fAppLE 1 rye r t57,?;:k ••, 44A`..1 II Go on New dusters of trees also became a way of marking the new Jewish settlements, distinguishing them from previous Arab towns and villages. So planting trees became both the practical means and the symbolic representation of planting Jewish communities in the Land of a "Totally Cool Sho pp i ngSpree pree E'1 7 j % off ALL WINTER 248 - 851-1260 Inside Orchard Mall • Orchard Lake Road at Maple APPAREL • ACCESSORIES • NOVELTIES Girls 4-6X, 7-14; Boys 4-7, 8-20 • Juniors & Contemporary Women CLOSE' D3SIGN DESIGN • INSTALLATION • SERVICE "The only call you need to make for the perfect closet." Phone: (248) 851-2804 ARNOLD LINCOLN-MERCURY-MAZDA China & Gifts 1611 494 Drive East Pay The Least • 2,000 fute, Mal7Da PASSION FOR THE ROAD" ri u l - LINCOLN Mercury GIL PRATT - Leasing Manager Your West Side Specialist (810) 445-6000 /29 )99 Gratiot Ave. at 12 Mile Road Roseville. MI 48066 Fax (810) 771-7340 76 Detroit Jewish News 4e china, crystal stemware, and silverware patterns – the largest in- stock dealer in the USA. • Introduce the bride-to-be to Heslop's registry and exclusive bridal plan. Orchard, West Bloontaeld, (Otthard Lake 43, 15 MOR.) (248) 737-8080 In the Diaspora, under the aus- pices of the Jewish National Fund, the day became a day of focusing on collecting money to plant trees in the Land of Israel. After Israeli inde- pendence, as Eastern and Sephardic Jews gathered alongside Ashkenazim in the State of Israel, the kabbalistic tradition of a Tu B'Shvat seder became known among West- ern Jews, just as the notion of tree planting for Tu B'Shevat became known to the Easterners. Then Diaspora Jews in America began to learn about and experi- ment with a Tu B'Shevat seder. By the early 1970s, the many-layered Jewish imagery of trees — biblical, kabbalistic, and Zionist —became especially important to American Jews seeking an explicitly Jewish and Torah-centered way to address American or world-wide political and social issues. In America, one group focused on ending the Vietnam War. To them, the destruction of Vietnamese forests, a violation of the Torah's prohibition to not damage trees in war, was particularly striking. Out of this they developed a Campaign for Trees and Life for Vietnam. They raised money for reforestation and reconstruction of devastated areas of Vietnam, sym- bolically planting trees of peace in such places as the lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Often these plantings were done on Tu B'Shevat. Meanwhile, some American Jews and others were becoming more concerned with dangers to the earth that had reached alarming levels. This helped bring about the creation of "Earth Day," a time for public recommitment to protect the planet. This brought together a new con- figuration in the history of Tu B'She- vat. The holiday had begun with the earthy questions of tithing and the regrowth of trees in wintertime. It had become a cosmic moment in the mystics' calendar, earth and spirit coming together. And so in the mid-1980s, there appeared in America a wave of new haggadot, or narrative story books, for Tu B'Shevat that joined the mystical and ecological per- spectives. Most of these works drew on the pattern of the kabbalis- tic seder while giving it a midrashic turn in a new direction. For exam- ple, the Four Worlds of the Kabbal- ah were fused with their symbolic referents — earth, water, air, and fire, all aspects of the planet's web of life, all in need of healing as aspects of the wounded physical body of this planet. And only three years ago, the Coaliton on the Environment and Jewish Life,.formed in 1993, defined Tu B'Shevat as a kind of Jewish Earth Day, urging it as a time to act on behalf of the wounded earth. This revivification of Tu B'Shevat comes in a dark moment of earth's history; the web of life is for the first time endangered by one of its own species — the human race itself, its most intelligent and self-conscious species, the one most fully grown to bear the Image of God. So deep winter, when trees and other vegetation must struggle to begin again, may be a specially appropriate moment to commit our- selves to renew the nature's flow of life in our own generation. This article is adapted from "Trees, the Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology," edited by Arthur \t\/askow, Naomi Mara Hyman, and Ari Elon and soon to be published by the Jewish Publica- tion Society.