Replanting Trees, Rebirthing Peace

Last week was the week of Tu B' Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, and we were in the land of Israel. We Jews from America had come to plant trees.

We both grew up with the little blue

of the Jewish National Fund to pay for planting trees in Israel, and one of us came to Israel in 1967 to plant a tree in a JNF forest.

But this is new. For we are planting in very different places from those of the past--inside Israel, and beyond the Green Line.

We are part of a delegation of ten rabbis and about sixty other Jews from America and Europe, who have come to help Rabbis for Human Rights plant trees to ensure that Israel fulfill its vision as a country that exemplifies the moral values of Judaism. RHR is the only Israeli rabbinic organization that includes Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and renewal rabbis. Its work is so well-respected in America that the rabbinic organizations of the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative denominations have all endorsed its efforts.

Several of the RHR rabbis are Americans who have made aliya [moved to Israel] and devote their professional and personal lives to the Jewish people, Zionism, and Israel. They protect the human rights of foreign workers in Tel Aviv, poverty-stricken Jews in Jerusalem, Bedouin nomads in the Negev, and Palestinians in West Bank villages.

We come at a time when, for fear of violence, very few Jews are visiting Israel. We share those fears, but despite them we have come to show our solidarity with our brothers and sisters who live in fear, and our commitment to an Israel that is Jewish, just, and democratic.

We head first to Katamonim, a Jerusalem neighborhood of Eastern Jews who still live in poverty, crowded in a neighborhood with only one patch of green space. The space is being sold to a developer, but the neighbors and the Society for Preservation of Nature in Israel want to preserve this place where trees, grass, and human beings can catch their breath. We stand with them, planting trees to support that breath of life.

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