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.