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Summer is almost here. It’s time to learn the Torah of the garden.
This article originally appeared on My Jewish Learning.
(JTA) — My mother died in February, and since then I’ve been caring for her home. At the time of her death, she had over a hundred plants — and that’s only inside the house. Outside, there were hundreds more — roses and lilacs and dahlias, lilies of the valley and irises and daffodils, violets and honeysuckle and sunflowers. They bloom in almost all seasons, from late winter to late autumn. Except when the ground is frozen, there is never a moment when something is not blooming in my mother’s garden. And she celebrated when they bloomed, whether once a season or once every 10 years. They were, in many ways, the great work of her life, and it’s powerful for me to be caring for them now.
I grew up surrounded by those plants. I ate wild strawberries, chestnuts and pears. I used pine needles for doll beds and hickory nuts for toy food. I slept (or pretended to) on carpets of moss and used branches of sumac as scepters. Once, I dug up some daffodils near the creek and moved them to my “garden” in the woods. My mother was furious (though those daffodils still bloom in the woods every spring). But my early plant experiences were mostly good. I planted peas with my father, and watched him guide the young bean plants up their poles. I noted when the violets came out and when the chestnuts fell from their trees. I particularly loved the wild roses that bloomed in June (in fact, they’re blooming now). For me, as for my mother, the plants are their own kind of people — beings I try to nurture, appreciate and understand.
So it’s moving to me that the Jewish tradition sees plants in a similar way — as beings with voices. Psalm 96:12 states: “Let the fields rejoice and all that is in them; let the trees of the forest sing for joy.” Psalm 17:33 proclaims: “Let the trees of the forest sing at the presence of God.” In Psalm 48:8, the fruit trees offer praise. In Isaiah 55:12, the trees clap hands.
Maimonides understood these verses to be metaphors, but the Midrash — writings that fill in gaps in biblical texts — claims that trees do in fact speak with one another and with other creatures, and that they discuss the earth and its well-being. The Jerusalem Talmud too understands these verses expansively, saying that when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai began to teach mystical secrets, the trees started to sing. The Zohar, the mystical Torah commentary, imagines that when the Creator visits the Garden of Eden at midnight, the trees burst into song.
This description of plants is a reflection of the way many of us experience plants — as alive, and in relationship to us. And it’s likely they reflect how our ancestors did too. Many indigenous spiritual practitioners consider plants to possess intelligence, so it’s certainly possible our ancestors saw plants this way as well. And it might be time for us to be mindful of this too, given that we are breathing in what plants breathe out, and vice versa.
A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University has recently discovered that plants make sounds, albeit at a frequency we can’t hear, and that they make more sounds when distressed. This claim was made long ago in the Midrash, which teaches that when a tree is cut down, its cry goes from one end of the world to the other but no one hears. How differently might we act if we could hear the cries of trees and plants? And how much richer might we be if we could tune into their songs?
Indeed, this might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. In some kabbalistic understandings, we have plant consciousness inside us. According to the mystic Hayyim Vital, plants are a category of beings known as the tzomeach — the growing ones. They exist among four kinds of living creatures: humans, animals, plants and stones (yes, even stones are considered beings). Vital says that the human soul reflects all these kinds of beings, and so perhaps we are kin to all of them. Even God has plant-like aspects: The kabbalists call the structure of the divine personality the Tree of Life, and in the Zohar, the Divine Presence is called the gan, the garden, or the chekel detapuchin kadishin, the holy apple orchard.
My own small New York apartment has many fewer plants than my mother’s home, but I care for them lovingly. Once, while I was away, the cat sitter forgot to water the fuschia and when I came home it was nearly dead and had only five living leaves left. I slowly nurtured it back to health, watering often but not too much, and now, a year later, it has bloomed many times. I may not be able to hear its voice, but I can see its beauty and I can feel the power and persistence of its life-force. As the summer solstice approaches, I invite all of us to celebrate, protect and listen to these green beings, these creatures who eat light and who create the very air we breathe.
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The post Summer is almost here. It’s time to learn the Torah of the garden. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Remains of last Israeli soldier missing from First Lebanon War’s Sultan Yacoub battle found
(JTA) — The remains of Yehuda Katz, the last Israeli soldier still missing from the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub during the First Lebanon War, have been recovered after 44 years, the Israeli military said Tuesday, bringing to a close one of the country’s longest-running missing soldier cases.
Katz, a 22-year-old tank gunner and yeshiva student who disappeared just 10 days before he was due to complete his military service, was one of three soldiers whose fate was unknown for decades after Israeli forces became trapped by Syrian troops in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on June 11, 1982.
Twenty Israeli soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded in the battle, with six initially listed as missing. Three were later returned or confirmed dead, leaving Katz, Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman as the only soldiers whose fate were unknown. The remains of Baumel and Feldman were recovered in separate operations in 2019 and 2025.
Katz’s remains were located during a special overnight operation carried out by the IDF in cooperation with Mossad and based on intelligence obtained in recent months. They were returned to Israel and military representatives informed Katz’s family of the discovery Tuesday morning.
