape of its leaves, and did some research into its origins.
It turns out that jacaranda mimosifolia, or “blue jacaranda” is not native to Mexico. Instead, it was introduced there by a Japanese immigrant. Tatsugoro Matsumoto was a landscape architect who cultivated the tree in his greenhouse and recommended to President Álvaro Obregón (1920-1924) that jacaranda trees be planted along the city’s main avenues.
I spent a lot of time looking for jacaranda trees in Mexico City. Doing so put me in touch with my surroundings and helped me feel less like an outsider.
I scrounged dead branches from the ground and when I returned to the U.S. the jacaranda branches crossed the border with me.
Back in my workshop, I made them into mezuzah cases.
The beautiful jacaranda tree, whose spectacular purple flowers draw visitors to Mexico City every spring, has also been imported from its native countries of Bolivia and Argentina to the United States, Asia, Australia and South Africa where it is loved and revered by the local populations.
I myself am the son of an immigrant mother. I feel fortunate to have grown up in a household where Yiddish and Ladino were spoken and to have four immigrant grandparents who resisted assimilation their entire lives. How grateful I am to have had this direct connection to the languages and cultures of my people.
These are the last of the mezuzah cases I made from the branches I found in Mexico.
I will donate the entire purchase price of these five jacaranda mezuzah cases to The New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, a group in Albuquerque that provides free legal assistance to immigrants.
This is one small thing that you and I can do to stand together against the rise of fascism in our country.
Like the jacaranda tree, human migrants contribute so much to their communities. They make our country rich in every way. They should be allowed to flower, not be kidnapped from their court appointments and workplaces and disappeared.
Jacaranda tree near the Pyramids, Teotihuacan, México, January 2024
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