Friday, September 22nd 2023 |
By SHAUL GOLDSTEIN
JERUSALEM (JTA) – The rabbinic tract Midrash Kohelet Raba tells us that when God created Adam, He took him to see each and every tree and plant, telling him to “make sure you do not degrade and spoil my planet – for if you do, there will be none to come after you and restore it.”
From the biblical injunction to protect natural woodland, even while laying...
By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF
Tu B’Shevat, Tu B’Shevat,
I like you a lot.
Tu B’Shevat.
No tears, no fasting.
Only wonder at G-d’s plot.
Tu B’Shevat, degraded, diminished, and deluded by Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Pesach, as we all know, is the New Year of Trees. It’s one of the holidays, as we all know, that is not in the Torah, but found its origins...
By EDMON J. RODMAN
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — For the last three years, I’ve celebrated Tu B’Shevat — the Jewish New Year of the Trees — by organizing a participatory seder in a nearby canyon-top park.
The seder usually includes about 10 to 15 people from my group, the Movable Minyan — a small, lay-led, independent congregation that needs every member’s active participation in order to thrive. We meet in the parking lot,...
By EDMON J. RODMAN
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — If Tu b’Shevat is such a happy New Year for Trees, why am I sucking lemons?
The holiday, usually a time for planting — except this year in Israel, where many are observing the shmitta year by not planting — for me may be a time of cutting down.
Our lemon tree, planted over a decade ago in the backyard, is sick....
JERUSALEM (JTA) — More than 200 people attended the first Tu b’Shevat seder at Israel’s Knesset.
Government ministers, Knesset members, and staff and students were among the participants in the seder on Wednesday evening hosted by Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. Lawmaker Ruth Calderon and Rabbi David Stav, founder and president of the Tzohar rabbinical organization, conducted the ceremony.
The seder replicated the four cups of wine from the Passover seder...
By EDMON J. RODMAN
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — While my neighbors were putting their Christmas trees to the curb, in what seems like a ritual of replacement, I was preparing to plant for Tu B’Shevat.
My friend Freda recently presented me a cutting from an Angel’s trumpet — a small tree with beautiful, large, pendulous white flowers that grows in her yard — and to observe the New Year of...
