Redwood Ritual: Making Judaism Environmentalist Through the Tu Bishvat Seder Open Access
Morris-Fry, Nico (Spring 2026)
Abstract
From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, American Jews developed an environmentalist Tu Bishvat seder as a means of expressing environmentalism as a Jewish value. Preceded by several decades of combining social justice with Judaism, some American Jews felt equipped to adapt existing rituals to align with their environmental concerns. The Tu Bishvat seder was already rising in popularity throughout the 20th century as it became associated with the state of Israel and as kabbalistic ideas became accessible. As environmentalism grew in the American public consciousness, some Jews utilized Tu Bishvat as a space to negotiate the relationship between ecology and Judaism. The holiday was already associated with nature and had very few existing structures, making it an accessible place to innovate. In one instance, the Redwoods Seder, a group of Jews made a particular environmentalist issue, the Headwaters Forest Struggle, the center of this intracommunal Jewish issue. By using the Tu Bishvat seder, an existing ritual, they asserted the authenticity of their environmentalist Judaism.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Tu Bishvat before the 1960s 3
Ritual Transformation for Social Justice: The Freedom Seder 8
Restructuring Jewish Ritual: Havurat Shalom 15
The Rise of Environmentalism: Ellen Bernstein 21
The Redwoods Seder 26
Conclusion 42
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