RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:Midrash Mekhilta Ex:R'ELIZAR:EXCOMMUNICATION:JEWISH RENEWAL
Synaptic Abstract of Ari Elon's ''Through Tu B'Shvat to Yah B'Shvat''
in " Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology" By Elon, Hyman, and Waskow
by Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal
In Elon's essay Synaptic Abstract of Ari Elon's Through Tu B'Shevat to Yah B'Shavat he begins with his child hearing the holiday pronounced as Dubi, ''Teddy Bear'' in Ivrit. From this cute play on words, Elon takes us through a journey of the holiday, and how its name has changed as well as its meaning through Hebraic and Judaic History. Most importantly, Elon takes us where the Holiday needs to be now, in terms of not only Judaism, but of the earth and its entire people.
He explains of course, that in the true counting of Hebrew numbers, based on arithmetical values placed on letters, the number 15, (which is the date of Tu B'Shevat on the Jewish calendar, in the middle of the month of Shevat when the moon is full), would be 10 plus 5, or Yud Hey. Since YH spells the name of G!d, (one of many), 15 is produced by adding 9 plus 6 or Tet Vuv, or TU.
He develops early on in his essay, that YAH B'Shevat is truly what the Holiday needs , has lost and needs to regain. The Divine must lead us and be the major factor in what we teach, what we do, and what we learn from this mid winter Holiday.
To help craft his thesis that the YAH naming is as valid if not more valid than the TU naming, he parses Genesis and re-affirms the two stories in it of creation. Tu is the festival of created trees (and I ask you to take note of the past tense of created), while Yah is the festival of all trees but most importantly the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.
He shows how in Genesis there are four 'acts' vis- a- vis G!d and humans. Humans are first afraid to call YHWH by name, the narrator then calls the Divine YHWH and this coincides with the eating of the forbidden fruit, Eve then calls YHWH by name, ending with humans being able to look G!d in the eye and call Him YHWH.
So, YAH B'Shevat are for those of us who acknowledge G!D and TU B'Shevat are for those who don't. Or as we will see, those who are Yah-centered will treat the earth unselfishlessly, while those who are Tu- centered will consume it.
Elon then speaks of history's four versions of the holiday.
We have the Talmudic day, not a holiday at all, but a tax day for social justice. We give of fruits from trees 4 years old or less to those folks who don't have fruit to eat.
We have a kabbalist day only dating back circa 500 years, with no mention in the Zohar, with a seder, with all kinds of beracoth on various types of fruit and nuts, and drinking various shades of wine, to bring us closer to the mysteries of the God-head. And much seems to be in rebellion of Halakah and even the Rambam in a Sabbatai Zvi manner.
We have the Zionist holiday which becomes an Israeli, not Jewish May day of tree planting. While Elon doesn't say it, one way of taking possession of land, unlike an object which requires kinyon, is planting trees. While the Zionist talk of making THEIR desserts bloom, the acts having a sly connotation of taking what is the land of someone else at the time.
Lastly we have the eco-Judaic holiday, in which we need to do tikkun to the whole earth, as Jews, but not just for Jews. It is not an Israeli holiday, nor actually a Jewish holiday, but the Jewish way of teaching ecology and doing ecology and being a light to others. This is similar to Passover not being seen as just a holiday for Jews to talk about a 'win' over Pharaoh, but to teach about religious, gender, economic, and other freedoms, which are still not won by many on the globe today.
Elon then makes the point that each holiday grew and repaired deficiencies in the other, setting us up for our being able, to override any traditionalist, when we make the holiday into a true Eco-Judaic one.
He then parses some passages from Talmudic Seder Seeds ( Zeraim), and concludes that while we have mitzvoth that hang on land, and those that hang on sky, mitzvoth for man to man, and mitzvoth for man to God, the Earth is dependent on all of them and implies that we need mitzvoth of man to earth.
Elon then related specifically the Zionist movement in Israel with school children. He explained how the holiday becomes secular, an Israeli May day, 4 months early, with true Jingoism and national chauvinism, and is rendered into a school children's holiday, with marching armies of kids with shovels, to plant trees in January or February.
In reality, the Zionist Tu B'Shevat was a national day of land grabbing, and it is no coincidence that the Knesset opened on this very day.
