The goal is to reconnect with the idea of trees and humans, as a way of explaining the development of Tu Bishvat. We begin with a cursory travel through Tanach, with just a few sources showing that the use of the tree metaphor for people/tzadikim/wisdom is prevalent even before the compilation of midrashim and talmudic literature that specifically deal with the connection of humans and the environment, and our responsibility towards the earth - you can say as Rabbi Saul Berman does, that we do not have a Torah injunction of "saving the Earth" but we do of saving human lives.
(א) ארבעה ראשי שנים הם.באחד בניסן ראש השנה למלכים ולרגלים.באחד באלול ראש השנה למעשר בהמה.רבי אלעזר ורבי שמעון אומרים, באחד בתשרי .באחד בתשרי ראש השנה לשנים ולשמטין וליובלות, לנטיעה ולירקות.באחד בשבט , ראש השנה לאילן, כדברי בית שמאי.בית הלל אומרים, בחמשה עשר בו.
(1) The four new years are: On the first of Nisan, the new year for the kings and for the festivals; On the first of Elul, the new year for the tithing of animals; Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon say, in the first of Tishrei. On the first of Tishrei, the new year for years, for the Sabbatical years and for the Jubilee years and for the planting and for the vegetables. On the first of Shevat, the new year for the trees, these are the words of the House of Shammai; The House of Hillel says, on the fifteenth thereof.
The Mishnah is establishing the date, the reasoning is that we need a time to say - this is the first year, and begin counting. Tu BiShvat is the new year for the purpose of calculating the age of trees for tithing. Lev. 19:23-25, which states that fruit from trees may not be eaten during the first three years; the fourth year's fruit is for God, and after that, you can eat the fruit. Each tree is considered to have aged one year as of Tu BiShvat, so if you planted a tree on Shevat 14, it begins its second year the next day, but if you plant a tree two days later, on Shevat 16, it does not begin its second year until the next Tu B'Shevat. So the calendar helps you know when you can begin harvesting a tree. The Mishnah is here just to get us started, noticing one of the aspects of Tu Bishvat - that of gratefulness and fulfillment in a small scale: I have fruit trees, I can only harvest them after four years of existence, and begin offering the first fruits to the Temple after that period as well; and giving tzedakah from it - tithing - as well. But trees and humans have a striking connection throughout Jewish sources, one which we celebrate on Tu Bishvat.
(23) And when you come into the land, and planted all types of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden; for three years it shall be forbidden to you; it shall not be eaten. (24) And in the fourth year all their fruit shall be holy, for giving praise to Ad-nai. (25) But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that they may yield to you more richly: I am Ad-nai your God.
(יט) כִּי תָצוּר אֶל עִיר יָמִים רַבִּים לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ לְתָפְשָׂהּ לֹא תַשְׁחִית אֶת עֵצָהּ לִנְדֹּחַ עָלָיו גַּרְזֶן כִּי מִמֶּנּוּ תֹאכֵל וְאֹתוֹ לֹא תִכְרֹת כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר. (כ) רַק עֵץ אֲשֶׁר תֵּדַע כִּי לֹא עֵץ מַאֲכָל הוּא אֹתוֹ תַשְׁחִית וְכָרָתָּ וּבָנִיתָ מָצוֹר עַל הָעִיר אֲשֶׁר הִוא עֹשָׂה עִמְּךָ מִלְחָמָה עַד רִדְתָּהּ.
(19) When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you will eat from them, but you shall not cut them down - for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you? (20) Only the trees of which you know that are not trees for food, them you may destroy and cut down, so that you build bulwarks against the city that makes war with thee, until it fall.
For a person is the tree of the field. Behold "ki" serves as a language of perhaps: is a tree a person such that one should enter to a siege to afflict it with famine and drought like city residents? Why should you destroy it?
Just a quick overview on a few halachic points -the rabbis will point out that the destruction is generally forbidden, whether with an axe or anything; and even the destruction of non-fruit trees is only allowed for a purpose. Rashi will make sure that we understand this idea that trees are important. The idea that you can read - the tree is a person - appears as the presence of a metaphor for people and trees in many sources, three of them below.
