As the holiday of Tu b’Shvat nears, it signifies the importance of remembering that the connection between Judaism and the environment began in the ancient world.

 Rather than considering environmental issues to be a fad that captures the moral sensibilities of the 21st century, environmentalism is, in fact, woven throughout Jewish law as an obligation.

Tu b’Shvat is technically considered to be the New Year of the Trees. The practical application of this “birthday” was to calculate the age of a tree for tithing and other ritual purposes.

One would assume that this minor holiday would go the way of other very technical tithing concerns: leave it to the experts to figure out and just tell us what we can and can’t eat. Yet, much to our surprise, Tu b’Shvat endures as a meaningful, symbolic and relevant holiday in the modern world.

The Torah mentions several times that humanity is responsible for safe-guarding nature. We are forbidden to destroy things needlessly, and, in fact, even when the need is paramount, as in warfare strategy, we are forbidden to level a field of fruit bearing trees. The text teaches us that we may be at war with each other, but we are never at war with nature.

The question of recycling articles that we no longer use is immediately answered by Judaism as a necessity, since the Talmud states it’s a sin to destroy anything that can still provide benefit to the world. The focus is removed from whether or not an object is no longer useful to me and expands the question to whether or not the object is of any use to anyone, anywhere.

We would be hard pressed to state that there is no use for anything we have. We discard things because we have fulfilled our use of the object, and not the other way around. The Jewish approach is to remove ourselves from the centre of our universe and gain a more global picture of our world. This is not our choice. We are commanded to do so.

Tu b’Shvat provides us with a day to remember to reframe the way we look at the world around us. Humanity is part of a much larger created picture from which we have isolated ourselves. The midrash states that the trees speak with humanity all the time seeking to become our companions. In fact, according to the midrash, all of nature speaks to all of nature, and only humanity has forgotten the language.

A famous Jewish rabbi, Abraham Isaac  Kook, said it beautifully: “All my days I have been careful never to pluck a blade of grass or a flower needlessly, when it had the ability to grow or blossom. You know the teaching of our Sages that not a single blade of grass grows here on Earth that does not have an angel above it, commanding it to grow. Every sprout and leaf says something meaningful, every stone whispers some hidden message in the silence – every creation sings its song.”

All we have to do is listen.