- What do these different sources bring up for you?
- What resonates and what are you struggling with in the sources?
- What is the blessing of trees?
- What seed to you want to plant for yourself for Tu B'Shevat?
We are planted on the edge of hope,
On hills falling backwards into the mist.
Topsoil washed away into the lowlands of past glory.
Windblown and fearless,
We grow.
We sink roots deep into the past,
Nourished by dead dreams and unfinished lives.
Defeated by gale and hail, despair mulches our feet,
Feeding our longing,
We stand.
We grasp at a sky always out of reach,
Branches stripped bare by winds from the abyss,
Scarred by frost, we stand naked before a cold and silent God.
Without understanding,
We endure.
We blink in the slow sunshine of spring,
Listen to a voice from beneath the choked silence.
As if these twisted limbs held a memory of a vanished crown
To weave light into hope…
We blossom.
After an adventurous and unattributable career in security and intelligence, Yael Shahar now divides her time between researching trends in terrorism and learning Talmud with anyone who will sit still long enough. https://www.yaelshahar.com/tu-bshvat-tree-planted-hope/
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, כָּל שֶׁחָכְמָתוֹ מְרֻבָּה מִמַּעֲשָׂיו, לְמַה הוּא דוֹמֶה, לְאִילָן שֶׁעֲנָפָיו מְרֻבִּין וְשָׁרָשָׁיו מֻעָטִין, וְהָרוּחַ בָּאָה וְעוֹקַרְתּוֹ וְהוֹפַכְתּוֹ עַל פָּנָיו, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (ירמיה יז) וְהָיָה כְּעַרְעָר בָּעֲרָבָה וְלֹא יִרְאֶה כִּי יָבוֹא טוֹב וְשָׁכַן חֲרֵרִים בַּמִּדְבָּר אֶרֶץ מְלֵחָה וְלֹא תֵשֵׁב. אֲבָל כָּל שֶׁמַּעֲשָׂיו מְרֻבִּין מֵחָכְמָתוֹ, לְמַה הוּא דוֹמֶה, לְאִילָן שֶׁעֲנָפָיו מֻעָטִין וְשָׁרָשָׁיו מְרֻבִּין, שֶׁאֲפִלּוּ כָל הָרוּחוֹת שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם בָּאוֹת וְנוֹשְׁבוֹת בּוֹ אֵין מְזִיזִין אוֹתוֹ מִמְּקוֹמוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שם) וְהָיָה כְּעֵץ שָׁתוּל עַל מַיִם וְעַל יוּבַל יְשַׁלַּח שָׁרָשָׁיו וְלֹא יִרְאֶה כִּי יָבֹא חֹם, וְהָיָה עָלֵהוּ רַעֲנָן, וּבִשְׁנַת בַּצֹּרֶת לֹא יִדְאָג, וְלֹא יָמִישׁ מֵעֲשׂוֹת פֶּרִי:
He used to say: one whose wisdom exceeds their deeds, to what may they be compared? To a tree whose branches are numerous but whose roots are few, so that when the wind comes, it uproots it and overturns it, as it is said, “They shall be like a bush in the desert, which does not sense the coming of good. It is set in the scorched places of the wilderness, in a barren land without inhabitant” (Jeremiah 17:6). But one whose deeds exceed his wisdom, to what may they be compared? To a tree whose branches are few but roots are many, so that even if all the winds in the world come and blow upon it, they cannot move it out of its place, as it is said, “They shall be like a tree planted by waters, sending forth its roots by a stream. It does not sense the coming of heat, its leaves are ever fresh. It has no care in a year of drought; it does not cease to yield fruit” (ibid, 17:8).
Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—
Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—
Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—
Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—
I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—
What shall I do with all this heartache?
The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—
I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:
Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .
To drink deep what is undrinkable.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
https://poets.org/poem/speaking-tree
which yields its fruit in season,
whose foliage never fades,
and whatever it produces thrives.-b
I think I’d rather be a tree.
To stand in my bareness, effortlessly secure.
Remarkable in any light.
Enriched by the world in the way it ought to be for each living thing.
Embellished by my age and experiences.
To give and to receive without expectation.
To be nurturing and nurtured without doubt.
To have a place that is mine in the world, in a system which knows it needs me and I it.
To be timeless.
Rigidly planted yet open to entertain the push and pull of the wind.
Rightfully proud to be as big as I am meant to be.
Earnestly believing that when my time is done, I’ve done all I was born to do.
Expecting when that season comes, as it inevitably will, to
elegantly fall back into the earth to await my next assignment.
Kierra N. Toney is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She is originally from Chattanooga, TN the eldest of her living siblings and a first-generation college student. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2017. Her research interest includes Urban Education and Education Policy, Race and Ethnicity, Social Inequalities, and Critical Race Theory. Kierra identifies as a scholar-activist and hopes to use her research as a tool to aid in equity and liberation for marginalized groups. Kierra has been writing poetry since she was 13 years old. She has always used poetry to help her process thoughts and emotions through life’s ups and downs. Recently, she has started to explore poetry as a tool for expressing ideas about social issues. She has goals of publishing books in Sociology, Poetry, and Children’s genres.
https://www.spokenblackgirl.com/poetry-1/2021/10/19/tree-poem-by-kierra-n-toney
When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?
And returns not there,
But soaks the earth
And makes it bring forth vegetation,
Yielding seed for sowing and bread for eating,
It does not come back to Me unfulfilled,
But performs what I purpose,
Achieves what I sent it to do.
Before you, mount and hill shall shout aloud,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the nettle, a myrtle shall rise.
These shall stand as a testimony to GOD,
As an everlasting sign that shall not perish.