Tu B'SHVAT -- don't just plant; protect!

As the "New Year of the Trees" arrives again, there are seders to be had, fruits to be symbolically eaten, Four Worlds to be invoked over four cups, and trees to be invoked.  Better yet, trees to be planted.  But saplings, which take decades to grow, already abound.  What do we have ever less of?  Mature trees in old growth forests -- which anchor vital habitats, and offer invaluable "ecosystem services."  So better still:  there are trees to be protected!  

In gearing up to solicit comments to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on its proposed National Forest Plan Amendment to Conserve and Steward Old Growth Forests, I came across a piece about Tu b'Shvat that I'd written and shared on NPR's "Interfaith Voices" program, back in 2008.  It's a short primer on this minor festival that brings in Joni Mitchell, roadless rules, redwood rabbis, and being the tree. ​

(It holds up too well, as again we face political headwinds in trying to protect what old growth is left.  Even a small detail from 16 years ago is relevant again now:  just last week, I and many others offered testimony on allowing California's car emissions regulations to be more protective of human life than the national standards, and to allow other states to embrace them.). 

So read on.  Afterward, by all means go plant a young tree -- but more importantly, do something to help protect a mature one!   Chag ha'ilanot sameach!

     Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, "Interfaith Voices", January 2008

Earlier this January, in Washington DC, I biked to synagogue in shorts.  It was 73 degrees.  Birds were confused too, and the trees just wanted to bud already.  Unusual?: yes.  Caused by our carbon?: perhaps [likely!].  But even two thousand years ago, folks knew that trees don’t quite hibernate – their sap starts to rise, midwinter.
            The Talmud names four new years: Rosh Hashanah, each Fall, is best known.  But now comes the New Year of the Trees – Tu B’Shvat (the 15th of the Hebrew lunar month of Shvat).  Tolstoy supposedly said “there’s hope for a people that celebrates the rebirth of trees in the middle of a Russian winter.”  (Or a Minneapolis winter).
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            It’s quite a festival, and an evolving one.  Tu B’Shvat used to be for tithing fruit.  Late medieval Kabbalists reshaped it for mystical union with Torah -- “the Tree of Life” – itself a sign of God’s essence.
            Fifty or eighty years ago, it focused on planting trees, in Israel.  Today it’s all about protecting trees -- and habitats, and critters, and ourselves.  Tu B’Shvat is our ‘poster holiday’ for Jewish environmentalism.
            When the mid-90’s Congress tried to roll back green protections, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (with Jews of all stripes) made Tu B’Shvat an education and action day, to save our National Forests.  The “Redwood Rabbis” held a Tu B’Shvat seder and sit-in among threatened old growth trees.  People get it.

            At my own Tu B’Shvat seders, I let Joni Mitchell’s classic eco-song make midrash commentary:  when “they pave paradise, put up a parking lot” — they don’t just “take all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum”— soon, “a big yellow taxi takes away your old man.”  When societies denigrate the value of trees, ultimately the same happens with human life and liberty.  Trees aren’t just about carbon sequestration, erosion protection, biodiversity.  Trees aren’t just about beauty, majesty, symbolic contemplation.  Trees are about democracy, human rights, your life and mine and our grandkids’.  

          Jewish law tells us to waste nothing, even to conserve energy by burning fuel efficiently (take that, EPA, and let California regulate mileage!).  We learn conservation from Deuteronomy 20, 19 – “when you besiege a city, don’t cut down the enemy’s trees.”  The verse continues, as usually translated, “for is the tree of the field human, to retreat?”  But in the original, the Hebrew reads literally:   “ki ha’adam etz hasadeh -- for the human is a tree of the field.”  We don’t just depend on trees; we are the tree.
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            So buy post-consumer recycled paper; use fewer squares of T.P.; specify Forest Stewardship Council wood for construction; elect someone who cares for Creation.  The next tree’s life you save, may be your own.  Happy Tu B’Shvat.
 
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                [The host, Sister/Doctor Maureen Fiedler, then read the following, per the transcript:]   

"#1, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda Maryland...#2, ...is President of the Washington Board of Rabbis...   #3,  ...and helps lead numerous Jewish and interfaith environmental groups (including the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, the Shalom Center, Religious Witness for the Earth, and Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light)."