How the new year for trees made me Jewish

Readers of this blog may have the impression that my interest in Judaism is only about half a year old, but I can actually trace my Jewish journey back to this very day 18 years ago, give or take a day or two. 

The story begins with one of my best friends from college, or rather with his sister. As I recall, she had somewhat recently married a Jew and was going through the process of converting to Judaism. Her brother, my friend, was picking up odd bits and pieces of Jewish culture and seemed to enjoy sharing them with me about as much as I enjoyed being shared with. Prior to that point, my exposure to Judaism was limited to having learned the phrase "L'chaim" from watching Fiddler on the Roof. That, and the fact that my family was awfully fond of Yiddish words like shnoz and toucus. 

So at some point, my friend invited me to come along with him to the house of one of his sister's new Jewish friends for a Tu B'Shevat Seder. I loved it – so much so that I still remember it this many years later! I had no idea that we were celebrating one of the more minor holidays of the Jewish year, and I would never have gotten the idea that it was in any way minor at all from the way those wonderful people threw themselves into the celebration!

What was it that made that little holiday celebration stick with me so long? A lot of impressions seem to come together: there was the happy bewilderment of being invited into a group of people I did not know, to celebrate a holiday I was not familiar with, and yet not feeling at all out of place. There was the quirky delight of having a holiday to celebrate the birthday of trees, something most other people in American culture take for granted. 

There was the oddly appropriate mixture of seriousness and playfulness with which they set about holding this ritual: an earnest interest in their own religion mixed with a D-I-Y spirit and a comfort born of knowing that nothing they did was ever going to piss off God – a mixture I had never seen before and have not seen since in any other religious fellowship. And there was the wickedly peculiar idea, to this Protestant Christian at least, that you could hold a religious ritual – indeed, celebrate a religious holiday – entirely within your own home, with your own invited collection of people, with no need for an ordained officiant to consecrate the wine or the other things that we ate that night. Which was a lot of fruit. And nuts. Tree things. 

Most of all, though, there was the joy that I felt among all of these people. Joy that they were getting to be together with their people. The joy of community, and of knowing to whom they belong, that I have envied in almost every Jew I have known ever since.

And I knew a lot of Jews in Boston. Jews chatting about Jewish in-jokes during community theater practice, Jews bringing handmade menorot to light in the newsroom, all the kvetching about how tough Passover is to get through, a Jewish housemate who tried to convince me not to ever try to become Jewish, and then lent me the Big Book of Jewish Humor as an entreé to his culture, the mystery of what was meant by High Holy Days. I wanted to be part of it! 

And now I am. And I owe it all to the trees. Happy Birthday, oh leafy ones!