Rabbi's Reflections for February

When I was growing up in Toronto, Tu Bishvat was a cute little holiday. It's basic message was 'Plant a Tree' and 'Be Nice to the Earth.' It was hardly serious, hardly very meaningful and who could argue with planting a tree? We would learn neat little tidbits of Torah such as this one: "Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai ... used to say: if you have a sapling in your hand, and someone should say to you that the Messiah has come, stay and complete the planting, and then go to greet the Messiah (Avot de Rabbi Nathan, 31b)." Tu Bishvat was fun and lighthearted. In fact, I looked forward to Tu Bishvat because I would get a little certificate saying that I bought my tree with 18 leaves at 10 cents each. That was some accomplishment for me back then.

But things have changed, haven't they? The world is different and all of a sudden, Tu Bishvat is not a meaningless holiday where we are all encouraged to go and hug a tree. I learned another midrash when I was a child and nodded my head in agreement. It went like this:

When God created the first couple, he blessed them, "Fill the world and conquer it4." Conquest can be for the purpose of exploitation, or for the sake of development. Which did the Creator intend? Our Sages answer this question in a midrash:
When God created the first man, he took him around to all the trees in the Garden of Eden and said to him, "See my handiwork, how beautiful and choice they are... Be careful not to ruin and destroy my world, for if you do ruin it, there is no one to repair it after you."

Who would argue with that? But, in the past few years, this midrash is not just Rabbinic hyperbole. They knew nothing about global pollution or warming or depletion of species. Their world was small but, still, they were insightful. They knew how delicate the world was and how, if we blow it, we don't get another chance. Tu Bishvat is not just for kids, anymore. It has been elevated from the simple 'birthday of the trees' as it is described in the Mishnah to a symbol of our very survival.

We consume too much. We waste too much. We damage property, including our own forgetting that what we have and are is still part of the world. And the worst part is that we think we are entitled to it. Not from any Jewish point of view, we aren't.

Jewish tradition is filled with warnings about damage, pollution, property, trees, environmental protection, and so forth. Its message is very simple; if we stop looking at the world as our private trough and start looking at it as something that God has given to us to protect and take care of, then our outlook changes. No longer are we the king and queens who deserve to exploit whatever we want. Rather we are servants of God and to each other to keep it clean and ready for whomever comes after us.

Perhaps this is the message of Ezekiel's vision24 when he was shown a polluted ocean, with all its fish about to die. He sees a small rivulet of water emerged from under the threshold of the Temple -- something pure coming out of something that was defiled. Hope emerging from despair. Gradually the water grew to a great stream, on whose shore grew all manner of fruit trees, whose leaves do not wither and whose fruits never cease. When these waters reach the ocean, the polluted ocean waters became clean again and all was returned to what it originally was. And all it took was a little river of hope emanating from what is good and right and that could change the world.

Ezekiel's vision ought to be our own this Tu Bishvat and we ought to be those small rivers of hope. With enough of us living as servants and not as masters, we could literally change the world for the better. And that, my friends, is what being Jewish is all about.