Tu B'Shevat

Sorry for being off line on the blog for a while - it's been more than a little much with pastoral emergencies and some wonderful programming.
This past Sunday we had an amazing Tu B'Shevat Seder. 16 tables of students and parents celebrated the holiday of the trees and "Torah as our Tree of Life." We ate different fruits, drank different colors of juice, told stories like Honi, the Jewish Rip-Van-Winkle and reflected on the meaning of Torah. From the Seder:
Our Torah is called Aytz Chaim, the Tree of Life. Jews in every community plant seeds for future generations by passing on traditions and learning from parents to children, as we do here today.
Over 3000 years ago at Mount Sinai our ancestors heard the Ten Commandments and received the Torah. Since that time we have tried to understand God’s words and use them as a guide to live our lives. It teaches us how to live with others and how to respect our world. Especially on Tu B’Shevat we think about nature and our environment and to follow God’s teachings to enjoy our good world.
Another meaning: we remember when God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai out of fire. There’s a famous legend that that the Torah is black fire written on white fire. The Torah has black letters – the dark fire. But the spaces between the letters are white. We read the black words but the white reminds us that the meaning surrounds and flows with the words and also inside of us.
Torah is our tree of life because it helps us find our way to good deeds and wisdom. In the same way we mix the juices, we are a mix of ability and sometimes mistakes. We study Torah throughout our lives as we seek to live a life of love and goodness. Study is a means to an end: to be a good person. One of the early rabbis said the goal of Torah is: to refine our personality for goodness and build a community of peace and justice.
If you'd like a copy of the Seder as a pdf or rtf - please contact me.