Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 5, 1987 Page: 3 of 20
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The World Around Us At Tu B' Shevat
BY RABBI NORBERT
WEINBERG
(WZPS) - Popular writings
make us imagine the Jew of
yore to have been constantly
locked away within the walls of
the yeshiva, the religious
academy. It was, It would see,
a world without the green buds
of spring, or the chirping of
forest birds.
Every year, just as the winter
winds seem their coldest, there
comes along a holiday in the
Jewish calendar which shatters
the stereotype-the holiday of Tu
b’Shevat, the fifteenth of the
month of Shevat, often called
Rosh Hashana Lallanot, the
New Year of the Trees, which
this year falls on February 14.
By tradition, the date marks
the start of the rise of sap from
the roots back to the branches.
The winter days were long
enough, by this season, to
allow the wood, chopped at
this time to be ready for use in
the ancient Temple of
Jerusalem for the spring
festival of Pesach. It also ser-
ved as the date from which the
age of trees was calculated, in
determing when the trees’ fruit
were to be brought for the of-
fering of the first fruits.
When the Temple was
destroyed, in the year 70CE,
the Jewish people lost their
sovereignty over the land, and
they gradually became exiled,
not only from the physical
presence of the land, but
estranged, in some ways, from
the soil. The fruit of the trees
could no longer be brought to
the Temple, nor was the wood
cut for use in the offerings,
and the celebration of the date
fell into disuse.
The attachment to the land
of Israel never died, and, with
the return to the land, the
festival itself was revived, not
in 1948, when Israel
established its independence,
but in the 16th century.
In 1492, the Jews of Spain
were scattered to the four win-
ds by the newly united
Kingdom of Castille and
Aragon. Many headed to the
East, to the Ottoman Empire,
but one group of dedicated
visionaries made their way to
the land of Israel, and settled
in a mountain-top village,
known as Safed.
They came to see the tragedy
of expulsion as not an un-
mitigated catastrophe, but in-
stead as a beginning of the era
of Messianic redemption. What
had happened on a human,
historical plane was a
manifestation of a cosmic,
divine struggle. The Jew, in his
observance of Judaism, was a
participant in the battle again-
st the forces of cosmic evil. The
fact that they had been able to
come to Israel was, for them,
proof that redemption was
near.
They revived the festival of Tu
b Shevat and gave it a new
meaning. Just as the tree was
gathered at that season for use
at Pesach, so, too, was the New
Year of the Trees a symbol of
redemption and liberation of
the land of Israel and of the
planet earth, in anticipation of
a future Passover, a festival of
ultimate liberation from exile.
They created for this oc-
casion a new kind of Seder
which revolved around the fruit
of trees, instead of unleavened
bread. The metaphysical aspec-
ts of the universe are sym-
bolized by the types of fruit
eaten. Those surrounded by a
hard shell, such as nuts,
represent the world of Assiyah,
of physical creation, a world in
which the holy is hidden by the
hard shell of unholiness. The
next category of fruit, peaches
or olives, have an inedible pit,
thus representing the realm of
Yezirah, formation, a higher
level of existence, still bearing
significant elements of the
unoly. The third category are
fruit which have little or no
peel or pit, such as the carob,
which represents the upper-
most realms, which are tainted
only in the least by corruption.
The fourth category of fruit
represent the ultimate level,
Azilut, the pure and absolute
realm of the Divine. Since this
is an intangible realm, no fruit
can represent it.
It remained for a later wave
of pioneers to carry out,
physically, what these spiritual
pioneers were only able to
speculate about. With the
resettlement of the land of
Israel at the turn of the last
century and the beginning of
this, the festival of Tu b’Shevat
took on new significance.
Redemption was no longer a
matter of speculation by
dreamers, but an actuality ac-
complished by physical effort
in draining the swamps of the
Galilee, greening the desert
lands, and rebuilding what had
been a backwater province of a
dying empire. It is with the rise
of modern Zionism that there
arose the very tangible act of
redemption of the land, the
planting of trees, physically, in
the land of Israel, and, albeit
at a distance, the participation
by Jews, around the world, by
donating funds soecificallv for
use in reclaiming the land of
Israel.
This return to the land has
forced the Jewish people to re-
examine what the great
classics of Jewish tradition
have to say not only about flora
and fauna, but also how a land
can be intensively farmed and
built up, yet at the same time,
enriched and conserved.
mim
HINEl MATOV
“Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity ..."
(Psalm 133) The olive (i.e. children of Israel) stands at the foot of Mt. Sinai;
the wolf and lamb dwell together under the fig and the grape. Each of these
trees provides fruit for the Tu B’Shvat meal.
