But Sukkot deals the upper hand for many reasons, including 7 whole days of fun. It is also one of the holidays with multiple names, two being: Zeman Simkhateinu, the Season of our Rejoicing and Chag Ha-Asif, the Festival of Ingathering. The sages tell us that we should spend as much time in the Sukkah as possible, including eating and sleeping there. As a child in suburban Philadelphia, I was allowed to fall asleep in the Sukkah in our backyard until “the middle of the night” when my parents would bring us inside (you know, once it was dark and we were asleep, like 10pm). For answers to questions about halachic Sukkah sleeping, click here. (Like can you sleep underneath a table in the Sukkah?)

Meanwhile, what better way to rejoice in the abundance of the fall harvest season than visiting a farm? Ganei Beantown: Beantown Jewish Gardens and Hebrew College are proud to host this first annual community Sukkot celebration supported by an Innovation Grant from CJP. Join us at Lands Sake Farm on Chol Ha’moed Sukkot, Sunday October 16^th from 12:00pm-4pm. A full listing of events is here. This event is for all ages and all denominations dedicated to joyous celebration of our harvest season.

While we can’t sleep in our Sukkah, bring a picnic lunch and you can eat in it! We’ll be making decorations, listening to live music, visiting the farm animals, working on the farm, making recycled paper and learning Torah.

“When you harvest your crops from your granary, you should be happy on your holiday, you and your children…”

(Deuteronomy 16:13)

Examples of Sukkot joy would be the Klezwoods concert at 2:00pm.

Marshall Ganz, Professor at the Kennedy School, long time organizer, has this to say in his course outline where he teaches the tenants of it:

The questions of what am I called to do, what my community is called to do, and what we are called to do now are at least as old as Moses’ conversation with God at the burning bush.

Why me? asks Moses, when called to free his people. And, who – or what – is calling me? Why these people? Who are they anyway? And why here, now, in this place?

Public narrative is the art of translating values into action.It is a discursive process through which individuals, communities, and nations construct their identity, make choices, and inspire action. Because it engages both “head” and “heart”, narrative can instruct and inspire – teaching us not only how we should act, but moving us to act.

It is a very powerful experience to sit in a room with other Jewish environmental activists and talk about times we have been disheartened, rejected, ostracized or belittled. It’s exciting to then talk about when we’ve been supported, boosted up and empowered. But the real movement forward is when we are able to take others with us. Our movement grows as we build community and momentum together.

I have found public narrative is a tool for community engagement as much as it is an opportunity to clarify and convey my purpose and vision. As one who recently started a Jewish environmental organization, it was been a helpful process of contemplation, clarification and articulation. As I better understand why I do this work, I am better able to call upon my community to join me.

More than we need to feel empowered by discussing areas of hope, we need to act to engage and empower others in our movement. Public narrative is a way to do that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabe-crane/tu-bshvat-an-ancient-holi_b_810325.html

"What was once an accounting of tree inventory in ancient Israel may be emerging as the accounting of a movement."

By Gabe Crane, Adamah Fall 2010

Tu B'Shvat, long ago the annual date set aside in ancient Israel for determining the age of trees, essentially as a tax matter, today marks what has come to be known as the "Jewish New Year for Trees." In that fact, it is not unique — it is one of four "new years" events within the Hebrew calendar, pointing to a complexity of cyclical understanding and thought that, as moderns, we have to some degree lost.

In recent years, however, this somewhat obscure holiday has been reclaimed by an emerging Jewish environmental movement that sees the holiday as an indicator of their ancestors' concern for the health of the natural world. As a sort of Jewish Earth Day, this moment in mid-winter when the tree sap begins to rise has become a rallying point for an environmental movement with far-reaching ideas about integrating faith and the natural environment, responding to global climate change and reimagining what it means to be Jewish.

"Tu B'Shvat has become important because it's become known as the Jewish environmental holiday," says Leora Mallach, director of the ADVA Network, an alumni association for two prominent Jewish programs, the ADAMAH Jewish Environmental Fellowship and the Teva Learning Center, known for their penchant for incubating Jewish environmental leaders. "That provides a real opportunity for education and awareness within the Jewish community."

