Thanks to Maya Bernstein for this Guest Post.  Maya is the Director of Education and Leadership Initiatives at UpStart Bay Area.  She blogs weekly on Jewish social entrepreneurship at Upstart, and on motherhood for Lilith magazine. This is cross-posted from UpStart Bay Area – the Bay Area headquarters for Jewish Social Entrepreneurs.

Had you told me that 260 Jewish Gen X-ers and Millenials, from Santa Cruz, the Peninsula, the East Bay, Marin, and San Francisco, many of whom are part of CSAs, and some of whom had never heard of a CSA, whose favorite trees include eucalyptus, olive, cherry, and redwood, would crowd together in the assembly hall of the Women’s Building in the Mission District, swaying like palm trees to the Israeli folk-dance “Tzadik Katamar Yifrach” (the righteous will grow like palm trees), I would have raised a cynical eyebrow in your direction. Since, though, I was swaying like a palm tree along with the crowd, I can assure you that this year’s Second Annual Bay Area Eco Tu B’Shevat Seder was a sight to behold.

Tu B’Shvat marks the fifteenth day in the month of Shvat, a day which the Mishnah, a codification of oral Jewish law redacted in the 200 CE, marks as the New Year of the Trees. The holiday largely fell into oblivion when the Jewish people were not living in the Land of Israel and not connected to its agricultural cycles, or obligated in the biblical tithes of its fruit, but, in the 17th century, was re-invigorated by the Kabbalists in Tzefat, who infused the holiday with mystical meaning and developed a ritual, analogous to the Passover Seder, to mark it. In recent times, Tu B’Shvat has become the “little holiday that could,” pulling behind it those passionate about the environment and social action, those interested in celebrating a Jewish holiday connected to nature and community, and one which involves drinking four cups of wine.

Last year, Jeff Levy, inspired by a session at the Professional Leaders’ Project Think Tank in 2007, imagined what it would be like to bring together a community of people to celebrate Tu B’Shvat. He began to spread the idea around, and then began to act on it; six Jewish organizations in the Bay Area, including Congregation Emanu-El, The Hub at the JCCSF, New Israel Fund New Generations, San Francisco Hillel, and EcoJews of the Bay co-sponsored the event, under-writing its cost, and 150 people, their own plates and cups in hand, showed up to celebrate Tu B’Shvat together. The event was such a success that this year the number of sponsoring organizations and attendees nearly doubled; the event was sold-out two weeks before it happened, and people showed up at the door hoping to be let in off of a waiting list. All of the advertising for the event was conducted paper-free, using viral marketing, email and Facebook. The event was the largest of its type in the country.

The structure of the Tu B’Shvat Haggadah (printed for the Eco-Seder on 100% post-consumer watste, chlorine free recycled paper), corresponds to the four Kabbalistic “worlds” – spheres through which the life-giving flow of the Divine is channeled and filtered. These realms correspond to the seasons – beginning, with a cup of white wine, with winter, and ending, with a cup of red wine, in the fall – and to the internal states of being – beginning with “Assiya,” the world of action, the lowest world, the realm of the concrete and physical, represented by fruits and nuts with an inedible outer shell and an edible inner core, and ending in “Atzilut,” the world of emanation, the highest world, which cannot be conceived by the senses, and so cannot be represented by any physical food at all.

All of the food and drink at the Eco-Seder was certified kosher, most of it was seasonal and purchased from local and/or organic sources; in fact, many of the food purchases were made directly from the farmers themselves. The fruits were incredible – jackfruit, guava, hazelnuts, organic papaya, organic kiwis, organic dried persimmons, organic pomelos and organic mangos. Many I had never even heard of, let alone seen or tasted before – like Buddha’s hand, with its white, dry, lemon-like core, or the tamarind, which looks like a giant brown edamame pod, and which, in order to eat, you need to crack open, de-vein, and then chew, making sure to spit out the pit; its flesh is thick and sweet, not unlike a date’s.

Participants at the Seder sat at long tables, adorned with platters of bountiful fruits and nuts. A group of musicians, playing guitar, mandolin, tambourine, and dumbek, sat in the center, accompanying each blessing over the wine, fruit, and bread, and jamming to songs like “Adama VeShamayim” – “Love the earth, love the sky,” the people all around them swaying, smiling, and drumming on the tables. During the course of the evening, participants studied Jewish environmental texts, grappling with notions of environmental preservation and change, and with human responsibility towards the natural world, meditated on their food, envisioning all of the natural and human resources that allowed for that piece of fruit to get from the trees outside to their mouths, danced, sang, and celebrated, and made personal and communal commitments to living a life more in balance with the natural world. Many will come together again on February, 18th, to join UpStart Bay Area’s first “How Do You Jew” conversation about concrete ideas for change the Jewish community can make on the environment in the Bay Area, featuring guest speaker Mike Zuckerman, Director of Sustainability at Temple Nightclub.

At the end of the evening, this diverse group of young Jews who rarely cross paths, and who had gathered together for this joyous spiritual event, helped clean up, washed their own plates and cups and tucked them in their bags, and headed out into the cold night air, the full, Tu B’Shvat moon shining above them.