COEJL's Environmental Series

Fills February with Ambitious Events

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

On the heels of recent Tu b'shvat events including a talk by Rabbi Arthur Green on the environment (to be repeated this Sat. evening at Ohabei Shalom in Brookline and again in May at Temple Emunah in Lexington), a morning text study followed by a tour of the Dudley Square area with Rabbi Toba Spitzer and a Tu b’shvat seder at Cambridge’s Tremont St. Shul, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life has organized an impressive and ambitious slate of events for February.

“COEJL's environmental justice series,” says spokesperson Judy Lehrer, “allows us to learn about environmental issues from different perspectives - and to take action.”

Tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 1 at 12:30 p.m., Philip Warburg, JD, Israel Union for Environmental Defense Executive Director, will discuss “Israel: Confronting its Environmental Future.” Warburg is a Harvard graduate and has been a Senate aide as well as Middle East Program Director of the Environmental Law Institute.

Since 1990, IUED, focusing on air pollution, water safety, solid waste management and recycling, preservation of open spaces and public health/environmental justice (including equitable allocation of environmental services), has pioneered legal advocacy as a means of safeguarding Israel's environment.

“IUED is one of the leading environmental groups in Israel addressing the environmental challenges in Israel,” says Lehrer. “Philip Warburg is a wonderfully engaging speaker; the lunchtime talk is a great way to learn about an aspect of the Land of Israel that we don’t often hear about.”

Pizza and drinks will accompany the event at the PC Offices of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, One Financial Center, 38th Floor, Boston. For directions, visit www.mintz.com <http://www.mintz.com; RSVP to Yael Biran at ybiran@mintz.com or 617-832-6957.

On Monday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. at co-sponsor Tremont St. Shul (8 Tremont St., Cambridge), Carl Woolf will facilitate “What's Environmental Health Got to do with Judaism? What's the Jewish response to industries that pollute in our neighborhoods?” with Jewish texts and dinner (info: 617-457-8670 or coejl@jcrcboston.org).

“People can learn about unhealthy levels of pollution in nearby communities like Roxbury and Dorchester,” Lehrer explains. “By working on environmental justice issues, we seek to empower residents of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color to address unhealthy environmental hazards, since the resident of these neighborhoods are much more likely to live next to polluting industries and unhealthy environmental hazards. The issue speaks to us as Jews who care about justice for residents in these neighborhoods and who take seriously the biblical directive to steward the earth.

“Since air pollution blows easily over town lines, we also know that by addressing the environmental health hazards of our neighbors, we will protect our own health and environment.”

On Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the JFK School of Government, 79 JFK St. Cambridge, COEJL will co-sponsor the Gubernatorial Candidates’ Environmental Debate. The debate is free, and will be broadcast and anchored by Margie Reedy and/or Chet Curtis, co-anchors of NECN's News Night, along with a panel of experts.

Suburban sprawl, water continuity, hazardous waste and toxic chemicals will be discussed. “It’s a great opportunity to understand candidates’ positions on environmental issues that affect us all,” says Lehrer. For information, contact Rani Corey at 617-742-2553 or rcorey@environmentalleague.org

On Thursday, Feb. 21 at 6 p.m. State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, who represents Brookline, Newton and Wellesley, will head “From Bill to Law: Urban Environmental Protection” at Temple Beth Zion, 1566 Beacon St., Brookline.

“By meeting with Senator Creem,” says Lehrer, “we’ll learn how we can effectively advocate for environmental justice through legislative process. A week later at the Letter Writing and Pizza Eating event (Thursday, Feb. 28, 6:30 p.m., 23 Summit Ave., Brookline), we’ll have an opportunity to debrief, socialize - and continue our efforts by writing to other legislators about the issue. For info, call 617-457-8670 or email coejl@jcrcboston.org.

“The event series,” she says, “is part of COEJL’s ongoing environmental justice campaign.” She invites involvement: “Anyone who’s interested in working on the issue should check out COEJL’s Environmental Justice Committee; the next meeting is February 7th at 7 p.m. at 120 Day St. in Jamaica Plain.”

COEJL is a program of the Jewish Community Relations Council; Judy Lehrer can be reached at judyl@jcrcboston.org.

Fertile time for holiday for trees

= Jews show respect for earth as they mark Tu Bishvat

By Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 25, 2002

Since ancient times, the holiday called Tu Bishvat, the New Year's Day for

trees, has cycled in and out of Jewish consciousness. Even synagogue

members have been brought up short to find it noted in their

congregation's newsletter or marked on a Hebrew calendar.

Currently, it is enjoying something of a renaissance, with a younger

generation seeing the holiday as an opportunity to witness concern for the

environment or take a stand against violence.

