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A Tu B'Shevat Message 13th February 2025

One of the many marvellous features of the Jewish calendar is how optimistic it is, encouraging us to be optimistic too.

As the Talmud tells us, Jews have four new years. Surely one is enough! But new beginnings pick us up and give us fresh drive and the New Year for Trees, Tu b’Shevat, is no exception.

Those of us who live in predominantly urban environments might not feel the strangeness of trying to break through the frozen ground of Winnipeg to plant a tree or trying to nurture something at entirely the wrong time of year in Sydney, but those of us in more rural communities might also feel that February is not the best time for tree planting in Uganda or Nigeria. (Maybe it is! What do I know?)

But my point is that we do not go by our own local agricultural cycle. Our calendar hooks us into the Land of Israel. This is the right time for tree planting in Israel and so Jews throughout the Commonwealth carefully nurture whatever they can get to grow at this time, expressing in earthy muddy solidarity our literal, practical association with the Land of Israel.

Tu b’Shevat bookends the Jewish agricultural year with Sukkot at the other end. We plant trees on Tu b’Shevat and on Sukkot we harvest bits of them to carry out the beautiful mitzvah of Lulav and the Arba Minim.

This last Sukkot I was in Auckland New Zealand for the first days of Sukkot – on my way to Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). I witnessed first-hand there how complicated local laws make it for Kiwi Jews to get the necessary bits and pieces they need for the mitzvah of Lulav and all the biohazard restrictions they have to overcome to make sure they get the right four bits in a bunch in time for the festival.

Meanwhile, I recall the Jews of Gibraltar planting etrog trees in their central park one year, which they did as a contribution to the late Queen’s ‘Commonwealth Canopy’ initiative, where she dreamed of a ring of trees encircling the Earth, throughout Commonwealth countries, helping the world to breathe.

And I’ve seen pictures of the etrog trees that the Jewish community of Maputo, Mozambique planted in their compound so that they could in future use their own etrogim for Sukkot, and some other communities, especially in Africa, have followed suit so they don’t have to worry in future as to whether they can get etrogim from abroad. For some of our communities, getting a palm branch is just a matter of popping outside, while in others it is more or less unimaginable.

The Sukkot before last I was in Israel and on every street corner there seemed to be stalls selling whatever one needed for the Four Species. A further reminder that this, like so many of our practices, is designed for the Land of Israel and its conditions.

But the Jews are now a global people as the membership of the Commonwealth Jewish Council attests and we are connected not by land but by love and relationship, tribe and practice.

So, however you mark Tu b’Shevat, from simply trying to eat 15 fruits from trees to holding a full scale Tu b’Shevat seder (based on the practice of the mystics of medieval Sefat) I hope you have a good one.

Happy new year! Tu b’Shevat sameakh!

Clive A Lawton OBE JP

CEO - CJC