January 2000 - טֵבֵת .. שְׁבָט תש״ס Tevet..Shevat 5760

This year Tu B'Shevat falls on Shabbat Shira, Saturday, January 22nd. Tu B'Shevat is the Jewish Arbor Day, the day for planting trees. When I was growing up in New Jersey, it never made a great deal of sense to plant trees in January or February, especially when there was snow on the ground.

My first real Tu B'Shevat was during my junior year in college when I was studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Several of my friends and I went to the JNF (Jewish National Fund) planting site at the John F. Kennedy Memorial. We were given coffee cans with a sapling growing in it. Under a bright and sunny sky we made our way down the hillside to the planting site. I can still remember the feeling, as the earth between my fingers seemed to come alive. The entire event might have lasted fifteen minutes or maybe a half an hour, but the feeling will stay with me forever.

Two years later during my first year in rabbinical school, again in Jerusalem, Barbara and I went to another planting site, we planted a tree together, our first of our married life together. (I hope that our tree at 25 is as strong as our marriage.)

But my greatest thrills planting trees in Israel were with my children. In 1981, Rinat was not quite three years old and Shai was less than a year old. Barbara, the kids and I were leading a tour of 40 sixteen year olds. As part of our tour we went to a JNF planting site west of Jerusalem overlooking the Old City. The view was magnificent. The sun was shining and the Western Wall was gleaming beneath the Golden Dome. But the most special moment came when Rinat began planting “her tree”. The electricity was in the air. Barbara and I watched almost breathlessly as the tiny child planted the tiny tree and the two of them began to grow up simultaneously and together. Shai and I planted a tree that day also. (To my amazement he claims that he remembers that day and that tree. When we returned in 1988 on Sabbatical, Shai was in second grade. He asked to go and see “his tree”.) Eitan planted his first tree in 1988 during our congregational trip. The wind was howling that day, and the storm clouds had been threatening all day. When we got off the tour bus at the JNF site at Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial, the wind let up for a moment and we planted the trees. Young (Eitan was five years old) and older (including the more mature widows and widowers) planted together. We got on to the tour bus feeling lucky that the storm had waited, and as the doors closed the rain came down in buckets. Another tree planting miracle had happened.

Make a miracle happen and plant a tree on Tu B'Shevat. Call the Temple Beth Sholom office for details, 357-8505.

Shalom, and Chag Samayach,

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D.

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