Monday is the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, called by the Talmud the “new year of the trees” as it marked the beginning of a new period for the tithing of fruits. Over the centuries it developed into a holiday, known in Hebrew as Tu b’Shvat—first transformed by 16th-century mystics, then by early Zionists, and finally by the Jewish Renewal movement into a sort of Jewish Earth Day. This last transformation, argues Meir Soloveichik, with its overtones of rootlessness and ideological malleability, betrays the day’s longstanding significance as a celebration of the enduring connection with the Land of Israel, and hope for return to Zion. (Video, 26 minutes.)

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.