Life begins anew in Arad

While “ism” is a common suffix that expresses a person’s ideas or values, one might say that Alex Borschel’s approach to life is more like an “ist.” That is, a botanist, a Zionist, an environmentalist, a novice scientist, and a Buddhist.

The 27-year-old has parlayed all of these “ists” into one – that of an activist – with one objective: To save a garden. But this isn’t your typical garden-variety garden. This garden, located in Arad, was gifted to the Ethiopian Jewish community by B’nai B’rith to commemorate Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift that transported more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

While the operation became an important chapter in the Jewish state’s past, Borschel has devoted himself to keeping this period of Israel’s immigrant history alive and relevant to the present and the future.

“I really hope that through this garden, I can be a symbol of action and make sure that all olim feel included,” he says. “This garden is really a gift to everyone. Everyone here has an immigrant parent, or friend, or someone who came here. We are all olim.”

In fact, Borschel himself is a new immigrant, having made aliya in January 2016, following some time in a rehabilitation center to address his alcoholism. He also participated in Project TEN, a five-month MASA program during the summer of 2015, where he taught English to Ethiopian immigrants. It was there that he found out about what he has named the Arad Botanical Gardens and its history.

“I needed to start over and I wanted to make amends,” Borschel explains of his choice to restore the garden. “I wanted to do better.”

Born in Germany to a military family, Borschel arrived in Washington at age four, by way of Paris and Norway. After his Israeli visa expired he went to Hungary, where his father lives. He returned to Israel just 10 days later, after his aliya paperwork cleared.

Ready to get to work on the garden, he settled in Arad, a city that borders the Negev and Judean deserts.

The George Mason University graduate serendipitously moved into an apartment where Ethiopian Jews from Operation Solomon once lived, and where he could see what lay ahead of him from his window.

What he found was 4,000 x 2,000 meters of neglected land, no water, and no signs of life.

Having spent a month on Kibbutz Na’an, which specializes in organic farming, Borschel knew the work starts early, so he awakens at 4:30 daily. Before the sun rises and catches up with him, he has catalogued supplies, written his daily goals, weeded, and measured how much water was collected overnight. Since he took over the garden in August, his day-to-day routine has paid off: the irrigation system has been rerouted, a pond has been installed, a reservoir has been built, and a Zen garden has been created. Life, both plant and otherwise, has returned: cactus plants have been revived, earthworms have reappeared, and birds are chirping once again. Additionally, 1,000 species of flowers and 1,500 plants that represent 120 varieties of fruits and vegetables, including peppers, zucchini, and cantaloupe, have been planted.

“This is not a botanical garden,” he says proudly. “It is a botanical farm!” With so much still to accomplish, Borschel has divided his goals into short- and long-term. The former includes completing the major landscaping for the end of winter, while the latter includes converting everything to clay beds, building a playground, and making the entire garden green as well as sustainable.

Ethiopians who still live in Arad, says Borschel, are overjoyed at his efforts.

His most ambitious goal is to use the Arad Botanical Gardens as a springboard to address immigrant relations in his adopted country, specifically with regard to Ethiopian olim. MASA’S Project TEN, he explains, was the first Israeli program to focus on how to more successfully include Ethiopian Jews in Israeli society as well as to improve conditions in which they live, no small feat for a population that consists of many who arrived having never seen a flush toilet or a refrigerator.

“There is a division of labor here that is not necessarily racial, but related to immigrant populations,” Borschel explains, quickly adding, “Ethiopian Jews see it as a racial issue so it needs to be addressed as that. They have a perspective we haven’t seen before. I wanted to make aliya so I could finish the work we started during Project TEN and get a better understanding of the situation.”

The new immigrant also wants to tap into the spirit of the kibbutz movement that was once so intimately woven into Israel culture. Invoking David Ben-Gurion’s famous declaration of Israel being a place where people were “making the desert bloom,” Borschel takes that pronouncement literally.

“Working in the garden makes me feel like that pioneering spirit is just asleep, not dead,” he notes. “I dream of making the entire country green.”

Borschel also dreams about inspiring others and his country.

“It is beautiful to see things come back to life,” he says, adding, “I have no intention of doing all of this work on the garden and then letting it be neglected again. Through this garden, we can demonstrate that we care about [Ethiopian immigrants]. This is a place to start.”

‘This is not a botanical garden – it is a botanical farm!’