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Tu BiShvat is a reminder that we spend our lives planting seeds. Time and effort are needed for our efforts to bear fruit. Wait patiently. One day, like the seed, we will be blessed.

This morning I met again with my usual cohort of Jewish clergy who study sacred texts together each week in the coffee shop.

When I was a kid, my family did not keep kosher. The closest we got was the story my mother told about how, when she was growing up, her father once yelled at her as she poured a glass of milk to go with her BLT sandwich: “We don’t mix milk and meat!”

A version of this post was published on the RACblog on February 12, 2014, in advance of the celebrations this summer around the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I am from blintzes, from Crest toothpaste and kippot tucked into a dresser drawer.

I am from no eating in the bedrooms, singing all the time, comfy couches, a grandfather clock on the wall and challah French toast. 

I was born into a Catholic family and given a Catholic education, but for as long as I can remember, Judaism has always fascinated me.

The kosher supermarket was chosen deliberately. Men, women and children were shopping and preparing for Shabbat.

Years ago, on a cold and sparkly winter afternoon, I sat with my younger sister in the living room, both of us savoring the long, dark pods of chewy bokser we had saved from our Tu BiShvat celebration at Religious Scho

Shabbat Shirah is on January 30^th this year, and is another name for the week we read the Torah portion called B'shalach. In this portion, the Israelites have just been freed from Egypt and we read about the splitting of the Red Sea.