Talmud Class: Three Stories About Trees

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

There is a Jewish holiday that few know, Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees, celebrated next Wednesday night and Thursday, January 24-25. If Passover is the most broadly observed holiday, Tu B’Shevat is among the least observed—a holiday about trees in the dead of winter. To prepare ourselves for the holiday next week, we are going to study three stories about trees: A story about a tired and thirsty traveler who is nourished and renewed by a tree’s shade and fruit and gratefully offers the tree a blessing. Taanit 5b-6a. Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s story The Giving Tree (1964) is the antithesis of the first story. In Silverstein’s tale, the human has no gratitude and just keeps using the tree, taking and taking until reducing it to a stump. Why is a story about an abused tree and an abusive human a bestseller? What does this troubling story teach us, and how are we to understand its apparent popularity? The story about a person who plants a carob tree that will not yield fruit for 70 years because he had inherited carob trees that had been planted for him by others. Taanit 23a What do these stories about trees teach us about us?