On a blessed year here, when the rains are abundant, the four seasons meld one into another, highlighting an especially emerald green and flowering springtime. But before it’s officially spring, it’s almost like there’s a fifth season here in Israel: the white and pale pink blossoming almond tree season, called “Shekediot.”
If you blink, you can miss it. This “season’s” peak lasts for a short window, a few weeks.
In Japan, the custom or ritual of viewing their pink cherry blossom trees in their full splendor is imbued with it’s very own name: Sakura.
Here in Israel there is no formal equivalent to Sakura, but make no mistake, unofficially, it’s definitely Israel’s Sakura season.
Even if you don’t go with intention to view the delicate white flowering Almond trees in say, Kfar Tavor in the Lower Galilee, or in the Valley of the Deer here in Jerusalem, the almond tree groves transform the landscape. Their ethereally delicate white and soft pink blossoms densely dot random natural landscapes, perfuming the air with scented magic.
Even if just on random walks, in wilder un-manicured groves, you encounter these magnificent trees that, as they grow, offer dreamy pops of beauty and serenity.
Their white blooms fill the air with a sense of a Spring-kind of snow; snow-white almond tree petals. Especially when the white petals have fluttered to the ground, encircling the tree trunk, sometimes, if you don’t look too closely, it can almost seem like a light showering of snow settled.
The wispy pink like threads at the center of the white blooms adorn them as a pink button might grace a lace or silk accessory, lending an especially gentle and feminine quality to this season.
The season is peaking, but there are probably still a couple of weeks before the blossoming almond tree — one of the first and possibly, actually, the first tree, to awaken from winter’s slumber will disappear as swiftly as it suddenly arrived.
I have my excursion to Jerusalem’s Valley of The Deer planned. Can you imagine the pure fairytale-esque kind of magic of seeing beautiful delicate doe eyed deer meandering in luminescent groves and meadows of sprawling rustic tree branches dotted with cotton-y white and blushing pink blooms?
So far, my pleasure in taking in the sight of the almond trees — these trees that have been indigenous to this place since Biblical times — has been in walking in the natural wild growth. The trees seem to be everywhere and truly are a sight to behold.
Not gonna lie. I’m tempted to snap off some branches from these almond trees and bring them home with me.
The other day, I went walking about an hour before sunset. The green landscape before me was beginning to darken a bit, or at least recede in its vividness, as it was overtaken by a more muted dull green. But the almond trees? I suppose it’s due to their pristine white, which must attract the light of the setting sun — it was as if each one of them, white flecked, was lit by its own invisible lamp.
In the expanse before me, each of the floral almond trees stood out.
Glowing.
Soon, their eye shaped fruits, the almonds themselves, will be tended to.
These beauties will reap what was sown.
For now, to inhale these trees’ perfume, to receive a gift that feels like our very own nature’s bridal veil, is gift enough.
© IJN 2026
