Shalom 6th Grade Families:  

With Tu BiShvat this week, we studied some Torah about the new year of the Trees. We learned about Orlah, a mitzvah that cultivates mindfulness and states that for three years ater it is planted, the fruit of a tree is not ours to eat.  We also looked at the laws of Ma'aser/tithing, which drive us to think of others who may be food insecure.  These Torah commandments, aimed at creating a just management of the food supply,  are based on yearly growth and harvests.  Determining if  fruit belonged to one calendar year or the next  created the need for a new year for a tree.  And hence,  Tu Bishvat, which has expanded in meaning from a just food supply to Chag Ha'Teva, where nature and the environment take center stage with the Torah teachings that surround them. 

Gabe says :his favorite thing related to trees and Tu Bishvat that we learned came from Rabban Yohannan Ben Zakkai:   “If you are holding a sapling in your hand and someone says that the Messiah has drawn near, first plant the sapling, and then go and greet the Messiah.”  Miron says his favorite iis from The Great Midrash on Koshlet/Ecclesiates: "When the Blessed Holy One created the first human, God took Adam and led him round all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him: “Look at My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are! And all that I have created, it was for you that I created it. Pay attention that you do not ruin and destroy My world: if you ruin it, there is no one to repair it after you!"

(Reccomended reading for all who love Torah, Trees, the Earth, or hopefully all three.)

For our unit of American Jewish History, we took a look at the year 1883. 1883 was the year of  both the "Treyfa Banquet"  and was also the year that Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus.  As famous as the poem that adorns the Statue of Liberty is,  we explored how Lazarus was of great fame long before she wrote those adamant words,"Give me your tired, your poor,  your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." 

The New Colossus, we learned a little about Emma's history as an American Jewish immigrant and her history as a poet, and then we analysed the poem, which may have had little impact in the months following its being written.   In the time of Emma's fame, the Statue of Liberty was seen by many as a guardian against  immigration!  Yet as years passed,  the power of the poem increased, and changed how the statue  was seen, finally being installed on the base of the statue in bronze.  Her poem inspired Americans to see the tall green sentinel as a symbol of welcome and not warding. 

We learned about another event in 1883. Take a look at the menu below,  and ask youself:  What is suprising about the menu below if it is being served to several rabbis? 

  Here are some culinary terms to help you decode the dishes:

Ala` Monglas:  (ala MontGlas) dish finished with a velouté  sauce augmented with Truffles, Mushrooms,  and Demi-Glace.

Relevee:  A second main dish that takes the place (lit. relieves) the entrée,  usually a roasted/stewed meat.

Ala Viennoise: served in a butter and cream sauce,  flavored with nutmeg

Grenouiles: Frogs’ legs

Vol au Vents:  baked dish covered in savory crust

Ala Tyrolienne:  A tomato and mayonnaise based sauce

GH Mumm: a brand of Champagne. Still around at $40 a bottle.

This menu was from a banquet held by Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congretations for the first graduating class of  rabbis of the Hebrew Union College. So you would be correct in realizing that the menu, while pork free,  features both combinations of milk and meat as well as plenty of other non-kosher Animals.  That earned this mean  the name "The Treyfe (unkosher) Banquet".  While its non-kosher nature is now guessed by some to have been an oversight,  there is no dobut that the meal was lavish, each course with a wine or liquour, showing that some Jews in the USA had acquired wealth enough for fine dining. And while there is also a debate as to how many observant sages and teachers of Judaism,  with shelfish or shrimp placed before them, got up and left the banquet or refused to eat,  news of the menu spread through the Jewish press,  reported by journalists such as Henrietta Szold, founder of Haddassa.  

The news brought attacks on the  leaders of the Reform Movement for ingnoring Judaism's laws for mindful eating,  which in turn caused the Reform movement to dig in and defend what may have been an accidental choice!  Within two years,  the Reform movement's 1885 Pitsburgh Platform elminiated kashrut as a part of Reform practice.  Instead of retaining kashrut as a value shared by American Jews,  half of  the American Jewish world would soon come to find they could no longer expect to be able to eat with comfort at the tables of the other half. 

In 1887,  members of traditionalist elements of the Reform movment and the American Jewish world as a whole founded the Jewish Theological Seminiary in the efforts to conserve the laws of  keeping kosher and other areas of Judaism rejected by the Reform thinkers.  Which means that this banquet (along with many other factors) led to the creation of... you guessed it,  Conservative Judaism.  

For more on this small dinner with big consequences, read Jonathan Sarna's excellent article at  https://www.jta.org/2018/01/16/opinion/what-really-happened-at-the-original-trefa-banquet .

Thanks for reading,

Gabe and Miron