Shaul Magid, a philosophy professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in

New York, said Tu Bishvat enjoys a kind of less-is-more advantage over

some other holidays. Save for the custom of eating fruit, the gift that

trees bestow upon humans, virtually no liturgy or traditions are

associated with Tu Bishvat.

"That gives Jews from various denominations license and freedom to mark Tu

Bishvat in whatever way is meaningful to them," Magid said.

The holiday, which falls on Monday this year, dates to the age of the

Talmud, the ancient compendium of rabbinical teaching. Then it was the

occasion for counting a Jewish peasant's trees and other agricultural

wealth, then determining his tithing responsibilities. That practice was

ended by 2,000 years of exile from Israel: In most countries, Jews were

forbidden to own land.

In recent times, the holiday's varying fortunes have offered a measure of

the issues on Jews' minds, noted Arthur Waskow, a 1960s radical turned

rabbi who helped revive the holiday by editing a Tu Bishvat anthology,

"Trees, Earth and Torah."

In the 19th Century, the holiday was adopted by Zionism, the movement for

the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Planting trees there became a

way for secular Jews--the original Zionists were as often socialists as

religious--to witness their allegiance to the proposition that Jews

deserved a homeland.

And with the emergence of the 20th Century ecology movement, Tu Bishvat

became a vehicle for a younger generation of Jews to express their

concerns for the environment.

"We began to observe Tu Bishvat seders in the 1970s, seeing the meal as an

occasion when human beings and the earth are at peace with each other,"

said Waskow, based in Philadelphia.

Reddening of wine

Such do-it-yourself seders are cousins of the ritual meal associated with

Passover. In celebrating that spring holiday, Jews drink a prescribed

number of cups of wine. Similarly, participants in a Tu Bishvat seder

drink four cups, beginning with a cup of white wine. They add a few drops

of red wine to a second cup of white wine; the third cup is half-red,

half-white; the fourth is just red.

That passage from white to red symbolizes the seasons of the agricultural

year, said Rabbi Ellen Wolintz-Fields of Congregation Beth Judea in Long

Grove. The step-by-step reddening of the wine speaks to the annual miracle

of nature's reawakening.

"As summer arrives and the land of Israel becomes bright red, tulips and

red poppies burst forth and bloom," Wolintz-Fields and congregant Debbie

Frager observe in a service they wrote for the communal seder Beth Judea

will celebrate Monday. "Water, sunshine and time combine to create new

life."

Waskow attributes some of the holiday's recurrent popularity to the

powerful imagery of trees. When the wind blows, they sway back and forth,

much as Jews do while reciting prayers. The opening chapters of the Bible

describe a tree so powerful that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat its

fruit, lest they become godlike.

"The 16th Century Jewish mystics identified a tree with God," Waskow said.

On Monday, kindergartners will don headdresses with paper-cutout trees for

an early-morning Tu Bishvat celebration in Sager Solomon Schechter Day

School in Northbrook. They will sing songs and tell stories of trees

moving through the seasons.

"Afterwards, the students will plant seeds," said Beverly Fox, assistant

to the principal. "We want them to understand that we all have a

responsibility to replenish the earth."

Vietnam trees replanted

In the 1970s, Waskow and his associates worked the holiday's symbolism

into their opposition to the Vietnam War. Enlisting the support of Abraham

Joshua Heschel, a celebrated Jewish theologian, they sent funds to Vietnam

to replant trees destroyed in the United States' "deforestation" campaign

to deny the Viet Cong their jungle cover.

This year, Waskow and like-minded Jews from Europe and America, among them

a dozen rabbis, are traveling to the war-torn Middle East to mark Tu

Bishvat with a similar gesture. They have raised $100,000 to replace

destroyed trees--on both sides of the checkpoints and barricades that

separate Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.

"We'll plant Palestinian olive trees cut down by Israeli troops and West

Bank settlers," Waskow said, "and Israeli forests burned by Palestinian

arsonists."

`May sycamore and wild fig grow tall'

Sometime in the 10th or 11th Century a certain Rabbi Halevi, an otherwise

unknown poet, composed a benediction for Tu Bishvat, "Shemonah Esrei for

the New Year of the Trees."

He based his verses upon the "Shemonah Esrei" prayer with which Jews

recount God's praises in synagogue services. Halevi's equivalent prayer

was forgotten until about a century ago, when a copy was found in the

storeroom of a Cairo synagogue.

The benediction concludes:

With the fruits of trees will we be blessed,

Gourd and pomegranate will blossom for this people.

On the New Year of the Trees,

May sycamore and wild fig grow tall,

Proclaim: "For true peace will I give you in this place."

Blessed are You, Adonai, the One Who makes peace.