The books of Joshua and Judges offer two competing views of how Eretz Yisrael (the land of
Israel) was conquered in biblical times. The book of Joshua argues that the conquest by those
who entered the land after our people’s 40 years of wandering was rather efficient, quick, and
complete. Our ancestors, the book of Joshua claims, went and defeated town after town of
armed people, including those cities that were walled. Remember the famous walls of Jericho?

The book of Judges, on the other hand, gives a version that suggests a conquest that was inefficient, protracted,
and never completed. In this book, our people in every part of the land continued to struggle with how to live
peaceably among surrounding cultures and, indeed, were at times at war with, and for much time subjugated to, those peoples. Perhaps the reality was more complicated than either book presents.

However, let’s look at how Eretz Yisrael was conquered in our day. In 1927, botanists Otto Warburg (1859–1938)
and Alexander Eig (1894–1938) recognized a new flower in the Negev, the dry and barren
desert that marks most of the southern part of Israel.

They are named the aaronsohnia, and it can grow in arid wilderness. The plant is named after the agronomist
Aaron Aaronsohn. Aaronsohn made aliyah to Israel with his family from Romania in 1882 when he was six–years
old. His parents were founders of Zichron Yaakov, one of the earliest agricultural settlements in
Israel. He later would become the first car–owner in Palestine, and one of the first to own a bicycle.

However, from the moment of arriving in Israel, he developed a lifelong interest in the study of
plants and trees that could flourish in his new home. As he grew older, Aaronsohn became a soil
specialist. He founded an organization that explored and promoted agricultural technology. He
devoted his life to developing plants and trees that would withstand drought, locusts, and the
many other stresses brought about by the extreme climatic conditions of the Middle East. He, in
fact, mapped all of Eretz Yisrael botanically. He built the first agricultural experimental station in
Atlit, seven miles south of Haifa.

Many today remember Aaronsohn for his spying efforts; it’s a great tale for another time. Without
diminishing his heroics in that capacity, we should reconsider and reassess his agricultural
efforts. After all, it was Aaronsohn’s work that made possible the resettlement of Eretz Yisrael.
Without his research on plants and trees, the early pioneers could never have settled the land.
And this telling point is often missed in modern Jewish history: The Israelis did not conquer the
land with guns, or words, or government. They conquered the land with trees. The moment they
learned how to use the soil, how to care for the soil, how to plant and to grow and to harvest, how
to blanket the whole landscape with grove after grove, they conquered Israel.

Zev, a kibbutz poet of yesteryear stated about the land, “You and I are bound together…May we
grow and flourish together.” As we celebrate bikkurim, the first and best of the harvest in Eretz
Yisrael this Shavuot, we might reconsider what it actually meant to conquer the land, tame the
soil, make the wilderness bloom, and recall all the heroes of the early years of Palestine, who
paved the way for a country’s existence and its flourishing.