They Came To March For Brotherhood
BY RICHARD BONO
Atlanta Jewish Times
Staff Writer
ATLANTA (JTA) — The massive
march on rural Forsyth County,
Georgia, on January 24 was
more than a demonstration
against the hostile racism that
occurred there one week
earlier. Rather, according to
consensus, it was a collective
show of solidarity against the
racial intolerance that has oc-
curred recently in Howard
Beach, NY, at The Citadel in
Charleston, S.C., and in recent
racial incidents in Philadelphia
and Boston.
"This thing developed a life
of its own,” said Sherry Frank
Southeastern director of the
American Jewish Committee.
Frank commented that the Ku
Klux Klan’s hostile appearance
January 17 in Forsyth County,
situated 38 miles north of
Atlanta, shocked the sen-
sibilities of the nation and was
the straw that broke the
camel's back.
The largest civil rights march
in more than two decades,
estimated at 15,000 to 20,000
bore witness to the change that
has occurred with the passing
of time. Nearly half the mar-
chers on January 24 in Forsyth
County were white and this
time the law was on the side of
the demonstrators, not against
them as it was in the 1960's.
Demonstration Resembled An
Army Camp
In fact, the scene of the
demonstration resembled an
army camp: Some 1,700
Georgia National Guardsmen in
riot regalia were joined by law
enformcement officials from
the Georgia Bureau of In-
vestigation, the Georgia State
Patrol and a myriad of law en-
forcement officials from
jurisdictions in and around
metropolitan Atlanta.
In all, a force of nearly 3,000
kept an angry group of about
1,000 counter-demonstrators
at bay, staving off a potential
confrontation with the mar-
chers.
Prior to leaving Atlanta for
the ride to Cumming, the coun-
ty seat of Forsyth, 175 busloads
of participants, including this
reporter, waited anxiously, not
knowing what lay ahead.
Jews Were Well Represented
Frank said that Jews, from
Atlanta and elsewhere, were
well represented in proportion
to their percentage of the
country’s population. And if it
had not been tor the Shabbat,
she said, more Jews would
have participated.
"The words of the counter-
demonstrators last week
(January 17) were an affront to
Jews as well as to Blacks,” she
said.
On January 17, about 90
people, men, women, children,
both Black and white, went to
Forsyth County to march for
brotherhood in the all-white
county. Blacks have not been
welcome there for 75 years.
But, to the surprise of
everyone, the brotherhood
marchers were met by 400
screaming Ku Klux Klansmen
and their allies. Obscene racial
epithets were hurled at the
group as was a barrage of bot-
tles and rocks.
The organizer of the march,
civil rights veteran Rev. Hosea
Williams, said afterward it was
the most violent, hate-filled
group he had ever encoun-
tered. Representatives of three
Jewish groups joined with
Atlanta's Black leaders to plan
the second march for
brotherhood in Forsyth County.
They were the Atlanta chapters
of the American Jewish Com-
mittee, the Black-Jewish
Coalition and the American
Jewish Congress.
A permit was secured. Law
enforcement, housing and
transportation were arranged.
But, no one anticipated the
outpouring of support that
came from throughout the
nation.
Frank said Jews lent much in
the way of support for the
second brotherhood march. A
local hotel, owned by a Jewish
Atlantan, made 100 rooms
available to the dignitaries who
came in to march. And, Atlan-
ta's largest Reform Temple
opened its doors for other
demonstrators who had no
place to sleep. Those
arrangements were made by
The Temple’s rabbi, Alvin
Sugarman.
"We share a history of op-
pression with Blacks,” Sugar-
man told The Atlanta Jewish
Times. "It's in different forms
and to different degrees, but
we know what it means to be
in an underclass, to be op-
pressed solely by virtue of birth
- we as Jews, they as Blacks.”
Vehemence Toward Jews And
Blacks
For most of those who came
to demonstrate against racial
intolerance, the march
provided their first glimpse at
the vehemence some
Americans feel toward Jews
and Blacks. Many of the Klan
sympathizers wore swastikas
and many were young
teenagers, striking a sense of
fear in some observers that the
seeds of intense racial hatred
are once again being sown.
The Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B’rith said there are
probably 10 Klan sympathizers
for each of the 200 Klan mem-
bers who they estimate reside
in Georgia.
"We’ve known for years that
Forsyth County is a white en-
clave and that the people there
are determined to keep it that
way,” said Charles Wittenstein,
the ADL's southern civil rights
See Brotherhood Page 20
PAGE 3 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1987 TEXAS JEWISH POST
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 5, 1987, newspaper, February 5, 1987; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth755511/m1/3/?q=mission+rosario: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .