Tu BeShevat, 15^th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat.

In Talmudic tales, tax day for orchard owners. In Kabbalistic thought, reflection on seeds as divine sparks. In modern times, a day to plant trees.

In contemporary life, an urgent call to heal our planetary ecological crisis.

A call that is implied in the early Kabbalistic Seder (text for a ritual meal) for Tu BeShevat, Pri Etz Hadar.

By practicing “comparative theology,” I came to recognize the call. When I heard it in Christian language, the resonance took me back to this 17^th century Jewish text.

For years, says contemporary Christian theologian Sallie McFague, environmentalists have sent an emotional message. “Love nature! Then, your awareness will be raised. Out of greater respect for biodiversity, you will honor the scarcity of planetary resources.”

In loving nature, Sallie says, many of us see God as pantheists would, as the immanent Spirit of All Life. Unfortunately this vision has been an epic failure at saving the planet. We stand in awe of our planet’s beauty, and continue to live just as we always have.

In a way, Sallie continues, we simply assume that God will save us. With the imagination of traditional theists, we pray to a transcendent God, an All-Powerful World Director. We will petition, God will repair, and we can continue to live just as we always have.

We need to merge these two visions of God, says Sallie. It’s not enough to love nature as pantheists, or to look towards salvation as theists. Instead, we must be panentheists, seeing divine salvation embodied concretely in the world, through our actions in it.

We cannot continue to live just as we always have.

We cannot live only as consumers, pretending we humans are subjects and all other life forms are objects.

We cannot pretend we live in a democracy, a place where people rule, juggling opinions until the best win. Because: we live in a biocracy, where all life forms rule, juggling needs so most can survive.

You might say, metaphorically: we cannot continue to believe in the old gods. We must come to know God anew, through a kenotic emptying.

You might say, shifting into a Jewish idiom, we must practice what Hassidic teachers would call bittul hayesh, nullification of the ego — the kind of ego we know in a consumer society.

We cannot continue to build our identities on material goods and services.

Because: life is material – but not only material.

Life involves foraging, growing, and feeding – projects of assiyah, the world of action, as we would say in Hebrew.

This world, however, is not just a collection of objects for consumption. Rather, everything in it refers beyond itself, to a web of life, a matrix of beings, each refracting divine consciousness through its unique biology.

This world opens onto awareness of a more cosmic consciousness – a world of atzilut, being with God, as we would say in Hebrew.

The anonymous author of Pri Etz Hadar knows this. “There is no physical thing here below that does not correspond to something above,” he or she writes.

If we forget, we rob the earth of its vitality.

“Whoever enjoys produce in this world without pronouncing a blessing is called a robber. … Through eating an aspect of creation [without blessing it], one eliminates the spiritual element that it contains, thus preventing that Divine power from being manifest in the world.”

Pri Etz Hadar is not merely liturgy for a ritual practiced one day a year on Tu BeShevat.

It is also a guide to a new everyday mindset, a spiritual path to a new way of living.

Image: paxgaia.ca