(א) אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים לֹא עָמָד וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב. (ב) כִּי אִם בְּתוֹרַת ה' חֶפְצוֹ וּבְתוֹרָתוֹ יֶהְגֶּה יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה. (ג) וְהָיָה כְּעֵץ שָׁתוּל עַל פַּלְגֵי מָיִם אֲשֶׁר פִּרְיוֹ יִתֵּן בְּעִתּוֹ וְעָלֵהוּ לֹא יִבּוֹל וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשֶׂה יַצְלִיחַ. (ד) לֹא כֵן הָרְשָׁעִים כִּי אִם כַּמֹּץ אֲשֶׁר תִּדְּפֶנּוּ רוּחַ.
(1) Happy is the man that has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. (2) But his delight is in the Torah of Ad-nai; and on His law he meditates day and night. (3) And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither; and in whatsoever he does he shall prosper. (4) Not so the wicked who are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
(8) For [the person who trusts God] shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out its roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes, and its foliage shall be luxuriant; and shall not be anxious in the year of drought, neither shall he cease from yielding fruit.
(יז) דְּרָכֶ֥יהָ דַרְכֵי־נֹ֑עַם וְֽכָל־נְתִ֖יבוֹתֶ֣יהָ שָׁלֽוֹם׃ (יח) עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ וְתֹמְכֶיהָ מְאֻשָּׁר.
(17) Her ways are ways of pleasantness, And all her paths are peace. (18) She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, And happy is every one that holds fast to her.
The subject is chochmah, an obvious reference to Torah, see our Torah service.
שישה קולן הולך מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין קולן נשמע, ואלו הן: בשעה שכורתין את עץ האילן שהוא עושה פרי, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין הקול נשמע; ובשעה שהנחש מפשיט את עורו, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם עד סופו ואין הקול נשמע; ובשעה שהאישה מתגרשת מבעלה, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין הקול נשמע; ובשעה שהאישה עם בעלה בעילה ראשונה, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין הקול נשמע; ובשעה שהוולד יוצא ממעי אימו, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין הקול נשמע; ובשעה שהנשמה יוצאת מן הגוף, הקול יוצא מסוף העולם ועד סופו ואין הקול נשמע.
Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer chapter 34:
Six voices go from one end of the world to the other and the sound is not audible… When a fruit-bearing tree is cut down the voice cries out from one end of the world to the other, and its sound is not audible… When the child comes out from the mother's womb the voice cries out from one end of the world to the other, and its sound is not audible. When the soul departs from the body the voice goes out from one end of the world to the other, and its sound is not audible….
The other three voices are: when a divorce happens, when a snake sheds its skin, on a first sexual experience of a couple. Meaning: all these moments the universe experiences a voice - and I want to say here that they are all mysterious, all potential or all painful even though necessary.
כי הוו מיפטרי מהדדי א"ל ליברכן מר אמר ליה אמשול לך משל למה"ד לאדם שהיה הולך במדבר והיה רעב ועיף וצמא ומצא אילן שפירותיו מתוקין וצילו נאה ואמת המים עוברת תחתיו אכל מפירותיו ושתה ממימיו וישב בצילו וכשביקש לילך אמר אילן אילן במה אברכך אם אומר לך שיהו פירותיך מתוקין הרי פירותיך מתוקין שיהא צילך נאה הרי צילך נאה שתהא אמת המים עוברת תחתיך הרי אמת המים עוברת תחתיך אלא יהי רצון שכל נטיעות שנוטעין ממך יהיו כמותך אף אתה במה אברכך אם בתורה הרי תורה אם בעושר הרי עושר אם בבנים הרי בנים אלא יהי רצון שיהו צאצאי מעיך כמותך:
and 6a
When they were about to part, [R. Nahman] said: Please, Rabbi, bless me. He replied: Let me tell you a parable — To what may this [our encounter] be compared? To a man who was journeying in the desert; he was hungry, weary and thirsty and he came upon a tree with sweet fruit, pleasant shade, and a stream of water flowing beneath it. He ate of its fruits, drank of the water, and rested under its shade. When he was about to continue his journey, he said: Tree, O Tree, with what shall I bless you? Shall I say to you, ‘May thy fruits be sweet’? They are sweet already; that your shade be pleasant? It is already pleasant; that a stream of water may flow beneath you? Look, a stream of water flows already beneath you; therefore [I say], ‘May it be God's will that all your shoots shall be just like you. So too you - with what shall I bless you? If with Torah - you already know Torah! If with wealth - you already have wealth! If with children - you already have children! Rather, may it be God's will that your descendants shall be like you.
So the person that holds Torah, and is pleasant, and makes others grow in their own Torah - here and in other sources - are compared to trees.
