The modern world worships progress. It fosters the perception that everything cultivated and built in the past is archaic and irrelevant. Progress, according to this view, means erasing the past and creating a new world, and the more you dismantle the values of yesterday – the better.
The creators of this worldview forget that they will be held accountable very quickly. In just a few years, they themselves will belong to yesterday's world, and the younger generation will see them as irrelevant to the contemporary world. Because that is the whole Torah – to despise the achievements of the past and to walk with the feeling that the great light has been revealed only to us, here and now.
Layer upon layer
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Tu B'Shvat, the New Year of Trees, turns our gaze to the world of plants, allowing us to see what true progress is. Indeed, we should not stand still. We must always move forward, grow, and prosper. But true growth does not mean cutting off the trunk, but rather the growth of new branches, new leaves, and new fruit from that trunk itself.
The tree does not change its essence and its basic properties with the passing of generations, but rather develops and expands them, and this is its true glory. Moreover, it is customary to measure the years of a tree by the layers of its trunk, since every year it adds a new layer. That is why we are moved by the sight of ancient trees, and for us they are a symbol of rootedness.
This is true growth, and this is also the path of Judaism. With each generation, another layer is laid on the building of Judaism. Thus we have been enriched in the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Rambam, the commentary of Rashi, in the literature of inquiry and morality, Kabbalah and Hasidism. Judaism is expanding, branching out, enriching, deepening, and accepting many and varied faces. If a Jew from past generations were to rise to life today, he would look with wonder and amazement at the vast abundance of Torah literature available in our day.
But this is not considered progress in the eyes of the critics of Judaism. When they demand 'progress', they mean pruning branches and cutting down plantations. If you remove a few commandments, abolish a few prohibitions, ignore a few verses - then they will lift you up and praise the great 'achievement' of 'progressive Judaism', which 'does not freeze on its own.' However, this is not growth, but destruction and uprooting.
Partners in growth
At one of the national kibbutz conferences, years ago, one of the movement's thinkers lamented: "We destroyed the old world out of a desire to build a new world, but we failed to understand that only archaeologists can make a living from ruins." And he was right. Cutting down trees is neither progress nor development. Cutting back on plantings is destruction and ruin, not flourishing and growth.
Judaism develops and progresses from generation to generation. It responds to the challenges of the time by discovering parts of the Torah that are especially necessary to meet these challenges. In the face of the ills of the modern world, Judaism has developed the teachings of Hasidism, which have breathed life into Jewish life. This is true growth and this is true progress.
The Torah is a tree of life, with unlimited vitality. It has the power to illuminate our path in all times and places, to grow and blossom and bear the fruit of joy. We have the right to be partners in this growth and blossoming, by engaging in the Torah out of loyalty to its principles and path.