Elon explains that in the 1960s, the Israelis, realized that planting trees on Tu B'Shevat is not ecologically sound. No one, it seems read the texts. It is a holiday for trees already planted and yielding fruit, or as I asked us to pay attention to, 'created', in the past tense. The tree without human interference, in tune with nature, in tune with YAH, renews itself , and in a few months in spring, will bring forth fruit.
Elon explains how actions to help the earth can actually hurt it, and we all know how our actions to help another, if we are not careful, can do more harm than good. The rituals developed with the Zionist Tu B'Shevat need to be amended and brokered into a Yah B'Shevat. One of the ugliest rituals is taking a song, and changing it to 'Kill the Arabs.' In a true sense, each tree planting was to drive the Arabs out. While Israelis complain of Arabs wanting to drive Jews into the Sea, Israelis took a holiday from the Talmud and the Kabbalists, and turned it into one to drive Arabs into the hills and the deserts. We can play victim well, but we don't tend to acknowledge that we can be victimizers, and good ones at that.
He then parses a troubling phrase of the Midrash Mekhilta on Exodus, which the fellow who killed a guard at the USA Holocaust Memorial and Museum used in his manifesto: "Kill the best of the Gentiles." I had written an essay on this the day of the shooting, but in the most simple terms, the Rabbis had to defend that Exodus says that all 'hoofs'' (cows, horses, etc), left Egypt with the Hebrews, and then a few verses later, has horses and chariots coming after the Hebrews at the Sea of Reeds. The Midrash says that some Egyptians, righteous gentiles, believed in G!d, so G!d spared their horses. So now these same 'good Egyptians' are chariot drivers with their horses. So Shimon bar Yochai says, meaning in a time of war, kill even the best of your enemy. Indeed in the trenches of WW One, Jewish British and French were killing Jewish Germans and vice versa.
But Elon, uses the Midrash of G!d scolding the angels for singing when the Egyptians where drowning, as evidence that this Mekhilta Midrash doesn't mean what some think it means. And since this Torah portion, with the Song at the Sea, comes at the middle of Shevat, it is important for those of us in Renewal/ Eco-Judaism, to place greater emphasis on the Midrash of loving even one's enemies, then the Song. (As an aside, I had a retired ordained cantor, who passed this June 09, OBM, and three cantorial soloists, at our and Hilton Head Island's, first Tu/Yah B'Shevat seder. And the cantor, then 86, wanted to sing the Song at the Sea. I asked him politely no. But in the middle of the Kabbalistic seder with all Eco-Judaic teachings, he started to sing Israeli Zionist songs. He didn't get what we were trying to teach that night.)
Elon then goes into a wonderful discourse on the life and sayings of Shimon bar Yochai which I do not want to get into detail now, but also compares him, because of the destruction they can do with their stares, to Eliezar, who was tossed out of the Academy for not agreeing with the Rosh over whether an oven was kosher. The point of it all is that we cannot be doing haravat olam, destroying the world and people, when we think we are doing tikun olam. And Yochai, his son, and even Eliezar did this.
Elon then talks about what is oft not taught which is Bar Yochai's teshuvah, and Jewish Spiritual Renewal. He says that since a miracle happened to him, he needs to go ''repair (tikun) something.'' Elon compares him to Jacob. Bar Yochai repairs the market in Tiberius. The rabbis had declared this lower market impure because dead bodies may have been buried there. Bar Yochai takes away this uncertainty and the market can be opened.
In his spiritual journey, before Bar Yochai enters the cave he only know how to argue, present difficulties, and not know how to deconstruct. Eventually he became the best at deconstruction. By deconstruction one shows the inadequacies of what is before him, e.g. a legal Talmudic maxim, or perhaps a Rabbinic ritual. Hence re-examination of what we do as new information becomes available is Talmudic and Judaic.
Elon concludes therefore that the holiday needs to be Yah B'Shevat, bringing the Kabbalistic seder down to earth, literally, moving from the Zionist-Israeli holiday of land acquisition, into a universal holiday, connecting the earth with the Divine, with rituals and even a set of new halakah, for all humans, especially Jews leading the way, hand- in- hand with partners in other religions, to repair the earth, and keep it healthy for generations to come.
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco-Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
Savannah, GA
Member Temple Oseh Shalom
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