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Thursday January 17, 2008

Environmental activists reinvent the holiday

by sue fishkoff
jta

When 33-year-old Josh Miller sits down Jan. 22 to the Tu B’Shevat seder he helped organize for young Jews in the Bay Area, he and the others at the table will be celebrating the connection between environmental activism and Jewish teachings.

It’s a logical connection to make — this is the holiday known as the New Year of the Trees. The holiday has in recent times taken on a more overt ecological role, from the Jewish National Fund planting trees in Israel to synagogues and JCCs sponsoring composting lessons or cleaning garbage from river banks.

But most of the focus has been on families with young children. Quite recently, young Jews in their 20s and 30s have seized upon the holiday, running Tu B’Shevat seders that are more explicit in their call to environmental activism and their reliance on Jewish text.

“It’s a holiday that’s easy to get behind, especially for our generation,” said Miller, who used to run Tu B’Shevat seders as the director of Jconnect, a Hillel program for post-college Jews in Seattle. This year he’s part of the core group of Jewish activists putting together the first community-wide Bay Area Tu B’Shevat eco-seder specifically for young adults.

Green Zionist Alliance Director Noam Dolgin, who runs seders in several North American cities, said Tu B’Shevat has special meaning for the many young Jews like himself who are active in the environmental movement.

Tu B’Shevat appeals to younger Jews, seder organizers speculate, because unlike most other Jewish holidays, it has no set rituals and is not halachically time-bound. That leaves lots of room for creativity — each group can write a haggadah, add readings and set its standards.

Some organizers are enjoying that Tu B’Shevat falls this year near Martin Luther King Day. Emily Rosenberg, the Chicago service program director for AVODAH: the Jewish Service Corps, said that’s why they decided to hold a seder this year for the first time. “We’ll relate Tu B’Shevat to issues of environmental justice and environmental racism,” she explains. “Who benefits from the growth of trees? Why does toxic waste impact low-income people more than others?”

Many organizers are using the holiday to advocate for organic food and locally grown produce, favorite causes of the Jewish food movement. Most of the seders are kosher, even if few of those attending keep that mitzvah. It’s a matter of Jewish identity building, organizers explain.

The San Francisco seder is calling itself eco-kosher, meaning it will serve food that was sustainably grown and produced in a socially just manner, by workers who receive a living wage.

Miller expects about 100 attendees, at $10 to $12 a pop — those who bring their own cup and plate to reduce waste get a $2 discount. “It seems weird to eat kosher food off Styrofoam plates using plastic spoons,” he noted.

Some of the organizers say that what distinguishes their seders from those run by young activist Jews 30 years ago is that the 1970s-era celebrations were focused mainly on political and environmental causes, while today’s seders include much more Judaism.

“I have a feeling that my parent’s generation held freedom seders and Tu B’Shevat seders as secular events, and my friends and I are holding them as religious events,” opines Kavod House founder Margie Klein, referring to the Martin Luther King memorial Passover seder written by Shalom Center founder Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 1969 that morphed in later years into seders supporting liberation for various oppressed groups.

That increased religious tie-in “resonates with people’s growing interest in Jewish mysticism, Chassidism, and Jewish spirituality in general,” Klein said.

If the religious overtones of these new seders are strong, the call to activism is stronger still. Many of the organizers are alumni of Jewish social service programs such as AVODAH, the Adamah Jewish environmental fellowship, and projects run by Hillel and the American Jewish World Service. They have practical experience they are eager to tie to the holiday.

So while traditional Tu B’Shevat seders may ask celebrants to consider what they might do in the coming year to help protect the environment, the haggadah distributed this year by Philadelphia’s Shalom Center tells people to take out their pens and draft letters right there at the seder table.

“As we drink the second cup, we commit ourselves to keeping the ethical dimension of the global climate crisis at the center of conversation and legislation,” the haggadah reads, before instructing people to write letters to their senators supporting the Lieberman-Warner climate security bill expected to come before the Senate early this year.

Rabbi Jeff Sultar, author of the haggadah and director of the Shalom Center’s Green Menorah campaign, has run activist seders before, but said this is the first time he’s explicitly tying the holiday to global climate change.

Sultar said that a holiday that consciously combines Jewish tradition and environmental activism has the potential to bring young unaffiliated Jews back to Judaism.

That’s what happened to him. Two decades ago, he said he was a “disaffected” Jew and environmental activist, when he went to his first Tu B’Shevat seder. “When I found out the environmental concern I already had was grounded in my Jewish tradition, it opened the door for my return to Judaism and led to my becoming a rabbi,” he said.

Tu B' Shevat seders honor New Year of the Trees

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