Dear Friends—
Happy Tu Bi’Shevat. This year the day that is sometimes called the “Jewish New Year for Trees” begins on the evening of February 12th, AbrahamAbraham is the first patriarch and the father of the Jewish people. He is the husband of Sarah and the father of Isaac and Ishmael. God's covenant - that we will be a great people and inherit the land of Israel - begins with Abraham and is marked by his circumcision, the first in Jewish history. His Hebrew name is Avraham. Lincoln’s birthday. Mourning the deaths of Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan, and struck by Tu B’ShvatThe new year of the trees, celebrated with a mystical seder (first created by the Kabbalists) at which four cups of wine are drunk and different kinds of fruit are eaten. In the State of Israel, Tu B'Shvat is Arbor Day, marked with the planting of trees. Tu B’Shvat also has become a modern holiday of the environment, with new seders and haggadot written to reflect this interest. coinciding with the birthday of the man whom Americans most associate with emancipation, it occurred to me that there is a Jewish nexus of nature, freedom, and rest that speaks deeply to my Jewish feminist self. Since my own usual associations with Judaism are indoor associations, with books and not the living trees from which they come, I find myself corrected by the fact that Judaism, in its abundance, honors trees with a date on the calendar.
I am reminded that there is a biblical sensibility that the land of IsraelLit. ''the one who struggles with God.'' Israel means many things. It is first used with reference to Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel (Genesis 32:29), the one who struggles with God. Jacob's children, the Jewish people, become B'nai Israel, the children of Israel. The name also refers to the land of Israel and the State of Israel. has a responsibility all its own to the Creator, a sensibility that recognizes nature’s independence from humanity. At Mount SinaiAccording to the Torah, God, in the presence of the Jewish people, gave Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai (Har Sinai)., anticipating life in the Promised Land and just before the Israelites are given the earth’s most prized piece of real estate, God’s message to the people is that the land belongs to God, and the land must be permitted, just as human servants must be permitted, to praise creation through ShabbatShabbat is the Sabbath day, the Day of Rest, and is observed from Friday night through Saturday night. Is set aside from the rest of the week both in honor of the fact that God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. On Shabbat, many Jews observe prohibitions from various activities designated as work. Shabbat is traditionally observed with festive meals, wine, challah, prayers, the reading and studying of Torah, conjugal relations, family time, and time with friends. (Sabbath) and shabbaton (sabbatical). In the psalmist’s words: kol haneshama tihalel YahA name for God, as in "halleluyah" – praise God. Some people prefer this name for God as a non-gendered option. (“all that breathes praises God” psalm 150); the earth must speak its own gratitude.
In the TorahThe Five Books of Moses, and the foundation of all of Jewish life and lore. The Torah is considered the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and study of the Torah is a high mitzvah. The Torah itself a scroll that is hand lettered on parchment, elaborately dressed and decorated, and stored in a decorative ark. It is chanted aloud on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat, according to a yearly cycle. Sometimes "Torah" is used as a colloquial term for Jewish learning and narrative in general., the earth is an expressive organism. When MiriamMiriam is the sister of Moses and Aaron. As Moses' and Aaron's sister she, according to midrash, prophesies Moses' role and helps secure it by watching over the young baby, seeing to it that Pharaoh's daughter takes him and that the baby is returned to his mother for nursing. During the Israelites' trek through the desert, a magical well given on her behalf travels with the Israelites, providing water, healing, and sustenance. dies, “water left the camp.” Observing its own mourning for a heroine whose miracles were all associated with water, the earth dries up. The ecology movement and our biblical forebears share the understanding that nature has an independent consciousness. To hear the speech of the earth is a blessing, and the consequences to the planet of our deafness are traumatic.
Biblically, the laws that honor creation are typically laws that are connected to commandments to rest. My feminist learning: We have a duty not to scramble tirelessly, but to be grateful and generous, assume our small place in creation, and join the trees in praise. The laws of shabbaton, the sabbatical year, echo the description of six days of creation followed by rest. The rhythm of the work week undergoes a cosmic magnification: people, imitating the Creator, are productive for six days and then rest; nature is productive for six years and rests, and then exponentially, after the land has maintained this rhythm for seven cycles of seven: Jubilee.
Sabbath and sabbatical are stages of rest on the road to emancipation. The Yovel, the Jubilee, is a call to restore primal order: indentured servants are freed, debts are forgiven, and property is restored to its original owners. These regulations are a caution against struggling to amass more or to war over real estate, reminding us that all things are, eventually, released (one way or another) from our possession and control. Underlying these laws is an obligation to take care of each other, to leave no one homeless. (“Do not wrong one another, but fear your God…” Lev. 25:17).
Today’s Feminist Agenda:
Appreciating that freedom must be learned, midrashA rabbinic method of interpreting text, often through the telling of stories. teaches that the Hebrews wandered in desert circles for forty years to make the short trip from Egypt to Canaan, because it took that long for the slave population to learn how to manage their freedom. Today, it behooves us to reflect on the substantial gains of the women’s movement and admit that we suffer the consequences of depletion if we do not adequately regulate our hard-won freedoms.
Not only do many of us live unbalanced lives, but schools and charities have not corrected for the absence of an earlier generation of volunteer women, to the detriment of children and the poor. Society needs to make adjustments to make two career families more viable, and we risk perpetuating conditions of stress at work and home if we do not emphasize to rising generations the need to change existing institutional structures and correct persistent gender inequities. One wonders if in the years since the onset of the contemporary women’s movement, we are not panting from exertion without having paused often enough to ask about the meaning of life.
Mindful of heroes of freedom—Coretta Scott King, Betty Freidan, and Abe Lincoln—and with admiration for Nature’s independence in its expression of praise for Creation, I was brought to the Jewish associations among freedom, nature, and rest. While it is true that in Genesis God gives humanity dominion over creation, elsewhere in our tradition, another theme runs with even greater energy: Jewish law builds in chances to start over and qualifies our dominion. The land, our possessions, our bodies, our children, and we ourselves are a sacred trust, and it is not our right to be infinitely demanding on them. Freedom entails rest, and we are commanded to rest, not when we are exhausted or having a breakdown, but regularly, on Shabbat, just as Nature is commanded to rest during the land’s sabbatical, leading ultimately to the emancipations symbolized by Jubilee.
On erevLit. Evening Jewish holidays begin in the evening. Hence, Erev Shabbat is the eve of the Sabbath. Tu B’Shvat, as we sing happy birthday to nature and Abraham Lincoln, we might remember that Judaism asks us to live lives of meaning and moderation.
Wishing you blessings and with thanks for the blessing that you are to Kolot,
Lori