קהלת רבה פרשה ז
בשעה שברא הקב”ה את אדם הראשון נטלו והחזירו על כל אילני גן עדן ואמר לו ראה מעשי כמה נאים ומשובחין הן וכל מה שבראתי בשבילך בראתי, תן דעתך שלא תקלקל ותחריב את עולמי, שאם קלקלת אין מי שיתקן אחריך
Midrash Kohelet Raba 7:28:
When the Holy One of Blessing created the first human He took him and showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him ‘See My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. And everything that I created, I created it for you. Be careful not to spoil or destroy My world – for if you do, there will be nobody after you to repair it.’
This source is interesting both in its scope - universal - and in its age. In a time where we were not talking about environment and taking care of the earth, we have a voice already pointing out to the connection between us, we, all humans, as stewards of creation. This same idea, in different ways, is portrayed in the next two sources: God as the First Planter, and how being close to trees (and in the Jerusalem Talmud, the presence of vegetable gardens) is important for the yielding of Torah itself - sages need to be close to nature.
ויקרא רבה פרשה כה:ג
ר”י ב”ר סימון פתח (דברים יג) אחרי ה’ א-להיכם תלכו, וכי אפשר לבשר ודם להלוך אחר הקב”ה… אלא מתחלת ברייתו של עולם לא נתעסק הקב”ה אלא במטע תחלה הדא הוא דכתיב (בראשית ב) ויטע ה’ א-להים גן בעדן, אף אתם כשנכנסין לארץ לא תתעסקו אלא במטע תחלה הדא הוא דכתיב כי תבאו אל הארץ.
Vayikra Rabbah 25:3
Rabbi Yehudah ben Shimon began his discourse with the text, “After Ad-nai your God shall you walk” (Deuteronomy 12:5). But can a man of flesh and blood walk after the Holy One of Blessing?… But in truth the Holy One, blessed be He, from the very beginning of the creation of the world, was before all else occupied with planting, as is proved by the text, “And the Ad-nai God planted a garden in Eden” (Genesis 2:8), and so do you also, when you enter into the land, occupy yourselves first with nothing else but planting; hence it is written, “And when you shall come into the land, you shall plant (Lev. 19:23).”
And it was taught: Any city that does not have in it these ten things, it is not appropriate for a Sage to live within it. A court that [punishes] with lashes and punishes [with penalties], a charity fund, collected by two and distributed by three, a synagogue, a bathhouse, a restroom, a doctor [for circumcision], a bookkeeper, a notary [for writing scrolls], a butcher, and a teacher of children. In the name of Rabbi Akiva, they said, even types of tree fruits because there types of fruit help eyesight.
כי ממנו תאכל, מצות עשה, שחייו של אדם אינו אלא מן האילן, רבי ישמעאל אומר חס המקום על פירות האילן, קל וחומר מאילן, ומה אילו שעושים פירות הזהירך הכתוב עליו, פירות עצמם על אחת כמה וכמה.
Sifre Devarim #60
For you will eat from them (Deut. 20:19) - It is a positive commandment, since a person's life is derived completely from the tree. Rabbi Ishmael says: 'The Place has pity on the fruits of trees, all the more so [the Place has pity] on the trees themselves; and if the Torah warns you [against destroying] those that make fruit, all the more so [it warns against destroying] the fruit itself.
How did Tu BiShvat change through the years?
The Kabbalists carried this relationship of Tu B'shvat and Rosh HaShanah a step further. For them, trees were a symbol of humans, as it says, "for man is like the tree of the field." (Deut. 20:19) In line with their general concern for Tikkun Olam - spiritually repairing the world - the Kabbalists regarded eating a variety of fruits on Tu B'Shvat as a way of improving our spiritual selves. More specifically, they believed that eating fruit was a way of expiating the first sin - eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Similarly, trees were symbolic of THE tree - the Tree of Life, which carries divine goodness and blessing into the world. To encourage this flow and to effect Tikkun Olam, the Kabbalists of Sfat (16th century) created a Tu B'shvat seder loosely modeled after the Passover Seder.
- The Jewish Holidays, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld
Three centuries later, also in the Land of Israel, one of the early Zionist movement’s goals was the reforestation of the land. As early as the First Aliyah at the end of the 19th century, we see Tu B’Shvat become a day to plant trees. With each successive wave of Jewish immigration to the land of Israel, Tu B’Shvat grew in importance.
