Last week, I took a very brief trip to Vancouver, Canada, to visit my friends, Cantor Shani Cohen and Rabbi Kylynn Cohen, because Shani was singing in the chorus of the Vancouver Opera production of La Boheme. While Shani was working, Kylynn and I walked around and admired all the spring flowers. We stopped to smell lilacs, tried to count all the various colors of rhododendrons we could find in Stanley Park, and stood underneath cherry trees while they shed their blossoms like snow. It was such a tender way of experiencing the changing of the seasons and connecting to nature, even in a largely urban setting. I love this time of year with its warm green potential.
In this week's double Torah portion, B'har-Bechukotai, God promises that if the people are good, "I will grant your rains in their season so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit" (Lev. 26:4). The Torah is fundamentally an agrarian document, providing guidance for a society that depended on the rains and the bounty of the harvests to feed themselves. These parshiot also talk about allowing the land to rest, giving both spiritual and practical guidance to an ethical agriculture.
Our modern society and urban amenities have made it easy for many of us to divorce ourselves from the cycle of the seasons and breath of the land, which is why I think it's important to try to seek it out and reconnect. We recently had the tremendous opportunity as a congregation to go visit the Institute for Soil and Soul in Long Grove, which is a Jewish regenerative farm founded by Gabriel Gould. The farm has educators who teach on connecting Judaism to land, and, in living out the ethics of the Torah, donates nearly all of its produce to The Ark. We got to pray and learn and sing in beautiful sunshine and nature, accompanied by birdsong. Then, the following day, our seventh-grade students also had the opportunity to visit the farm, and they got to work the land, shoveling mulch and helping prepare for planting.
As spring tips into summer, I hope you get to find yourself connecting to nature, feeling the cycle of the earth, and maybe even helping something to grow. If you do, you will be taking part in some of the oldest Jewish traditions.