"A Tree of Life To Those Who Hold Fast To It" What do mean when we say: Eitz Haim Hi? עץ חיים היא

This past week we celebrated the New Year of Trees, Tu B'Shevat!

When we think about trees in the Jewish tradition we might immediately think of Torah which is likened to a "Tree of Life."

We also celebrate trees for just what they are - beautiful parts of God's creation that 17,000 years ago started growing along with grasses after a cold ice-age, at least here in Manhattan! We can thank the trees for oxygen we breathe and of course for sweet fruit we eat. I love their green lushness during the spring and summer as well as their artful presence in fall with yellow and red leaves. I particularly love trees in the winter skies with their maze-like networks of lines on the canvas of far away clouds - branches and twigs sometimes dancing in the wind.

Trees are an incredible part of our experience on Earth. They can connect us to the grandeur of God and creation. That's not to mention that the new year of trees always make me think of our many branched family trees. As Jews, each year on Tu B'Shevat, we can renew our relationships to the Jewish Family Tree of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern), African and global Jewish families, as we think about the new year of trees in metaphorical terms.

But to our question as we continue the celebration of Tu B'Shevat: what do we mean when we return the Torah to the ark and sing out "The Torah is a Tree of Life! Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace?"

Here is the passage from the siddur. Let's expand on the "Tree of Life" metaphor, to deepen our connection to this aspect of our liturgy.

To our chagrin, world peace alludes us. Inner peace is a different story.

As to those battles we must fight with soldiers, the Torah tells armies to be careful not to cut down the fruit trees. If Torah is a tree of life, what is the commandment really reminding armies of the world to take into consideration, when they wage war or defend their people militarily?

The Torah's claim and phrasing is striking. "Are the trees humans that they can retreat before you?" We see from here that compassion towards God's creation is a commanded responsibility especially for soldiers waging war.

Aren't we waging war on the evil inclination every day, internally? Are not nations waging wars and having to defend themselves militarily? What trees must we leave standing? Which trees give us life?

If Torah is a fruit-bearing tree no one may wage war upon it! No one may reject her teachings. And we must come to understand that all her paths, the wisdom she shares through reflecting on the human situation and even call to arms is a pathway toward peace.

Commentators expand on the Deuteronomic passage about fruit trees to compare human beings to trees of the field. Human beings "flower" and flourish in the forests of humanity. How can we cut each other down? How can we cut off family trees and uproot fellow human beings? What we seek to understand is how Torah's commandments and lessons get us and keep us on a pathway towards peace.

....Returning to the liturgy when we put the Torah away: what personal meaning do you derive when you think about Torah being a "Tree of Life?"

How do you reconcile passages of the Torah that describe war and bloodshed and the claim of the prayer from putting away the Torah that "all Her paths are of pleasantness and peace?"

What other trees in Jewish tradition come to mind, when you start thinking about trees? How does that inform our contemplation of the tree metaphor for Torah?

What else might be compared to a "tree of life?" How is that an apt metaphor for Torah study and deriving meaning from her passages and stories - not just thinking about the words as they "sit on the scroll?"

Study the sources below to expand your conception of the "tree of life" metaphor and to think about other trees mentioned in Jewish tradition.

Are the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil two different trees or one in the same?

What is the relationship between these verses in Genesis and the use of the metaphor "Tree of Life" for the Torah?

Read the next passage from Proverbs. Here is where the liturgist found the notion of Torah and wisdom as a tree of life. And this book of the Tanakh asserts that all her paths and teachings are for putting us on the course of peace and happiness.

Proverbs also uses the tree of life metaphor in a different way. Note how the metaphor is put to use in these two chapters and verses:

Rabbinic Texts

What other metaphors are used by the Sages of the Mishnah in Pirke Avot? Which is most powerful for you?

Learn the following passages to discover how the Rabbis put the Proverbs verses to work:

The New Yorker, The Intelligent Plant, Michael Pollen (December 23 & 30 2013) "The most bracing part of Mancuso’s talk on bioinspiration came when he discussed underground plant networks. Citing the research of Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, and her colleagues, Mancuso showed a slide depicting how trees in a forest organize themselves into far-flung networks, using the underground web of mycorrhizal fungi which connects their roots to exchange information and even goods. This “wood-wide web,” as the title of one paper put it, allows scores of trees in a forest to convey warnings of insect attacks, and also to deliver carbon, nitrogen, and water to trees in need. When I reached Simard by phone, she described how she and her colleagues track the flow of nutrients and chemical signals through this invisible underground network. They injected fir trees with radioactive carbon isotopes, then followed the spread of the isotopes through the forest community using a variety of sensing methods, including a Geiger counter. Within a few days, stores of radioactive carbon had been routed from tree to tree. Every tree in a plot thirty metres square was connected to the network; the oldest trees functioned as hubs, some with as many as forty-seven connections. The diagram of the forest network resembled an airline route map. The pattern of nutrient traffic showed how “mother trees” were using the network to nourish shaded seedlings, including their offspring—which the trees can apparently recognize as kin—until they’re tall enough to reach the light. And, in a striking example of interspecies coöperation, Simard found that fir trees were using the fungal web to trade nutrients with paper-bark birch trees over the course of the season. The evergreen species will tide over the deciduous one when it has sugars to spare, and then call in the debt later in the season. For the forest community, the value of this coöperative underground economy appears to be better over-all health, more total photosynthesis, and greater resilience in the face of disturbance. In his talk, Mancuso juxtaposed a slide of the nodes and links in one of these subterranean forest networks with a diagram of the Internet, and suggested that in some respects the former was superior. “Plants are able to create scalable networks of self-maintaining, self-operating, and self-repairing units,” he said. “Plants.”

How do these sources and the article expand our conception of the "tree of life" metaphor and our relationship to Torah, to trees and to life itself?

BONUS, A song and a blessing!

For your enjoyment, check out these unique and special prayers and songs for Tu B'Shvat.

This first piyyut - liturgical prayer - is written by Rabbi Yosef Chaim - the Ben Ish Chai, an 18th Century Iraqi sage who wrote beautiful poetry in addition to halakhic responsa and Torah commentary. As Tu B'Shvat is a day to embrace our broader family tree as Jews (it was Wednesday night/Thursday of this past week) enjoy this Middle Eastern Jewish celebration of "going out to rejoice among the trees of the forest."