The points of connection between trees, the larger environment and Jewish tradition are rich and many: In prophecies surrounding the coming of the Messiah, it is noted that one day the trees will sing and clap their hands; in the Kabbalistic tradition, the 10 Sefirot, or "qualities" of being, are arrayed in Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life — also a name for the Torah; Eve and then Adam eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and in a famous, mystical story from the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva and three others ascend into the mysterious realm of "pardes," the orchard.

Nigel Savage, director of the Jewish environmental organization Hazon, has seen the trend develop over the years. Having attended his first Tu B'Shvat seder in 1986, Savage has seen more and more focus around the holiday in every year since then, in no small part thanks to Hazon's own work, providing education and resources to Jewish communities around the country. This year alone, Savage anticipates Tu B'Shvat seders being carried out with Hazon materials in over 100 communities and households around the country.

As Savage notes, "Any Jewish holiday is just a reminder of something we should be thinking about the other 364 days of the year." In that, Hazon has become a leader in substantively connecting ancient traditions to contemporary challenges. Now entering its 11th year, Hazon organizes bike rides on both coasts and in Israel to raise money for environmental organizations and causes, complete with full religious services, local, organic food, and a day off for the Sabbath. Hazon also organizes food conferences, tackling agricultural and food issues in the U.S., fiscally sponsors numerous Jewish environmental start-ups and spearheads the largest faith-based coalition of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the country.

"Tu B'Shvat comes to remind us that our lives depend on the physical world that sustains us," Savage says, "Tu B'Shvat is a day to think about how we power our homes, and how we travel, and the changes we might make in the coming year. Tu B'Shvat is a time to notice that there's going to be a Farm Bill in this country in 2012. The next time the Farm Bill comes through, we should be thinking about equity and food systems."

"You can't find the phrase 'urban food desert' in the Talmud," admits Adam Berman, Executive Director of Urban Adamah, a new program in Berkeley, Calif., based loosely on the aforementioned Adamah that seeks to synthesize organic, local food production, social justice, and Jewish values. But, he says, the values espoused in ancient Jewish thought clearly indicate an imperative to substantive engagement on environmental challenges of our time. "The core Jewish values of ahava, tzedek and chesed speak directly to the issues we are talking about here around social and environmental justice," he says.

In that opinion, Berman is not alone. Progressive Jewish environmental organizations are springing up with surprising speed: From Urban Adamah to another Berkeley-based organization, Wilderness Torah, to the Kayam Farm at the Pearlstone Center in Baltimore, Md., the Kavanah Garden in Toronto, Eden Village summer camp in Dennytown, N.Y., and the Jewish Farm School, leading alternative spring break trips around the country. "There's so many things happening in so many different places around this country," says Mallach, of the ADVA network.

With a rising concern for the environment in the face of global climate change, and in particular an interest in agricultural sources and practices, brought on by the work of writers like Michael Pollen and films like Food, Inc., the Jewish concern for environmental equity and healthy food is far from unique. What is unique about organizations like Hazon, Wilderness Torah, and Adamah is that they are taking on these issues through a religious lens.

In doing so, they are bending what have become standard cultural norms in the way of religion and progressive values. For Zelig Golden, director of Wilderness Torah, engaging in what are traditionally understood as liberal causes is not contradictory to a religious life; in fact, it is what defines it.

"There's a teaching that when you build a city you have to create green belts around the city," he says, "This is Torah. This is ancient scripture. Talking about building greenbelts."

Savage seconds Golden's feeling. "This is one of the places where Jewish tradition has wisdom," he says, "The question is how do we start to evolve a contemporary environmental halacha," or code of law. "Fundamentally, we're in the business of shifting what it means to be Jewish. That's what were trying to do."

