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PHOTOS BY RUDY THOMAS

in
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Rabbi Dan Horwitz leads the group in the final blessings of Havdalah.

Deeper Roots,
Wider Branches

SUE SALINGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Hazon Detroit
celebrates Tu
b’Shevat.

T

he Jewish tradition imagines a Tree
of Life — a reality map — that is
rooted in our consciousness as
Torah, with fruit guaranteeing eternal life
for whoever can get back to the Garden of
Eden to eat it. That is implicit in our exile
from the Garden, that represents life as it
exists across the Kabbalistic planes of the
material, the emotional, the intellectual and
the spiritual (the transcendent) — or earth,
water, air and fire.
The Kabbalists assert each of us recre-
ates the tree each year, guaranteeing the
life of the coming season, by celebrating Tu
b’Shevat (the New Year of the Trees) with
a seder that honors and takes us through
each of those four worlds: earth, water, air
and fire.

State Reps. Jeremy Moss and Robert Wittenberg

In contemporary times, Tu b’Shevat sed-
ers have become the important moment in
our annual holiday cycle to care and tend
for the Earth. It is one of the more overtly
environmental celebrations we have.

This year, with the environment under
greater threat from both human consump-
tion and human politics than ever before,
Hazon brought together eight Jewish orga-
nizations and five environmentalists as
partners in shaping, cultivating and healing
our world.
Friends from Yad Ezra, The Well,
NEXTGen Detroit, Adat Shalom’s Young
Adult Group, Shir Tikvah, Jewish Ferndale,
Detroit City Moishe House and Repair the
World created and co-led the seder, which
was held Feb. 11 at the Light Box, an arts
and performance space in Detroit.
For the material world, the world in
which we eat fruits with hard shells or peels
to remind us that in our lives we need to
work for and uncover the “good stuff ” often

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March 2 • 2017

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