The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901, turned tree planting, particularly on Tu B’Shvat, into part of the national ethos. The Zionist movement also turned to Tu B’Shvat as a symbol of revival, beyond just reforestation, when the date was chosen for the opening of the Technion in 1925 and of the first Knesset in 1949. It came to represent the blossoming of a restored Jewish nation. (Michael Cohen, Forward, 2010)
source: http://forward.com/articles/123351/the-lesson-of-tu-b-shvat-a-judaism-for-every-se/
Even in Israel the idea has moved a little from just planting to planting and making sure that the trees grow.
TEL AVIV (JTA) — From leafy eucalyptus trees lapping the shores of the Sea of Galilee to date palms in the desert to pine and oak trees in the North — many of which were destroyed in the Carmel’s forest fire last month — Israel will celebrate trees on Tu b’Shvat...
But this year, in wake of the Carmel Forest fire that killed 44 and consumed some 5 million trees and 12,000 acres of land, a growing understanding has taken root that mass replanting of trees is not the way to go. At least not right now.
"Planting is still important, but in many cases we have to make a kind of change in our consciousness,” said Yisrael Tauber, director of forest management for the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael. “It’s not just planting, but also natural regeneration of forests, and the managing of that natural regeneration that is key.”
The strategy after the fire has cast a spotlight on Israel’s longtime rush to make the Holy Land green, which for decades was embraced as Gospel (or, more accurately, Torah from Sinai) by both Diaspora and Israeli Jews. The question now is not how fast trees can be planted but whether and which trees should go in the ground, and how Israel should plan its ecological future. (Dina Kraft, JTA, 2011)
Source: http://www.jta.org/2011/01/11/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/after-fire-what-types-of-trees-are-best-suited-for-israel
This was written in wake of the Carmel Forest fire that killed 44 and consumed some 5 million trees and 12,000 acres of land.
As the historian Jonathan Sarna has noted, “Tu B’Shvat has changed in my lifetime, from a Zionist holiday—eating Israeli products and planting trees [for the Jewish National Fund]—to an environmental holiday, characterized by becoming environmentally conscious and going green.” The rapidity with which this change has happened is striking. Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s 1988 The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays is in many ways a guidebook to American Jewish holiday observance. In his description of Tu B’Shvat, Greenberg does not even mention the environment, although he does note that the day has “become a time for picnics and outings and identification with nature as well as with the land of Israel.” Overall, though, Greenberg concludes that “in the absence of historical significance, the day remains a minor semi-festival.” (Tevi Troy, Commentary magazine, 2015)
Source: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/i-think-that-i-shall-never-see-a-jew-as-lovely-as-a-tree/
[A midrashic reading of Malachi for our generation:]
“Your planet is heating like a furnace. Already droughts scorch your continents, already your waters boil into typhoons and hurricanes, already the ice melts and your sea-coasts flood. Yet even now you can turn away from the fires of coal and oil, turn to the solar energy and the winged wind that rise from a sun of justice and tranquility to heal your planet. For God’s sake, you must all take on the mantle of Elijah! Turn your own hearts to the lives of your children and the children of your children, turn their hearts to learning from the deepest teachings of the Wisdom you inherited – that together you can yet avert the utter destruction of My earth.”
(Rabbi Arthur Waskow, “A Sun of Justice with Healing in its Wings”)
The pattern of nutrient traffic showed how “mother trees” were using the network to nourish shaded seedlings, including their offspring – which the trees can apparently recognize as kin – until they are tall enough to reach the light. And, in a striking example of interspecies cooperation, Simard found that fir trees were using the fungal web to trade nutrients with paper-bark birch trees over the course of the season. The evergreen species will tide over the deciduous one when it has sugars to spare, and then call in the debt later in the season. For the forest community, the value of this cooperative underground economy appears to be better over-all health, more total photosynthesis, and greater resilience in the face of disturbance.
In his talk, Mancuso juxtaposed a slide of the nodes and links in one of these subterranean forest networks with a diagram of the Internet, and suggested that in some respects the former was superior. “Plants are able to create scalable networks of self-maintaining, self-operating, and self repairing units,” he said. “Plants.”
[...] for Mancuso plants hold the key to a future that will be organized around systems and technologies that are networked, decentralized, modular, reiterated, redundant-- and green, able to nourish themselves on light. “Plants are the great symbol of modernity.”
“The Intelligent Plant” Michael Pollan. The New Yorker, Dec. 23 & 30, 2013 - source: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant