When I was in Religious School, I clearly remember my mother giving me and my sisters each a quarter to purchase a leaf that was given to us by our teachers, to lick and then paste on an outline of a tree. After several months, the picture would be completed and I would receive a certificate in the mail stating that a tree had been planted in Israel in honor or in memory of whom I designated.
My grandparents on my mother’s side were strong supporters of the Zionist state and the work of the Jewish National Fund. They set up an annuity for each their grandchildren so that on our birthdays, long after they made their way to the world beyond this one, we would receive a gift from the JNF. In this way, their dream of building and beautifying the Jewish State of Israel would be remembered for generations to come.
It is a shame that we no longer purchase trees in this way. We now must pay for the entire tree at one time. Gone is the anticipation that went along with handing in your coins and tasting how yucky the stamps were. We reveled in adding color to our sheets, waiting for the day when we could claim our tree. We celebrated Tu b’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, knowing that each tree in Israel had a birthday and a person who sponsored it. For my Bar Mitzvah, each member of my family had the opportunity to plant our own tree in the Jerusalem forest dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy. I still have the picture of the sapling. I do hope that someone watered it in my absence!
When I arrive in Israel on Tu b’Shevat at the end of this month, I hope to return to that same place and see the tree that I planted with my name on it. I will also look for the grove of trees that Temple B’nai Abraham completed last year around this time, to check on their growth. Since I will be in Israel in time to celebrate the coming of spring, I hope to join my fellow travelers in planting a few more trees in honor of Israel’s future and the health of our planet. What a thrill it will be to celebrate the holiday that honors nature by planting for the future, while accompanying a group of individuals who are seeing the land of Israel for the first time. It is similar to seeing the world through the eyes of a child, and observing the innocence with which they perceive their surroundings: No preconceived notions, just the wonder and awe of the beauty that they perceive.
Our teenagers who have gone on Y2I with the Lapin Foundation and our young adults who have joined the Birthright Program come back from Israel with that same feeling as they convey it to the congregation in their speeches to us on Yom Kippur. Israel is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey, filled with a diversity of crops. Now the Jewish National Fund needs our support more than ever as they restore forests destroyed by terrorism and as they look to build for Israel’s future. JNF aims to creatively develop parks and facilities that will meet the demands of a growing population, while being loyal to its mission to beautify the country, bringing people closer to nature through Jewish ingenuity.
I hope that each of us will take an opportunity to plant a tree in Israel this Tu b’Shevat as a way to remind ourselves what going green truly means in a Jewish way by celebrating the birth of a single tree. I look forward to sharing with you my impressions and those of my group as we report back to the congregation from Israel!
Rabbi Steven Rubenstein