In not shying away from modalities that are often perceived as conflicting, the emerging movement is not alone in a shifting American cultural landscape. Mourning those lost in the now-iconic shooting in Arizona, President Obama's adherence to and grounding in a religious faith (as deeply questioned as it may be by his critics) highlighted his ability to appeal to constituencies that lie outside the institutionalized ideas of what is right and left in this country. At a recent talk on environmental action, First Lady Michelle Obama lauded the work of Hazon, among other organizations.

Golden, whose organization seeks to reconnect Jews to the environment through the celebration of the traditional Jewish pilgrimage festivals, sees this synthesis as just one part of a growing paradigm shift. "I don't see Wilderness Torah as an environmental organization," he says, "I see it as a Jewish cultural organization, looking to reawaken the most ancient parts of our culture, to bring us back into relationship with ourselves personally, community, the Earth and ultimately our relationship to God. It actually transcends environmentalism. Wilderness Torah today has just been building 'programs,' Ultimately, these should become embedded cultural experiences that are actually lived out, not just provided by a non-profit organization."

Tali Weinberg's story in many ways encapsulates the journey of many Jews of her generation. A daughter of a kibbutznik father and a second generation holocaust surviving mother, Weinberg went to a Jewish day school growing up and participated in a culturally Jewish, largely secular home. At university she became involved as a political and environmental activist, and explored other spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, meditation, and indigenous First Nation ceremonies in Manitoba.

"I felt like I couldn't really find those streams and important issues within the Jewish community," she says, "I spent eight years really having little involvement with my Jewish identity."

In her mid- to late-20s, she had what she describes as a "reawakening," exploring indigenous, land-based roots in her own religion and culture. She attended Elat Chayim, a Jewish spirituality organization then based in Accord, N.Y., and became involved in the ADAMAH community, serving two seasons as the farm's field manager.

"While I was farming and in the field, I started to integrate some of these ideas," she relates, "It became an embodied experience as opposed to a predominantly intellectual experience. The text was the land itself."

After two years studying permaculture outside of the Jewish context, Weinberg is returning to become the farm manager for Urban Adamah, where she hopes to integrate the design system pioneered by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren with her Jewish background. Whereas permaculture is a recently popularized design strategy that seeks to employ sustainable land use practices by mimicking those systems found in nature, Weinberg sees ancient traditions the world over — Judaism included — as speaking to the same idea.

"If you look at some of the permaculture principles and ethics, they're basically a universal articulation of what exists in every part of the globe, in every tradition," Weinberg says. "These are all things that are both in permaculture and in Judaism. Our teachers, our ancestors, really understood how to engage in the land in a sustainable way."

Golden, for one, agrees: "Jewish environmental thought is not new," he says. "It is as ancient as the Jewish tradition. Jewish traditions are connected to the cyclical calendar, which tracks the seasons, tracks the moon cycle, tracks these rhythms.

"You can go right into Genesis, into the stories of Avraham, the stories of Isaac and Jacob … all these stories take place in an earth-centric environment. Avraham is told to go out from his home into the wilderness. Isaac encounters his beloved while meditating in the field. Jacob has his vision of the ladder and God right here on earth while on what very much seemed like a vision quest, surrounded by stones."

"The next Sabbatical year begins in December 2014," says Savage referring to the biblical practice of letting agricultural fields lie fallow once every seven years. "We want to put shmita on the agenda for jewish community. By December 2014, we want it to be the case that in every synagogue, every classroom, every JCC — we want there to be a conversation happening."

Maybe he will get his wish. What's happening now, Golden says, is "still very nascent. It's still pre-emergent. We haven't actually hit the big time yet. In a generation, there's going to be a blossoming, as what's now called the Jewish environmental movement will become a mainstream Jewish experience."

"I think it's inevitable that the Jewish community, as all communities of faith in this country, will embrace the values that we are espousing," argues Berman, the Urban Adamah director. "All religions will cease to be compelling if they aren't speaking to these issues, as they become more prevalent, as more and more people realize that engaging with these issues is essential to meaning, joy, happiness, connection and life."

If so, larger things may be looming on the horizon. What was once an accounting of tree inventory in ancient Israel may be emerging as the accounting of a movement. "What we're seeing in the community," Golden says, "Is just the sap beginning to run."