Spring is in the air, and Tu BiShvat, our New Year for Trees, draws our attention to the manifold ways our planet earth sustains us and provides us with food. After Friday services and before we tucked into to our Friday potluck feast, we gathered as a community for a Tu BiShvat Seder. With its roots in kabbalah, the Seder turns around the different kinds of fruit produced by trees, bushes and the earth, especially in the land of Israel, where Tu BiShvat is now celebrated as a sort of Earth Day.
Some of the fruits we eat have a hard outer shell and a soft edible core (e.g. bananas), others are soft and edible on the outside but have a hard interior (e.g. dates), and others still are soft inside and out and can be eaten as a whole (e.g. figs). In addition to the fruits of the trees and the earth, the Seder also includes blessings over the fruit of the vine, with no fewer than four glasses – parallel to the Pesach Seder – beginning with white symbolising winter and potential growth, then white with a little red, then red with a little white, then red alone symbolising summer and full growth.
This year we had some musical treats from IJC member Hila Levi, including a beautiful rendition of Shalom Hanoch’s Ki ha’Adam ‘Etz haSadeh – Man is Like a Tree in the Field, based on Israeli poet Natan Zach’s poem of the same name. The poem is inspired by the rhetorical question asked in Devarim 20,19 – “Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?” – which also inspired the kabbalists when they created the Tu Bishvat seder. Zach reflects on what we human beings share with trees, in particular that we, like trees, are always incomplete, always growing, always climbing higher, never finished, always in process. Like trees, we too have inner resilience that can help us weather the many storms that come our way.
Because the man is the tree of the field;Like the tree the man grows up.Like the the man, the tree also gets uprooted,And I surely do not knowwhere I have been and where I will be,like the tree of the field.
Because the man is the tree of the field;Like the tree he aspires upwards.Like the man, he gets burnt in fire,And I surely do not knowwhere I have been and where will I be,like the tree of the field. | Because the man is the tree of the field;Like the tree he is thirsty to water.Like the man, thirsty he remains,And I surely do not knowwhere I have been and where will I be,like the tree of the field. I've loved, and I've hated;I've tasted both this and that;I was buried in a plot of land;And it's bitter, it's bitter in my mouth,Like the tree of the field;Like the tree of the field. |
We also had a special guest at our Seder table. I met US Rabbi David Fox Sandmel at a recent meeting of the Belgian Council for Christians and Jews convened at the offices of the Consistoire in Brussels. I invited him to join us for Friday services and potluck. Rabbi David spoke to us about his important work as recently elected president of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ – ijcc.org) and delighted us with his warmth and good humour.
Rabbi Brian
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