While reading, consider these questions:

What do these texts tell us about the relationship between trees and people?

What do these texts tell us about the relationship between trees and God?

What relationship to the environment is being described?

Does Tu B'Shevat appear in your text? If so, what is its purpose?

[A midrashic reading of Malachi for our generation:]“Your planet is heating like a furnace. Already droughts scorch your continents, already your waters boil into typhoons and hurricanes, already the ice melts and your sea-coasts flood. Yet even now you can turn away from the fires of coal and oil, turn to the solar energy and the winged wind that rise from a sun of justice and tranquility to heal your planet. For God’s sake, you must all take on the mantle of Elijah! Turn your own hearts to the lives of your children and the children of your children, turn their hearts to learning from the deepest teachings of the Wisdom you inherited – that together you can yet avert the utter destruction of My earth.”

(Rabbi Arthur Waskow, “A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings”)

by Tevi Troy

Every year, in midwinter, synagogue bulletins and Jewish Community Center emails are filled with announcements of organic Sabbath lunches, environmental lectures, and recycling drives. The impetus for this annual unveiling of the green—which, somewhat unusually, takes place across Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox institutions alike—is the commemoration on the Jewish calendar of Tu B’Shvat, classically known as the New Year for Trees.

In 2015, Tu B’Shvat begins on February 3 and continues through the day of February 4. In recent decades, it has moved from the periphery of special Jewish days to much closer to the center. It serves as a kind of Jewish Earth Day—a rallying point for the marriage between Green sensibilities and Jewish identity. Indeed, the takeover of Tu B’Shvat by the environmental movement is now so all-encompassing that it threatens to become the only thing for which this special day—which has existed for two millennia—is known.

. . .

[Arthur] Waskow’s conflation of environmental activism with Tu B’Shvat caught on so well that by 2012, the whole business became a rallying point in the presidential election. That year, the National Jewish Democratic Council touted President Obama’s environmental record and concluded that “on this Tu B’Shvat, it is clear that the Jewish community has an ally in the White House who shares this value.” Other matters that liberal Jews have associated with Tu B’Shvat include: opposition to fracking, the importance of eating locally grown foods, reducing one’s carbon footprint, and exploring why Jews should be vegans (or at the very least vegetarians). For Jewish foodies, Tu B’Shvat is a day like no other. The 14-year-old organization Hazon, which “examines how American Jewish life can be strengthened by engagement with food, the outdoors, and the environment,” sees Tu B’Shvat as “a perfect time” to have conversations about the morality of food and its centrality to the Jewish experience.

In addition to the overt attempts of left-leaning activists and groups to define Tu B’Shvat as a liberal holiday, most American synagogues today have seized on it as an opportunity for communal service to the environment. In the weeks leading up to Tu B’Shvat, synagogue announcements within Judaism’s three main denominations herald a host of environmental activities for congregants. At Washington D.C.’s Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation, an ad for a recent event noted that “protecting the environment is a Jewish value rooted in the Creation story” and then invited guests to a Tu B’Shvat seder “whose theme is protecting the environment from the ravages of global warming and the pollution of air, water, and earth.” The event was sponsored by the shul’s Green Committee.

Oakland’s Rodef Shalom, which advertises itself as a progressive congregation, hosted a Tu B’Shvat program with an arborist who “will discuss trees and how they affect the environment.” The event promised to help people “learn what is going on and how you can help.” This event was sponsored by the shul’s Social Action Committee.