If you are a tree hugger you are in luck.
Monday is Tu BShvat, the 15th day of Shvat, and it’s the New Year for the trees.
Find your favorite tree and wish it a Happy Birthday. 🎈🎊🎂
If, however, you take a close look at the tree you might pause, because the tree is probably not looking all that great right now.
Why are we celebrating the withered specimen that is before us?
Doesn’t even look like that tree will even survive another year.
TuBshvat is the time when the sap deep inside the tree begins to move upward. This is a harbinger for the revitalization of said tree.
It’s a holiday celebrating potential, the joy that is yet to bloom.
Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, a Chassidic Rabbi of the 20th century shares a fascinating insight. He teaches that TuBShvat the New Year of the trees, is also the time we are judged as parents.
Rosh Hashana is the birthday of the world and that is when humans are judged. But on the 15th day of Shvat we humans are evaluated on our parenting.
Are we providing the proper nutrients for our children?
Are they receiving ample doses of the love they are thirsty for? Are they showered with the attention they need to thrive?Being a parent means planting seeds, laying roots, endlessly tending to the fragile blossoms and often waiting many seasons to see the fruit of our efforts, as we pray the little saplings are internalizing the messages we are attempting to implant in them.
I remember my epiphany.
A few years ago our children were visiting with their little ones. I was in another room in my home and I overheard our oldest son speaking to one of his kids. At that moment, my husband entered the room and started to speak to me.
I shushed him.
When asked why, I responded with some shock
“Listen to what he is saying, those are my words coming out of his mouth. I was never quite sure he heard me!”
The motif of planting is a powerful and hopeful one.
The fruits may be long in coming but we never give up hope.
Yigal Yadin the famous archaeologist who excavated Masada, found a small, sealed pot on the site during the dig.
In it he found date pits.
Yadin contacted a researcher at Bar Ilan University who was an expert in botanical archeology and gave him the pits. This professor, Mordechai Kislev, was able to determine through the means of carbon dating, that the pits were indeed 2000 years old. After consulting with experts in the field, Prof. Kislev came to the conclusion that the pits had no promise of resurrecting into a tree.
He put the container in a drawer in his desk, and there they languished for forty years.
Until, one day Prof Kislev came across the work of some botanical researchers who were working on a project to reseed and restore ancient seeds found at archaeological sites.
He contacted them, and the rest is history.
After a long, technical process the seeds were successfully sprouted in 2005.
The tree that resulted was the oldest tree of its type ever grown from ancient resprouted seeds and was named Methuselah, after the oldest man who ever lived.
What seemed to be impossible actually happened and is even recorded in the Guiness Book of World Records, the arbiter of all important miracles.
This should give us much comfort.
Hopefully it won’t be 2000 years in the making, but the seeds we faithfully tend to, the children we nurture and love, will send forth shoots, leaves and flowers.
So go hug that tree, I mean that kid, and know that as it says in Psalms
“Those who plant with tears, will reap the fruit of their labor with joy”.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach repunctuates the verse to read those who plant with joyful tears, will harvest the benefits of their labors.
As we raise our children and we face challenges, we may shed some tears of sadness along the way. The challenges may be might hard but they are part and parcel of the process.
So embrace the child and the challenge-with joy. Then we will merit to see the fruits of our labors.
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!