Today is the holiday of Tu b’Shvat, the “new year of the trees.” In the diaspora, this day over the centuries came to embody the Jewish longing for the Land of Israel. With the return from exile, it has taken on a new meaning as a day to be celebrated by planting trees. Alon Tal considers its significance:
There is no more concrete manifestation of the Zionist impulse as the national movement of an indigenous people, than Israel’s forests. Seventy years ago—when the country was an impoverished, developing nation, the founders set about returning the woodlands to a decimated land—a land where 97 percent of the original vegetation had been extirpated.
That is not Zionist propaganda. Empirical evidence from aerial reconnaissance photography of the British army in World War I confirms the absolute bareness of Palestine following 2,000 years of Jewish exile. Since then, almost two million dunams of woodlands have been planted. There is something deeply meaningful about this profound act of national, ecological revival during these troubled times.
Over the years, I was always annoyed that Palestinian leadership never respected the authenticity of my Israeli identity and Jews’ historic connection to their homeland. But invariably, I let it go. Many Jews working on coexistence even avoided openly defining themselves as “Zionists,” lest they create unnecessary antagonism. The main thing was to get on with the “peacemaking.” In retrospect, this was a mistake.
Two-thousand years ago, the Mishnah codified the four new years that are built into our national calendar. . . . The fact that Israel has revived this arboreal birthday and turned tree-planting and tree-preservation into a national holiday is a sign of just how much our heritage informs our present-day lives.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-trees-and-indigeneity/