On Sunday 9th February several dozen members of 3CLJC gathered in Gloucester for a wonderful Tu B’Shvat Seder in celebration of Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees. Rabbi Anna had done sterling and inspirational work in putting together a specially created Seder order of service, with background history, readings, blessings and symbolic foods. A recently returned member of the community, who is a garden designer and horticulturalist, had lent a touch of magic to the proceedings with lovingly crafted table dressing centrepieces consisting of carefully chosen flowers and foliage, each with a symbolic resonance illuminating both the ethos of the festival itself and wider themes: about the climate crisis and contemporary tragedies, but also hope and resilience.
The service was divided up between some of the community’s young and not so young members. Another member read an initial explanation of the roots of the festival in 16th century Jewish mysticism and Kabbalistic symbolism, while some of the younger participants treated us to amusing parables and Talmudic stories on the theme of trees, ecology and our responsibility for the environment. The Garden Designer explained his choices for the table dressing, and Rabbi Anna oversaw a series of concoctions of red and white grape juice, carefully calibrated to produce multi-hued libations for the four blessings of the service. Each colour represented a different season, which in turn related to a specially curated seder plate of botanical and pomological (look it up!) significance. These included a plate of plants where the inside but not the outside is edible; a plate of plants where the outside but not the inside is edible; a plate where the whole fruit is edible; and a bowl of woody spices that are not themselves edible but which impart joyful flavours and fragrance. Each plate, libation and blessing related to one of the four Kabbalistic worlds. Under Rabbi Anna’s careful tutelage, the community navigated through these worlds – and several songs – en route to a delicious shared meal, made up of dishes brought in by members of the community, featuring among their ingredients the edible gifts of many trees and plants.
The meal was rounded off with grace and then everyone piled in to help clear up. Attendees ranged from the very young to the elegantly elderly, and it was remarkable how many new faces joined the celebration, evidence of the good work and warm welcome offered to new members by Rabbi Anna and the rest of the crew. Hopefully all went away cheered by the convivial occasion and bearing in their minds the aphorism that opened the seder: “Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai used to say: If you have a sapling in your hand and they tell you ‘The Messiah is coming!’ – first plant the sapling and then go to greet him.”