Skip to main content

Tree Time

After a long wintery break the Jewish calendar decided that the new year for the trees falls right in the middle of January. After weeks of beautiful weather, the temperatures are starting to drop here in Germany ( this weekend was -14 Celsius!). So even though in Germany the timing of Tu Bishvat doesn't seem to make perfect sense there has been no lack of festivities.

The celebrations started for me in Duisburg at the Jewish Kindergarten where I joined in for the children's Tu Bishvat party. After planting "Blumen" (flowers) I led an activity where we learned about the blessings for fruits and vegetables. As a bit of a personal triumph I led the whole lesson in German! Then we had the children make fruit salad faces. I was pretty impressed with the ingenuity of these 3-5 year olds face recognition abilities! 




Across Germany the idea of a "Tu Bishvat Seder" seems to be pretty popular. This concept was brand new to me, and basically its a twist on the Passover seder but retrofitted to celebrate trees, plants and especially eating fruit. 

I went to my very first Tu Bishvat Seder here in Berlin with a group called LSD and Jung und Judisch (apparently they aren't as careful here with their acronyms). There was copious amounts of fruits, nuts singing and true to its seder name, 4 cups of wine. 





In Friedrichshain we've been celebrating all month long. Our weekly Shabbat playgroups have centered around learning about and celebrating Tu Bishvat (and I'm rather proud of our cute little programing). First we planted herbs, then there was a children's seder and lastly we made bird feeders and labels for our growing urban garden. Just for fun too I decided to make apple raisin cinnamon swirl challah this week.



We also planned one larger scale event where we had a puppet theater perform for us. The show was centered around a tree in the changing seasons. All the small children were totally engrossed in the show shouting out comments and encouragement the entire performance. Followed by wonderful muffins baked by Anja (which seemed suspiciously like unfrosted cupcakes to me).  We ended the cozy afternoon in the homey family center with a full crowd and happy chocolate filled children.





After this holiday there is a bit of a lull in the Jewish calendar until Purim so I'm looking forward to gearing up for a very busy spring!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summertime Film Finale

This week marked not only my 11 month milestone but it was also the last movie night for the summer. In Duisburg throughout the year we've been hosting monthly events for Jewish young adults. One event I've been hosting bi-monthly is our Jewish film night or "Kino Abend". This event was passed down to me by my predecessor Amira, who never fails to help me choose the latest title. We've done all kinds of movies ranging from "Kaddisch fur einen Freund" or Kaddish for a friend, a story about a young Palestine refugee who moves into an apartment below a Jewish old man in Germany and the friendship that they develop. Perhaps the most thought provoking event was our movie night and discussion about the "Hannah Arendt" movie. She was a famous Jewish German historian/philosopher who wrote about the "banality of evil" in reference to Nazis during WWII. This movie was inspired in fact by a course I took in university where we r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Going Back to My Roots

Generally I don't post about my vacations, but the latest trip I took with my mom Lithuania seems to fit with the theme of my Jewish experience in Europe so here we go anyway. Last week we went to find our roots in Lithuania. This needs some backstory. My grandma was born in a town called Memel (now Klaipeda) in Lithuania in the 1920s. When she was 6-weeks old my great-grandparents decided to move to South Africa. Since then my grandmother has never been back, despite being an avid world traveler. So when my mom decided to come to visit me in Germany it seemed like a great opportunity to do some heritage hunting. My mom has been researching our family tree for years now and managed to locate the towns and villages that our ancestors were born in so off we set to go see what these places were like today. Vilnus old city, Capital of Lithuania  Rather naively I underestimated how heavy and emotional this journey would be. Living in Germany of course I'm quite aware ...
1 comment
Read more

Chicas and Cheesecake

Back in the US my primary memory of Shavuot is my mom's cheesecake she makes every year. Her recipe is actually quite similar to the German variety made with a yogurty dairy product called quark, (something that after nine months I still can't fully explain), but I still have a soft spot for good ol' American style cheesecake. Let's back up for a second though, Shavuot is the Jewish holiday where we received the 10 commandments and it also the harvest festival. The tradition goes that before the Jews received the Torah they did not know the rules for kosher food and couldn't properly prepare a meat meal. That's where the cheesecake comes in. To celebrate this holiday we eat dairy to commemorate the first kosher meal in Judaism which happened to be a dairy meal! In that spirit, along with Chaya the rebbetzin at Chabad on Campus I decided to have a cheesecake bake-off! Monday night before Shavuot we paired into "teams" to bake! We made peanut...
Post a Comment
Read more