I have always loved pomegranates. I love the splendour of an orchard in full bloom or heavy with ruddy, ripe fruit, the sweet-tart flavour, the anticipation and trepidation that pomegranate season means that the Yamim Noraim, the High Holidays, are fast approaching, holiday meals with family and friends and gold-red leaves in the late autumn or the first burgundy shoots on the bare tree in spring around Purim time. 

It is the most majestic of fruit and also the most spiritual. 

For years in our family preparing mentally and materially for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish lunar new year, includes visiting pomegranate orchards which somehow in my mind brings home to me the concept that in the Hebrew month of Elul, the lead up to Rosh Hashana, "the King is in the field", it's a time when God is especially attentive to our supplications and penitence, a time when we are more aware of His presence. 

I have always loved pomegranates and it feels somehow appropriate that in the wake of the horrific Hamas invasion of Israel on Simhat Torah, October 7th, the first farms where my family and went to volunteer was a pomegranate farm, working alongside hundreds of other Israelis from many different sectors of our society to save the huge pomegranate harvest in a nearby kibbutz suddenly bereft of seasonal workers because of the war. Such a bizarre cognitive dissonance to be surrounded on the ground by the gorgeous late season giant red pomegranates while above warplanes, drones and the occasional Hamas rocket roared over our heads. 

Pomegranates, one of the most well known symbols of Rosh Hashanah, is the most Jewish of all fruits, rooted deep in our ancient Hebrew heritage, woven into our religious and cultural life for millennia. 

One of the special seven species with which the Torah describes the Land of Israel as being blessed with, pomegranates appear multiple times in the bible.

Its striking bell shaped flowers are the inspiration for the golden bells adorning the hem of the High Priest's garment, alternating with pomegranate pendats woven from blue, scarlet and purple yarn. 

The beauty of the pomegranate fruit and blossoms feature in Solomon's Song of Songs and through the ages in Jewish liturgical poetry. 

The crown (calyx) of the pomegranate grows in the shape of a six pointed star, thought by many to be the inspiration for the Star of David as a Jewish emblem. 

There are many traditions associating the pomegranate tree with the tree of life. 

Villages and towns in ancient Israel and Judea, and in modern Israel, bearing names including the word Rimon, pomegranate, like the ruins of the ancient synagogue near the Lahavim forest, close to Beer Sheva. 

And this is before we get to the more spiritual symbolism of the pomegranate as a sign of blessing, as a metaphor for a person who is full of good deeds, a righteous person, the holy nation of Israel, a fruit who's many seeds are said to amount to 613 like the number of commandments Hashem gave to the Jewish people. 

We place the pomegranate in pride of place on our Rosh Hashanah dinner tables and make the Yehi Ratzon blessing "may we be full of good deeds like the seeds of a pomegranate" and "may we be full of merit like the seeds of a pomegranate", but the pomegranate represents so much more than that simple prayer.

It embodies thousands of years of an unbroken chain of Jewish faith, culture, history, art and agriculture.

It is the yearning for our long destroyed ancient Temple in Jerusalem and the pomegranate adornment of the Kohen Gadol's robes and the bringing of the first fruits of the biblical seven species as offerings. 

It is an image that repeats itself over and over again in ancient Jewish architecture and the adornment of synagogues throughout the ages, in mosaics, engravings, embroidered parokhet curtains in front of the Torah ark, millennia old jewellery uncovered in archaeological sites and motifs decorating furniture in synagogues to this day. 

These thoughts and more crowd my head as since that terrible Simhat Torah three years ago working in agriculture has become part of my routine. I have worked so many pomegranate harvests in that time, pruned and weeded so many pomegranate orchards during the winter and spring. Even the small pomegranate tree in my garden has started yielding more fruit. 

Each pomegranate picked, each sucker branch trimmed feels like reaching out to my ancestors through the centuries, Israelite farmers, Judean farmers doing this exact same work in this exact same place. These are literally my roots, my people's roots. A beautiful red fruit that is at once sensual and holy, an ancient blessing for our land, for our nation, an exhortation to be righteous, an aspiration to be worthy of blessing. 

May this coming year bring us blessings like the seeds of the pomegranate, may we all be written and sealed in the book of life and good deeds.