To See Sacred Potential

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on Saturday, February 7th, when Rabbi Steven connected the wisdom of Shabbos rest to Tu B’Shehvat. In North America, the birthday of the trees is a time when deciduous trees are resting, and, for millions of years, the majestic pine stores burbling sap.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on Saturday, February 7th

Every Chicagoan has their least favorite month. I was chatting with some friends about it. Someone said December, when it gets dark at 4:00 pm. Another friend said April, because March tricks you into thinking that spring is here and summer is right around the corner — but you always forget about April. Controversially, one of my friends said August but he overheats easily. Any other suggestions? Personally, February is my least favorite month. It’s just gray: gray weather, gray trees, gray sidewalks, gray moods.

And so in what feels like an accident of the liturgical calendar, Jews in North America celebrate Tu Bishvat during this gray season. Tu Bishvat (literally, the fifteenth of the month of Shevat) is also called Rosh HaShanah L’Ilanot, or the New Year of the Trees; today is the 20th of Shevat, so we observed it five days ago. It’s one of four new years named by the rabbis, used to mark the beginning of the growing season for fruit bearing trees. And in fact, if you go to the land of Israel right now you’ll find the trees are beginning to bud and blossom — something Rabbi Lizzi and I saw on separate trips over the past few weeks. It’s quite rainy, and green. Tu Bishvat is a reminder that a substratum of our tradition is connected to the seasons, particularly those of the Near East. As much as we are people of the book, living in our heads and our hearts, we are also a people keenly aware of where we are — embodied in time and in place.

So as Jews living in the diaspora, we look out the windows on the days following Tu Bishvat to see bare branches against winter skies and are reminded that these trees are very much alive — sustained by millions of microscopic processes invisible to the human eye. Deciduous trees lose their leaves to prevent water loss, while conifers protect their needles with a weather-resistant waxy coating. Chemical changes that promote shrinkage, dehydration, and sugar concentration allow cells to harden and become glass-like to prevent them from freezing. Nutrients are concentrated in the roots, preparing the trees for new growth as the days lengthen and the temperatures warm. The biblical commentator, Rashi, notes that the selection of Tu Bishvat was because this is the time when sap begins to quicken in the trunks and branches. Whether or not we can see it, creation continues to unfold around us — sometimes just under the surface. It is something we cannot control, that we can neither promote nor prevent. The world turns; we cannot stop it, we cannot speed it up.

The inevitability of the world is both beautiful and terrifying. There is a comfort, at least to me, knowing that all of these things will exist beyond us, that no matter what destruction we might cause there will be a post-anthropocene (scientists estimate that the human species has about 7.8 millions years of existence in us, a timeline we certainly have the ability to cut short — but based on what we know about the life span of planets, this gives complex organisms another 800 million years to continue evolving without us). And it is also scary to know that so much of the world is beyond our control: not only the arc of ecological history, but even the trajectory of our own lives — shaped, as they are, by the forces of nature and the choices of other people.

As Jews, this knowledge is not an excuse to say we are powerless to change things and throw our hands up in defeat (as tempting, and as pragmatic, as this kind of nihilism may be). Even knowing that we control so little about the world, we are obligated to respond in ways that leave it just a bit better than we found it. When we open the Torah this week, we find our ancestors gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. They have only recently escaped slavery in Egypt; now a free people, this is the moment when their painful history is transformed into a source of power and purpose. God says to them, “See how I have brought you out of Egypt. Although the entire world is mine, you will be a cherished treasure. Follow my covenant, and in response you will become a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” And the people respond: Kol asher diber Adonai, na’aseh — all that God has said, we will do.

So God begins to share the details of this covenantal relationship, beginning with the Ten Commandments (which we find in our parashah this week): remember that I am God, do not make idols, keep Shabbat, honor your parents, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal or lie, do not covet, and so on — and our ancestors go, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is too much. The voice from heaven. The fire and smoke on the mountain. The constant sound, like the blasting of the shofar. All of these commandments. We can’t take it. And so they stand at a distance, and ask Moses to be their intermediary.

But what, exactly, is too much about revelation? Yes, the experience itself is overwhelming. But this is a people who witnessed the ten plagues, who watched a pillar of fire descend from the skies to keep the Egyptian army at bay, who saw the sea split in half so they could walk to the other side on dry land. Honestly, what’s a little more fire and smoke. Yet they are afraid – perhaps not of revelation, but of what it reveals about the world around them. The prohibition against idolatry means that this is a world where people will make idols of power, or of money, or even of themselves. The requirement for Shabbat means this is a world where we need to be reminded that our dignity is not defined by what we do, but by who we inherently are (as Rabbi David Ingber likes to say: Shabbat is when we are celebrated as human beings not human doings). It is a world of broken families. It is a world of murder and adultery, of stealing and lying, of forgetting to be grateful for what we have and instead covet what is not ours. How tempting to step back. To turn inward and spiritually hibernate. To hunker down for this winter of our collective soul, and try to shield ourselves from everything happening outside of our small corner of the world. Yet like sap flowing under bark, like roots digging deep into the soil – the good and the bad (and everything in between) continues, regardless of whether we pay attention to it or not.

And God says pay attention! We say this every time we pray: shema Yisrael, listen up you Jews – everything you see and don’t see, it’s all part of creation. We are called to bear witness to the world as a singular whole, holding both its messiness and its potential in our gaze. And if we are to live up to our promise as a kingdom of priests, we are obligated to respond to this complicated picture as a priest would: with care, compassion, and consideration of the sacred that exists all around us at all times. We do this even if what is happening in our lives and the lives of the societies we live in is largely outside of our control, even if what is happening feels like too much to bear. Our ancestors back away from Mount Sinai, but in the end they accept the covenant – and use it to chart the wildernesses, both literal and metaphorical, that lie ahead of them. The commandments are inherently countercultural. They provide an alternative path for moving across this landscape, rather than giving in or giving up to the darkness that obscures it. From the mess and from the possibility we find around us, we are called to draw out and draw upon the latter – even as the former makes it hard to see a way forward.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat writes that Tu Bishbat is about potentiality, especially for Jews living in places where midwinter means sleet and snow. Knowing that there is life stirring within the dormant trees, this holiday is a reminder of what exists below the surface, behind the brokenness, through the darkness. She writes, “Even when our hearts feel deadened or our spirits frozen, we can affirm that someday there will be sweetness that we can’t yet feel or see.” We are not a goy kadosh, a holy nation, because we are somehow better than other people. No, holiness is our purpose – to be a reminder of what is possible, witnesses to sacred potential, even when it is difficult to see.

In times like these, that alone can feel like an impossible task. There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, most of them far outside of our direct control. But as Willow reminded us with the story of Jethro, who comes to tell Moses that he doesn’t have to do it all by himself – we don’t have to do it all by ourselves. Our tradition reminds us that although we are not at liberty to ignore what needs to be done, it’s also not our responsibility to do everything. Great miracles can happen if each of us does something. So the question to ask yourself, what is that small something you can do? Like the bulb, just below the surface of the cold hard ground, you contain a potential that is waiting to burst forth and bloom. Only you can nurture that seed. The first step is to remember that it is there. It always has been.