"Other holidays repose on the past. Arbor Day proposes the future."
-- J. Sterling Morton
“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, and then names the streets after them.”
-- Bill Vaughan
Known as the Jewish New Year for Trees, Tu B’Shvat can be literally translated as the 15th of (the month of) Shevat. The date originally was created as the day to track the Biblical prohibition against eating fruit from a tree during its first three years. The fruit of a four year old tree should be set aside as a gift to God, and finally, in the fifth year the fruit can be eaten. The kabbalists of the Middle Ages developed the idea of a Tu B’Shvat Seder, with each tree and fruit eaten given special symbolic meaning. By saying blessings over the various foods in the Seder, participants would not only stop and appreciate the gifts of the land, but would also be brought closer to spiritual perfection. The Kabbalists also believed that as we take from the world, we repair it by reciting the appropriate blessings.
Ever evolving, Tu B’Shvat is celebrated in Israel today with the planting of trees and is known as “Arbor Day.” The date has been adopted in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world to signify our commitment to the environment and our thinking about the future.
Living in a town called Bloomington, it seems natural that we would celebrate Tu B’Shvat in style. Always known for its trees, in 2010 the city of Bloomington won a $20,000 award from Tom’s of Maine to establish an orchard. Meant to be a community resource, the first trees of this orchard were planted in 2011 next to the Willie Streeter gardens near the YMCA. It is important that these trees are not just any trees, but fruit trees which give back the most to our environment by providing both shade and sustenance. As “an organization devoted to growing fruit for the community to share and enjoy,” the Bloomington Community Orchard is a “publicly owned orchard maintained entirely by volunteers with the harvest available to everyone in the community.” Doing the ‘biblical’ math, we should start eating the fruit from these trees in the year 2016.
Tu B’Shvat takes on even more significance as we think about our commitment to the environment within Congregation Beth Shalom. This past December, Congregation Beth Shalom was one of 4 congregations nationwide to receive an award as being a ‘cool congregation.’ (Click here to read all about it)This award of $1000 was given by Interfaith Power & Light, a national organization whose mission is to mobilize a “religious response to global warming in congregations through the promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.” We received this award because a third of our congregants have committed to serious greening measures in their own homes. Tu B’Shvat gives us a chance to think not only about greening within our homes, but also outside in our landscape.
I encourage you this year to not only plant trees, but to think about things you can do to further create a sustainable environment. Here are some of the easy things I have started to do. I now bring lunch everyday in a lunch box. I’ve learned to make my own cleaning products from vinegar, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and have been using micro fiber cleaning cloths for years. Did you know that olive oil shines up stainless steel just as well as an expensive aerosol spray? At Beth Shalom I’ve learned about low VOC paints, composting, and new hints on recycling and reusing.
Tu B’Shvat falls on Wednesday, February 8th this year. We will celebrate as a community with a Tu B’Shvat salad bar dinner on Friday night, February 10th. Let’s come together to celebrate Torah, the “tree of life to those who hold fast to it” and to rededicate ourselves to sustaining our world for future generations to come.
As it says in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13:
“See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world – for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.”
Judith Rose
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We welcome Joshua Herman as our student rabbi. 