Posted by: Joe Yudin | January 29, 2010

"After striving for so many years to set up the [Jewish National] fund, we do not want to disperse again without having done anything…the fund shall be the property of the Jewish people as a whole."

In 1901, with those words at the fifth Jewish national Congress, Theodore Herzl initiated the Jewish Nation Fund (JNF) in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in order to purchase and reclaim land in Palestine, the ancient Land of Israel. The first donation of £10 was made in memory of Zvi Hermann Schapira, who put forth the original idea of such a fund. In that very same year there were only 3,500 acres of wooded acres in the Land of Israel. Through the JNF’s efforts the Jewish people around the world in a coordinated and joint effort led by the JNF has reforested approximately 212,000 acres of land in Israel. Today the JNF plans to plant seven million trees over the next 10 years here in Israel. What drove us to do such a thing a full 65 years before the founding of the environmental “Green” movement? The answer to this question lies in a little known Jewish holiday that we celebrate tomorrow.

Fruit baring trees were protected in biblical times and the Israelites were encouraged to plant them (see Leviticus 19:23). The Torah is riddled with images of trees being sacred, from the very beginning. The first instance is of course the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ to which eating from its fruit was forbidden to Man. Later in the Torah (Deuteronomy 8:7-10) God commands:

For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and [date] honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. And thou shalt eat and be satisfied, and bless the LORD thy God for the good land which He hath given thee. Later God actually compares Man to a tree: "Man is a tree of the field" (Deuteronomy 20:19).

During Mishnaic times (about 2000 years ago) one of the four Jewish “New Year’s” celebrations was established for the ‘New Year of the Tree’ called Tu B’Shvat, which is literally the date of the holiday. About this time of year Israel’s fields are green with crops, the landscape is dotted with wildflowers and the beautiful pink and white flowered Almond trees begin their spectacular bloom. A quick glance out my window at the lush, winter panorama of the Jezreel Valley confirms this fact. In Medival times Tu B’shvat took on celebratory customs and in the Kabbilistic city of Tzfat, when a student of the famous rabbi Itzik Luria began a “Tu B’Shvat Seder” or ceremonial feast which took on mystical connotations. His reasoning for this celebration was to bring man and Nature closer together in order to hasten the arrival of the Messianic Age( See the Jewish book Pri Etz Hadar, based on earlier Medival Jewish works, excerpts here: http://www.theshalomcenter.org/node/378). These ideas soon spread to the ‘Diaspora’ or Jewish communities outside of Israel.

After the First Aliyah in 1882 of religious Jewish Zionists from the around the Middle East and Europe arrived in the Land of Israel, Tu B’Shvat, continued to be a celebration of the Fruit of the Tree as it had become in the Diaspora, but now that Jews had returned to Israel en masse with the idea of settling the land and reclaiming its Biblical grandeur, tree planting became part of the holiday and celebrations once again.
Since the establishment of the JNF, tree planting has become a symbol for the rebuilding of the State of Israel. So if you aren’t coming to Israel anytime soon you can pay to have a tree planted in your name or in someone else’s name. If you are touring Israel anytime soon, ask your tour guide to take you to plant that tree with your own two hand.

For more information about planting trees in Israel click here: http://www.kkl.org.il/kkl/kklmain_brown_eng.aspx.