We liked the ways that Goelman used the first person in this piece. The self-referencing advances the story; it’s not overdone. We liked the elegant descriptions of the olive harvest, its good verbs. The mention of one harvester’s injury by Israeli fire adds import to the piece. We thought the lead was a bit confusing, that it needed one sentence to establish the context for the first quote. But the ending is lovely and apt, given the publication’s Jewish readers.
Read “Opening Up the Old Olive Trees,” by Zachary Goelman