Cada uno bajo su parra y su higuera

“Cada uno bajo su parra y su higuera” is an expression of peace and secure belonging that Gershom Wald sets against the bloodshed of religious and political projects. In his account, it names a life made possible not by conquest or national power, but by a community choosing to settle and live alongside its neighbors.

The phrase in Wald’s imagined Jerusalem

Wald tells Shmuel Ash a story about crusaders who, after a long journey, reach a valley in what is now Slovenia and decide to call it Jerusalem. They establish a small settlement there: they build modest homes and a church, divide the land among themselves, and make roads. They marry women from the nearby village and raise children who play in places named for the sacred geography of the Holy Land. In this invented geography, Jerusalem is not a city to be captured but a way of living that can be carried elsewhere.

Wald describes the settlers’ lives as peaceful and free, without further bloodshed or unending struggle against enemies. The phrase “Cada uno bajo su parra y su higuera” crystallizes that peace as ordinary, individual security: each person has a place to live, rather than a promised homeland to win through force. He turns the story into an invitation to Shmuel to stay, asking where he would go if he left and whether he already loves the place.

A counter-image to national destiny

The expression gains force from Wald’s distrust of redemptive causes. He argues that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and modern movements may preach kindness and salvation, yet their adherents can turn to persecution and violence when they hold power. He rejects the prospect of redeeming the world through such movements, reasoning that would-be redeemers have repeatedly become implicated in bloodshed. The peaceful settlement in the valley offers a counter-image: a community can have a home without making enemies or claiming that its violence serves a sacred end.

That contrast also surfaces in Wald’s discussion of David Ben-Gurion. He admires Ben-Gurion’s breadth of vision and argues that Jewish peoplehood cannot be treated as a blessing if it means standing apart from other nations. Shmuel, by contrast, criticizes Ben-Gurion’s nationalist state and warns that the Arabs will not forget the defeat of 1948 or the subsequent intrigues with Britain and France. The phrase’s peace is therefore not a settled political reality in their argument; it is a measure by which the costs and claims of national power are judged.

War, responsibility, and the cost of ideals

The ideal is sharpened by the history of Mija Wald’s death. Gershom recalls that he and others taught the young to answer a call to fight, surrounding Mija with stories of earlier defenders and repeating that a voice had called and he had gone. He later recognizes himself as part of that call. The peaceful life under vine and fig tree stands in stark contrast to the collective language of sacrifice that helped send his only son to war.

Yet Wald does not simply replace one certainty with another. He can praise Ben-Gurion as a clear-eyed leader who understood that security would not be granted freely, while also remembering Shaltiel Abravanel’s opposition to partition and his effort to reach agreement with the Arabs. Wald once sided with Ben-Gurion’s realism; after Mija’s death, the question of whether the sacrifice was worthwhile becomes an unspoken wound between him and Shaltiel. The expression holds the alternative they did not achieve in tension with the historical pressures they believed they faced.

Meaning and limits

The phrase is not presented as a political program that resolves the conflict. It appears within a story Wald invents to imagine a different outcome: people naming a valley Jerusalem, making homes, and living there in peace. Its simplicity is the point. Against claims that history demands bloodshed, it offers a picture of belonging grounded in everyday security and coexistence. But the gap between that imagined settlement and the wars, losses, and arguments in the novel keeps the phrase from becoming an easy consolation.