Rebirthing Trees, Sharing God's Abundance, Healing the Earth
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *
[This essay includes some action steps you could choose to undertake as part of your Tu B'Shvat/ Birthday of the Trees celebration, or could undertake independently. Two sample letters on public policy are at the end of this essay.]
Wouldn't it seem strange if you heard that mystics had transformed April 15, Income Tax Day, into a festival for celebration of God's reemergence?
Yet that is what the Kabbalists of Safed did in the sixteenth century when they recreated Tu B’Shvat. Tu B’Shvat, the full moon of mid-winter, had been important only in Holy Temple days, in the calendar of tithing. It was the end of the “fiscal year” for trees. Fruit that appeared before that date was taxed for the previous year; fruit that appeared later, for the following year.
The Talmud called this legal date the “New Year for Trees.”
But the Kabbalists saw it as the New Year for the Tree of Life itself — for God’s Own Self, for the Tree Whose roots are in Heaven and Whose fruit is the world itself and all God’s creatures. To honor the reawakening of trees and of that Tree in deep mid-winter, they created a mystical Seder that honors the Four Worlds of Acting, Relating, Knowing, and Being.
These Four Worlds were enacted with four cups of wine and four courses of nuts and fruit. The fruit moved from less permeable to more permeable -- for Acting, those with tough shells and soft, edible insides (e.g., walnuts); for Relating, those with soft outsides and hard insides (e.g., peaches); for Knowing, those that are soft and edible all the way through (e.g., figs); for Being, fruits so "permeable" they are not tangible at all and exist only on the plane of Spirit.
The symbolic system of this Seder held still deeper riches: echoes of generation and regeneration in the worlds of plants and animals.
o Nuts and fruit, the rebirthing aspects of a plant's life-cycle, are the only foods that require no death, not even the death of a plant. Our living trees send forth their fruit and seeds in such profusion that they overflow beyond the needs of the next generation.
o The four cups of wine were red, rose, pink, white. Thus they echoed generation and regeneration among animals, including the human race. For red and white were in ancient tradition seen as the colors of generativity. To mix them was to mix the blood and semen that to the ancients connoted procreation.
o The Four Worlds of the mystics also were connected with what they saw as the four primal elements of the natural world : Action, earth; Emotion, water; Intellect, air; Spirit, fire (energy). Earth, water, air, and fire must be free of poison and must be interwoven in balance if the world was to prosper.
Why then did the Kabbalists of Safed connect these primal urgings toward abundance with the date of tithing fruit? Because they saw that God’s shefa, abundance, would keep flowing only if a portion of it were returned as rent to God, the Owner of all land and all abundance.
And who were God’s rent collectors? The poor and the landless, including those priestly celebrants and teachers who owned no piece of earth and whose earthly task was to teach and celebrate.
These mystics saw a deep significance in giving. They said that to eat without blessing the Tree was robbery; to eat without feeding others was robbery. Worse! — because without blessing and sharing, the flow of abundance would choke and stop.
Tu B’Shvat approaches once again. This year, it begins in the Western calendar the evening of January 21 – the day in which we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King -- and runs through the evening of January 22.
The connection is appropriate: King was himself a teacher and celebrant who risked and lost his life to forward the cause of the poor and the need for justice.
Today, even more than in King's lifetime, the trees of the world are in danger; the poor of the world are in need; the teachers and celebrants of the world are at risk.
So Tu B’Shvat must continue to be a time for teachers and celebrants – to celebrate through the life-giving sacred meal of rebirth for the Tree of Life, God's Own Self. It must also become a time for action to feed the endangered earth and the endangered poor. Both are in greatest danger from the poisonous overload of carbon dioxide and methane that human societies are pouring into God’s wind, the ruach ha’olam, and from the destruction of trees that soak up the CO2.
Already the spreading desertification in Africa, the unprecedented drought in Georgia, the diminishment of the Great Lakes so they can no longer bear the vessels that bring food to the world, the Katrina hurricane -- all are caused in part by the global climate crisis, global scorching. Earth, air, water, fire -- all are in danger. So today Tu B’Shvat must once again change as it has in the past, becoming a day to act — to demand new laws and interrupt old destructions.
Today the Seder might include time to write a letter to the local papers, callimng on Congress to strengthen and pass the Lieberman-Warner bill to combat the global climate crisis, or calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to allow states to set more earth-healing requirements for CO2 emissions from autos. (Two sample letters are below.) See www.
Give! Share! Act! Or the flow of abundance will choke on the friction of its own outpouring, and God’s Own Self will choke on our refusal of compassion.
Below are two sample letters, one to local Jewish or general newspapers and one to Senators. Please use one of these to write and sign your own and send it. And write Greenmenorah@shalomctr.org Sample letter 1:
To the Editor:
Tonight we celebrate the traditional Jewish midwinter festival of rebirth of trees and the earth. So it is especially painful to face the EPA's recent action to prevent California and 15 other states from setting strong earth-healing standards for CO2 emissions.
California has sought similar permission 53 times over 30 years and was never turned down –- until now. In refusing, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson ignored the law and the unanimous recommendations of his own legal and technical staff.
As California's Governor Schwarzenegger said, the ruling is “unconscionable,” “ignoring the will of millions of people who want their government to take action in the fight against global warming.” And Connecticut's Governor Rell said, “The EPA has become a roadblock. This is a shame and a disgrace. They are not serving the people.”
We demand that the EPA heal the earth, protect human society, obey the law, and honor God's abundance -- by reversing its unconscionable decision.
Shalom, (signers)
Sample letter 2:
Dear Senator:
I am deeply concerned about the impact of our global climate crisis on God's creation -- the web of life that includes, as the Bible says, the human race and all the living, breathing beings of our world.
I am glad that Senators Warner and Lieberman have introduced their bill to address this crisis. But in its present form, the bill falls short of what we need, to save our food supply, water supply, coastlines, and human health as well as many other species in the sacred web of life, from the ravages of climate crisis and global scorching,
Global scorching is already affecting the poor in America and around the world most quickly and deeply, just as Hurricane Katrina most deeply affected the poor of New Orleans. I am especially concerned that the bill address issues of equity and justice as part of addressing the climate crisis.
I urge you to strengthen the bill in these areas:
1. We are already facing even faster ice-melting and other disastrous results of global scorching than scientists originally predicted, and must move swiftly to reduce CO2 emissions. The goal must be reductions by 20 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. The bill falls way short of that, and I urge you to support its strengthening.
2. Please include a carbon tax along with cap-and-trade as ways of reducing CO2 emissions, devoting its proceeds to vouchers for low and middle-income people to use public transportation.
3 Please Include major grass-roots aid to developing countries to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and to meet the needs of communities endangered by drought, floods, or newly spreading diseases.
Most policy changes can proceed by increments without permanent damage. But to prevent the worst effects of the climate crisis, we need to do ENOUGH and do it quickly, not little by little. I urge you to strengthen the Warner-Lieberman bill and move quickly to pass it.
May the work you do to heal the earth and human civilization from this danger, fill you with a sense that you have well met your responsibilities.
Shalom, (signers)
