大象传媒

From Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

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Tomorrow night and Thursday is the Jewish New Year for trees.听 Most other faiths don鈥檛 do this, but we Jews have four new years - one for the kings, one for years- the beginning of the actual year, one for tithing herds of animals- and this one, the New Year for trees. It probably used originally to mark the day for beginning counting the age of trees, and certainly it was a day for planting them. These days it is mainly an occasion for increasing ecological awareness. In my long years as a rabbi, we鈥檝e done such varied things as seminars on green issues, planted trees after the great storm of 1987 on a local common, planted new trees at the front of the synagogue, and got all the children planting trees after bad weather, or in the wake of tree disease.

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But why trees? Well, all this started in the biblical land of Israel, and the same conditions would apply throughout the Middle East and anywhere else hot. Trees hold water in the soil and stop erosion, and trees provide shade, as well as wood for fuel. So, whilst we now realise trees to be a precious resource in temperate Britain, in the ancient middle-east, and beyond, trees were even more treasured, for their produce and shelter were a source of life.

We don鈥檛 feel quite like that in wet and windy Britain. But the value of planting new trees after we鈥檝e lost so many to recent storms over Christmas and New Year applies just as much to us. Planting new ones, tending them lovingly, treasuring them, we recognise that we need them not only for their wood, their shade, and their gripping of the soil, but because their function in the ecosphere is equivalent to life itself. So, though it鈥檚 a minor festival, I, like many other Jews, will be planting trees on Thursday. For they symbolise hope in the future- even for after we鈥檙e long dead and gone- and they鈥檒l help new generations 听find shade and comfort and water. What more can we ask for?