And the Jews were robed in vernal hues...

By Michæl Berk Tacoma Community College Tacoma, Washington

When I spontaneously packed two duffle bags and moved from Southern California to Washington State two years ago, my entire viewpoint of environmentalism changed. I spent two months couch-surfing until I got my own place just a couple of miles away from Evergreen State College, known very well in many circles for being the most earth-friendly place, buried deep within an evergreen tree forest where dreadlock-adorned students can be found living in tents. This was on the west side of town, and I found out just what it really meant to be aware of the environment and what we as humans do to it. Indeed, it's difficult not to notice the earthy signs everywhere, and the constant sight of multiple bins chained together for trash and various recyclables. On the far east side of town was quite a different scene, with a Catholic abbey and college without a recycling bin to be spotted by the naked eye.

Strangely, it was evenly betwixt these two very different sides of the capital city that a small white building housed two Jewish congregations; one of them I frequented during my days in that city. It was a true balancing act, like most things in the city, even for a Conservative group, embracing both the traditionalism symbolized by one side of town, and the awareness of the world in which we live on the opposite. While being Jewish didn't seem to mean that one had to take up a specific belief with regards to environmentalism, it was something everyone would eventually discuss at one time or another during kiddush after the humble Saturday morning minyan. If nothing else, they all talked about it more, simply by being exposed to it, than anyone in Southern California ever seemed to while munching on bagels or knish.

Now I live a bit further north, and I am a member of a congregation near the University of Washington in Seattle. When I attended services there for high holidays a few months ago, I noticed that something seemed to be missing, namely those little envelopes I always saw as a kid to plant trees in Israel. While I know why I didn't see them, their absence made me think about trees and the world we have been given to both harness and watch over.

Some time while the congregation was silently reading the Amidah, I closed my eyes and thought back to the time when I was 17 and visited Israel. It was the summer of 1995, and as our bus drove us from the airport where we had landed at 2am on a Friday morning to Jerusalem, the sun came up and we noticed the charred hillsides where "donation forests" had once been. There was still smoke rising from the ashy ground in some places, and we all watched silently, as we saw the devastation of the forest fires which had been extinguished just a few hours before. Later in the trip, we all had the opportunity to plant a tree. I planted twelve. I couldn't stop. The thought of tikkun olam, repairing the world around me, stuck in my mind. Standing there in shul, I could clearly see every moment of that sunny day when I stood on a stepped hillside planting trees. This month, as we approach Tu B'Shevat, I think more and more about that day planting trees, doing my part to rebuild the forest; and I consider what role the environment plays in Judaism. When I did some looking, I found three things right away:

1. Bereshit 2.15 - God took man "and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate it and to guard it."

2. Bereshit 1.28 - God told man to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; have dominion over...every living thing."

3. Every reference I have ever seen in Torah to ownership or "domination" has an equal balance with the responsibilities that come with it, such as marriage or the ruling over a population.

Most things in the Torah are balanced this way; power is given only with due responsibility and taken away when the responsibilities are neglected and the power is abused. We all have an obligation to keep the land we use fertile and clean, because that's the responsibility that comes with inhabiting that land. We use the oxygen in the air, oxygen produced by algae in the oceans we have polluted and the trees we have cut down.

I think about the trees I planted, and then the clear-cut forest land on the edges of the Olympic National Forest between the beach and where I currently live - a sight that made me speechless when I was driven through it a year and a half ago. I use paper, I have a responsibility to do what I can to repair what has been done to that land - as an individual I believe it, and as a Jew it is reinforced by the liturgy I study. I feel better when I take out my trash, and place the junk mail and magazines I get every now and then into the paper bin, the cans my friends leave behind into the aluminum bin, the socks that got a hole in them in the clothes bin, the glass bottles from pasta sauce in the glass bin, the plastic packaging from my purchases in the plastics bin; all which sit happily beside the large trash can down the hall. I know that even that little effort to sort my garbage means that perhaps a tree is spared, perhaps less carbon is released into the air, I'm actively doing something to make some sort of difference. I'm glad the bins are there, and next time I move, wherever it may be, if the bins aren't there - I'll put them there.

And Tu B'Shevat? I'm borrowing one of my mother's ideas and using an empty egg carton to plant parsley seeds which will be ready just in time to use as karpas for Pesach. I'll ask the owner of my apartment building if I can plant another tree in building's private courtyard, somewhere near the fountain. I'm asking others to recycle their garbage when they can. I'm asking you to take notice of the green as it disappears in the cold haze of winter, and perhaps find a way to make the spring a little greener wherever you live.

[Posted 1/2/03]