Presence

Peninah and I were invited to a Tu B'Shevat Seder, something, I will confess, I had never heard of. Baltimore is host to a Torah MiTzion Kollel, and one of the members put together a program for a Tu B'Shevat seder, basically a meal where you sample the shivas ha'minim, read various selection from Tanach, Talmud or elsewhere relating to agriculture, discuss and eat. Apparently, this is somewhat commonplace in Israel; I've never heard of it being done in Baltimore.

Apart from the fact that we were forty minutes late (all my fault) we had a good time. There were about eight couples, we earch took turns reading passages and interjecting comments. I ate wheat (in cracker form), figs and dates and drank wine and pomegranate juice (apparently rimonim are out of season now). I passed on the olives and barley. I will only eat the former on pizza and the latter in soup or chulent.

To me, the crowd was the interesting part. Baltimore is not really well-known for it's overabundance of non-yeshivah Orthodoxy; then again, Rambam has been thriving over the past few years, so perhaps there is more here than I am aware of. Perhaps I need to get out more. It also reminded me of just how cynical I am; many of the people at the seder spoke of their deep emotional feelings for and connections to Israel as homeland of Jewish people, about how the Land would only prosper in the hands of B'nei Yisrael, etc. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just different from how I look at it. I tend to look at it more as a place with lots of kosher restaurants. In all seriousness,

At the very least, it got me thinking again about the interrelationships between the Land of Israel in Judiasm, in particular how agriculture is tied into Halacha in both a practical and representitive fashion. It's something that is for the most part overlooked by contemporary programs of study, at least in America. I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to fully understand the Torah without a good approach to the role of the Land within the societal framework.