The chewy fruit that spells hope and resilience

If you were going to a garden centre to buy a plant or a sapling, one thing you probably wouldn’t think about was how flammable it was. If you were doing the same thing in California, however, you might consult official guidance on which trees have some resistance to fire and which more easily burn.

The reason for that was all too obvious from the terrible wildfires that recently turned several neighbourhoods in Los Angeles into wastelands of ruins and ash.

According to a study by World Weather Attribution published last week, climate change had made the conditions that fanned the flames more likely.

In our times, natural disasters used to be considered just that, rather than acts of God betokening the retribution of a wrathful Deity. But now we look at them through a new ethical lens as a kind of nemesis for planetary abuse.

One of the fire-retardant flora listed in California happens to be the carob, a tree associated with Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees, which falls next Thursday. It was considered meritorious to eat the produce of the Land of Israel but fresh fruit was difficult to export in days gone by — carob is native to Israel and its dried fruit stores well.

As we became a predominantly urban people, the agricultural features of the Jewish calendar faded into memory, recalled in the study hall perhaps but no longer a practical aspect of our lives. But as the threat of global warming dawned, we had to reconsider the relationship to nature in our tradition and Tu Bishvat has become freighted with a new significance as a platform for raising eco-awareness.

In some communities, it is traditional to recite Psalm 104 on Tu Bishvat, a paean to Divine splendour and majesty as manifest in the works of Creation. God is the forester populating the slopes. “The trees of the Lord drink their fill, the cedars of Lebanon that He planted./ There birds build their nests, the stork makes its home in the cypresses.”

Some scientists believe climate change is making conditions conducive to wildfires more likely (Photo: Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

If protecting the planet is in our collective self-interest, there is a spiritual dimension to it too for just as Adam and Eve were enjoined to “tend and keep” the Garden of Eden, so we are curators charged with safeguarding God’s handiwork. The Hebrew verbs l’ovda uleshomra suggest a balance between having the freedom to shape the world and conserving it. And both words can carry religious connotations for we speak of avodat Hashem, “service of God”, and shomer Shabbat “keeping Shabbat”, sanctifying a day by self-restraint in refraining from certain activities.

The custom of planting trees on Tu Bishvat is relatively modern, credited to Rabbi Zev Yavetz, a founder of the religious Zionist movement Mizrachi, who made aliyah from Poland in the late 19th century. A teacher in Zichron Ya’akov, he took his students to plant saplings to honour the festival in 1890 – apparently wanting to emulate the floral celebrations he had seen to mark May Day in Europe.

Yavetz’s idea caught on – and became endowed with a potent symbolism, representing the restoration of the Jewish people to its ancient homeland where it sought to put down fresh roots.

Today the planting of trees has a broader resonance, a reparative act that is part of an effort to turn the tide against deforestation and despoliation. It is also an expression of hope, an investment in the future, as illustrated by a popular talmudic tale.

Honi the Circle-drawer is out walking when he spots a man planting a carob tree. The carob is notable for the time it takes to mature and Honi asks the farmer why bother since he is unlikely to live long enough to see its fruit.

The man responds, “Just as my ancestors planted for me, I too am planting for my descendants.”

Thereupon Honi falls into a deep sleep and, Rip Van Winkle-like, wakes up 70 years later to witness a man gathering carobs from the tree. Were you the one who planted it? he asks him. I am his grandson, the fruit-picker replies. It could have been a parable invented for our times as we face the question of what environmental legacy we will leave for future generations.

Signifying hope and resilience, the carob may deserve an honoured place on our Tu Bishvat plate. But it is not the prettiest of fruits and, although naturally sweet, chewing the earth-brown pods raw, according to chabad.org, is “not the most pleasant experience”.

So carob is better incorporated into a prepared dish. You can apparently buy carob powder and use it to make a cocoa-like drink. But some might argue that to be ecologically correct, we should stick to local produce for Tu Bishvat and home-grown carob may be hard to find – so it is perhaps best enjoyed in the imagination rather than on the table.