Tree Doctor Extraordinaire // Meet Dr. Miriam Silberstein

Doctor Miriam Silberstein is on the team of a new carob-growing endeavor called CarobWay. When I asked whether she herself eats carob, she laughed and shared the following story.

“I am totally committed professionally to promoting the increase in carob tree production in Israel because it has a multitude of advantages for farmers, for the economy and for the environment,” she began. “We live in semirural Pardes Chana, north of Netanya, and our street is lined with carob [bokser] trees. When I was growing up, there was a carob tree right outside my window. But I have not yet learned to like it.

“By contrast, my husband, Meir, is a carob aficionado. Whenever he and I go for a stroll in our neighborhood, he picks them off the trees and eats them. I ask him to keep a little distance away because I’m sensitive to their aroma. I still haven’t gotten used to it.”

Dr. Miriam Silberstein, 72, is putting her five decades of experience as an agronomist behind a new undertaking to increase the amount of land used to cultivate carob orchards tenfold. The day we spoke was typical; she was up before dawn to make the two-hour drive to Kiryat Shmonah, on the Israel-Lebanon border, for a series of meetings where she evaluated research and development projects for northern Israel. 

Her mother, Esther Rothschild, and her father, Matityahu Appel, had survived the Holocaust, part of a group of 100 Jewish children from Germany who were sent to a religious Jewish orphanage in Basel, Switzerland. Her mother was 11 and her father was 13. The two youngsters spent seven years in Switzerland, where they learned professions: she nursing, and he carpentry. Their parents had been members of Orthodox kehillos and perished when they were stranded in Germany and thus unable to join their children and take refuge in Switzerland. 

Esther and Matityahu got married, moved to Israel and went to live on the religious Kibbutz Sheluchot, where Miriam was born. The family moved to Pardes Chana when she was three. Food was scarce during those years of rationing, so her family grew their own vegetables in what was referrred to in America as “a victory garden.” 

“I remember that as a girl in the sixth grade, I loved taking care of the vegetables and flowers. I used to get up at five in the morning to weed and water the garden before going to school. My father, who was a carpenter, specialized in the olivewood products that came to symbolize the Holy Land. Both parents were involved in making and selling tashmishei kedushah, agricultural implements and souvenirs. They even made the olivewood gavel that was used by the very first speaker of the Knesset.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, Miriam taught high school biology and agriculture for a decade. She married a tax consultant named Meir Silberstein, and they have three children and ten grandchildren. Miriam went on to study botany and plant pathology, writing her doctoral thesis on the causes of root rot in avocado trees. Today avocados are popular, which was not the case only a few decades ago. Her expertise subsequently extended to exotic subtropical fruit trees, some of which Ami readers may have never encountered: cherimoya, mango, loquat and lychee. 

Dr. Miriam and her husband enjoyed pioneering challenges. 

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