Trees and Justice

Tu B'Shevat falls on February 3, 2007. This article originally appeared on Beliefnet in January 2003.

The coincidence that Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish new year for trees, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the celebration of one of America's greatest leaders, come together on the same weekend this year provides an opportunity for us to reflect on the connection between trees and justice.

Throughout the world, Jews gather on Tu B'Shevat to celebrate trees and the bounty we receive from God through them.

According to the Talmud, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat marks the beginning of the sap rising in the trees of Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), a sign of spring and the renewal of life.

In the Jewish legal tradition, Tu B'Shevat is the beginning of the fiscal year for the biblical tithes on fruit. Two ecologically oriented practices dominate our observance of Tu B'Shevat. Many communities celebrate this holiday by planting trees, and thus actively participate as partners in creation, keeping alive the great garden in which we live.

Increasingly popular among Jews of all denominations is the Tu B'Shevat seder. Like the Passover seder, it is an elaborate intertwining of food, wine and words.

This kabbalistic ritual emanates from the mystical notion that eating a wide variety of fruits with proper intention can effect a tachyon (a healing or rectification) of the first time humans "missed the mark" by eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

The global ecological crisis — from burning rain forests and clear-cutting ancient forests. Holes in the ozone layer make clear that our nibblings from the Tree of Knowledge have indeed brought an urgent need for terrestrial healings of cosmic proportion.

In Tu B'Shevat we find an affirmation of the necessity for caring for trees, and by extension, the entire garden in which we live.

And we find a connection between our consciousness, our consumption (eating), and the health of the world around us.

From the trees of our glorious garden we eat not only olives, oranges, dates, figs, and myriad other fruits but also books, paper, napkins, fences, furniture and houses (not to mention oxygen).

The Hebrew word for tree is eytz. "Eytz chayyim he"--a tree of life is she--we sing as we put away the Sefer Torah on Shabbat mornings. And that same eytz also means what we call in English "wood" or "timber."

Continued on page 2: 'holds the very earth in place...' »