A Five-Bagger |

Boy, tonight will be totally cool.

First, we will be experiencing a penumbral lunar eclipse. And a full moon. Even a comet will appear. So, my Shabat evening guests will be joining me outside (with glasses of wine, of course) to enjoy the gifts of the night. Our Shabat dinner will either be enjoyed under the stars…or much later than normal. (It depends on the weather, of course!)

As if these were not auspicious enough, it is also one of the four new years that exist in the Hebrew calendar. (The others are the first day of Nisan, right before Passover, which is the new year for kings and festivals; the first day of Elul, the new year for tithing; and the first of Tishrei, which we all know as Rosh Hashana.) Tu B’Shvat, tonight’s new year is when the earliest blooming trees in the State of Israel begin their next fruit-bearing cycle.

Tu B'Shvat Infographic — http://media.aish.com/documents/TBSH(English).pdf

This new year is an ecological one. It’s officially the new year for trees, but it’s our celebration of the force of nature and the environment in the world. (Consider it the first- the real first- Earth Day.)

It’s been traditional to devour the seven species that are denoted in the Tora- grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates (from which the biblical honey is derived) are the fruits. The other two species are wheat and barley. (Many “spiritualists” (who study the Kaballa) match these seven species to the seven attributes of our human existence.)

A more recent tradition has been to participate in what is called a Tu B’Shvat Seder. (Seder means order or arrangement of events). In the late 1500s, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (Tzfat, Israel), who was among the revivalists of the Kaballist tradition, created this event. Its goal was to restore Hashem’s blessings upon us by strengthening and repairing the Tree of Life.

So, if it’s a celebration, what do else we do on this day? One of the more traditional things in recent history was to donate money to Keren Kayemet LYisrael, the Jewish National Fund. So, that trees could be planted in the land of Israel.

This, over the years, has been among the primary methods by which Israel was able to reclaim the land from the desert. It made it possible for Israel to become one of the prime agricultural regions in the Middle East.

Lately, many of us have been asking the fund to use our donations to help prune and manage the forests that have proliferated across the State. Because that conservation effort has been lacking- and many terrible forest fires have led to the deaths of firefighters as well as significant property damage. But, not this year. After terrorists torched many of Israel’s forests this year, we need to plant new growth.

Whatever your tradition or religion, today is a great time to consider the role of nature in our lives- and what climate change may yet provide.