By Rabbi Leo Dee
The focus of Tu B’Shevat is usually on fruit trees and their fruits, but what about those trees that don’t bear edible fruits? It turns out that the benefits of all trees far exceed their ability to feed us.
Toward the end of the Torah, we learn about the person who goes into a forest to chop down trees and swings an axe, which causes some wood to go flying, and he kills another person. The punishment for this unintentional but reckless manslaughter is that the perpetrator must flee to the nearest City of Refuge, where they must live until the death of the High Priest.
The Gemara debates whether the victim was killed by wood that went flying from the handle of the axe, or by a chip loosened from the wood being chopped. Either way, we can see that the Torah is describing a person using a tool made of wood, cutting down a tree in a forest, killing a person with a piece of wood, and granting a punishment of exile to a city, where there are not so many trees.
From a “big picture” perspective, this can be seen as a warning to mankind. If we destroy nature then our punishment will be living in the absence of nature. It echoes the Divine commandment never to destroy fruit trees, even when besieging an enemy city, because we should always appreciate their long-term benefits.
An article from the Washington Post reveals to us some of the recently discovered scientific benefits of living among trees. The Post reported on a research study among 30,000 residents of Toronto, whose health was tracked and correlated to how close they lived to trees. The study found that people living surrounded by trees accumulated benefits of reduced heart disease, cancer, and stress, particularly when compared with those who do not. Why?
Trees are known to improve urban air quality by pulling ozone, particulates, and other pollutants into their leaves and out of the air, and thus protecting us from some air pollution. Trees also benefit us by reducing stress, generating a calmness that frequently comes from being around greenery—a mental effect that translates into physical benefits. Interestingly, there is also a suggestion that being around trees somehow increases our desire to exercise. Trees in the street seemed to have a more beneficial effect than those in our backyards, maybe because they are closer to the source of pollution, or because they brighten up the urban landscape or cause us to want to walk or jog longer distances.
Conserving nature, in a city or a rainforest, has innumerable benefits to mankind, some of which we are only just being able to quantify. Tu B’Shevat is the day when we as Jews show a little appreciation to nature and to its Creator. So, this Tu B’Shevat, in addition to enjoying the beautiful fruits that trees give us, why not also take a walk in nature and appreciate the blessing of the trees that we take for granted?
Rabbi Leo Dee is the co-author of The Eco-Bible from which this idea was excerpted. He is an educator living in Efrat and Israel’s envoy for social initiatives. His book Transforming the World: The Jewish Impact on Modernity has been republished in English and Hebrew in memory of his wife Lucy and daughters Maia and Rina, who were murdered by Hamas terrorists in April 2023.