February 3rd, 2007 is Tu B'Shvat, the New Year for the Trees

The Giving Trees
By Elizabeth Applebaum

One of the late Shel Silverstein's most endearing works is The Giving Tree. Even the most cold-hearted readers—the kind who find "The Sopranos" a bit tame—will be moved by this tender story of a tree and the boy it loves. If you haven't seen it, or even if you already have, it's excellent reading for our Jewish holiday of the trees, Tu B'Shevat.

Planting Seeds of Hope

An exciting and accessible Tu Bishvat Seder for the whole family, by BabagaNewz, and what the JTA has to say about it. Bring on the ice cream and cookies!

Torah, Jews and Earth
By Arthur Waskow

There are two major reasons for the American Jewish community to take as one of its major concerns—in prayer and celebration, in daily practice and in policy advocacy—the protection of the earth environment. One is for the sake of the earth. The other is for the sake of Jewish continuity, renewal and vitality. Both are for the sake of God and Torah.

A Party for the Trees
by Yosef Abramowitz and Rabbi Susan Silverman

As the Once-ler chops down a truffle tree for her new industry in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, a fuzzy little man appears on the stump and cries, "I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees!" He pleads for the Once-ler to stop destroying the earth.
This same message of preserving and respecting the earth was formulated thousands of years ago in ancient Israel.

Every Day Is (Jewish) Earth Day
By Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb

Denis Hayes and Isaac Luria were both onto something.
Hayes, who created the first Earth Day in 1970, noted that beyond April 22, many folks never thought about ecology. Thus the slogan, trite but true: “Every Day Is Earth Day.”
Luria, the young kabbalist who died in Tzfat in 1572, gave us a famous creation myth.

But Is It Jewish?: A Reflection on Environmentalism and Judaism
By Rabbi Kenneth L. Cohen

When Rabbi Shlomo Eger, a distinguished talmudist, became a Hasid, he was asked what he had learned from Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, his new rebbe. He replied that the first thing he learned was "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." But did the sage, an expert in Jewish law and lore, have to travel all the way to Kotzk only to learn the first verse of the Torah? He replied, "In Kotzk I learned that God created the heavens and the earth, but that after that, everything is up to us."

Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought
Edited by Arthur Waskow
Two Volumes. Jewish Lights; Reviewed by Jonathan Groner

From Canaanite civilization to Israelis' current passion for the automobile, from talmudic prohibitions on excessive waste to the early Zionists' deep connections to the soil of the Holy Land, from philosophical discussion to poetry to public interest law: This two-volume anthology contains a little bit of just about everything related to Judaism and the environment. Arthur Waskow, its editor, is of course a well-known advocate of Jewish renewal, and in the few essays of his own included here he makes the familiar case for Judaism as the bearer of an ecological ethic as well.