LYNNE MEREDITH COHN Staff Writer
KRISTA HUSA Photographer

Above: Michael Simon, from Temple
Beth El, leads the seder in song.

Left: Stesha Day with her daughter Persia,
munching on an orange, and friend
Camay Smith at Teva's Tu B'Shevat seder.

Roll Out
The Green

A Jewish environmental group
hosts the first community-wide
Tu B'Shevat celebration.

\ -

Above: Rabbi Josh Bennett, far right,
leads the Tu B'Shevat seder on
Sunday, Feb. 8.

bout 100 people from 2 to
80 came together for the
first community-wide Tu
B'Shevat seder last Sunday.
The event was hosted by Teva, a
Jewish environmental group, at the
Kahn Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield.
Kari Grosinger, the Jewish
Federation staff representative at the
event, said Teva hopes to make it an
annual gathering.
"We had about six or seven volun-
teers who helped get the day together,
buying plates and fruit and cutting
the fruit and getting grape juice," she
said. Harry's Garden Center in
Warren donated plants to decorate the
room, and all participants took home
a cup with soil and parsley seeds to

grow parsley for Pesach.
Tu B'Shevat is a Jewish celebration
of the budding of the trees in Israel. It
marks the turn from winter to spring.
Rabbi Josh Bennett and Stacey
Hoffer co-chaired the event. "The
event was fabulous," said Bennett,
who especially enjoyed singing songs
as a group. "The idea was to have
some community awareness about Tu
B'Shevat and it was really a wonderful
opportunity to share the holiday and
celebration with people who for the
most part would otherwise have not
had any connection to the holiday."
Teva's founders originally aimed for
a young adult crowd for the seder, but
Jews of all ages have gotten involved
in the group, said Grosinger.
"Teva is the Jewish environmental
connection, an opportunity
to connect people to their
Judaism through their love
and respect for the environ-
ment," she said. The group,
which formed last May,
plans four or five events a
year, including a summer
outing at Kensington, a win-
ter Havdalah program, the
Tu B'Shevat seder and a
spring restoration project to
clean up the environment
and "give back to the com-
munity."

❑

Right: Kenneth and Miki Bassey fol-
low along during the seder.

2/13
1998

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