For the soldiers who survived Sultan Yacoub, the news ended a wait that had followed them for much of their lives.
Avi Rath, who fought alongside Katz, said the unresolved fate of his comrade had stayed with him for decades. “The look on the family’s faces stays with you your entire life, a look that says, ‘You didn’t finish the job,’” Rath said in an interview on Tuesday with KAN public radio’s “Kalman Liberman” program. “Thank God, this closes a circle and resolves some of the uncertainty, but there is also great pain. It weighs on our conscience.”
Katz had studied in the Hesder program at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, combining Torah study with military service. According to the yeshiva, he slept barely four hours a night while immersed in his studies. He had planned to become a rabbi and teach at a yeshiva after completing his military service.
On the night before the battle, Katz gathered fellow soldiers around him and taught them Maimonides’ laws governing the conduct of Jewish soldiers in battle, the yeshiva said on its website. He then led them in singing Psalm 23, including the verse about walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Remains of last Israeli soldier missing from First Lebanon War’s Sultan Yacoub battle found appeared first on The Forward.
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What Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon has said about Israel and Gaza
Angie Nixon is not the first progressive and outspoken critic of Israel to win a major-party nomination for statewide office. But her upset victory in Florida’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate makes her the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America to do so.
The milestone comes after a string of victories for DSA-backed insurgents in local and congressional races from New York and New Jersey to Pennsylvania and Colorado since 2025, with criticism of Israel and the war in Gaza being central issues in many of their campaigns.
Nixon did not make Israel the centerpiece of her Senate campaign, which focused heavily on affordability, health care and other economic issues. But on Israel and Gaza, her record puts her broadly in line with the DSA’s approach.
Appearing on Morning Joe the morning after her victory, Nixon called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal who needs to answer to his crimes” and said she opposed sending Israel U.S. money or weapons “at this moment.”
Nixon will face Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody in November. Moody, who was appointed to the Senate after Marco Rubio became secretary of state, is considered a favorite in a state that shifted toward Republicans in recent elections. A University of North Florida poll released in July showed Moody leading Nixon 50% to 42%.
A state representative from Jacksonville, Nixon said after her victory that her formal ties to the DSA are new. In an interview with The Contrarian on Wednesday, she said she had “just recently joined the DSA because I was asked.”
The affiliation connects Nixon to a national organization that has made Palestinian advocacy a major part of its political identity. The DSA describes Palestinian liberation as an “essential part” of its broader socialist struggle. Its national co-chair, Megan Romer, recently said the group’s goal is “a free Palestine with a capital in Jerusalem,” which she acknowledged could be understood as support for a one-state solution.
The organization has at times enforced that position aggressively even with its own elected officials. In 2021, DSA members debated expelling then-U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a one-term New York Democrat, after he traveled to Israel with J Street, the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group, met with then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and voted for funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. The national organization ultimately decided against expelling him, while publicly criticizing his actions.
What Nixon has said on Israel and the Palestinians
Long before her upset Senate victory and DSA affiliation, Nixon had become one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in the Florida Legislature.
In November 2023, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, Nixon introduced a resolution calling on the Biden administration to push for “an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
The resolution sparked a heated and highly emotional debate in the Florida House, according to the Florida Phoenix. Nixon was largely isolated, with Republicans and members of her own party speaking against the measure and turning their backs on her. Nixon cried as she defended the resolution.
“Many of my colleagues have stated that folks are fearful of another massacre occurring to the Jewish people,” Nixon said. “Well, guess what? A massacre is occurring now.”
The Florida House ultimately rejected it 104-2.
In May 2024, Nixon joined pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of North Florida, telling students she was “in awe” of their generation. She later said she wanted the protesters to know that elected officials supported them and that they were “on the right side of history.”
In the campaign for Senate, her official foreign-policy platform called for ending unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, which she said had “fueled a genocide in Palestine.” She advocated for ending U.S. support for Israeli settlements and creating a path to Palestinian self-determination through the United Nations Security Council.
Jewish Insider reported that Rick Stark, chair of the Florida Democratic Jewish Caucus, said that during a Zoom meeting with the group, Nixon did not give a clear answer when asked whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He also said Nixon was unfamiliar with the meaning of the slogan “from the river to the sea,” but told participants that Palestinian friends had said it was not a call for Israel’s destruction.
Last month, Nixon said in an interview with WMNF Radio that she would have voted for a House amendment to end the $3.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel. The amendment, introduced by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fierce critic of Israel who lost his Republican primary in May, received support from 103 of 212 House Democrats.
In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program Wednesday, the hosts asked Nixon what she would tell Jewish voters concerned about her position on the conflict. “We need to make sure that we’re putting Americans first before we go ahead and start sending money or military aid to any country outside of the U.S.,” Nixon said.
Pressed specifically on whether that meant cutting off all military aid to Israel, Nixon said: “At this time, I believe what’s happening over in Israel and in Palestine is not good for Israelis or Palestinians. And I do not support sending any money or any weapons to Israel at this moment.”
The post What Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon has said about Israel and Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Manhattan Central Synagogue attacker faces federal hate crime charges
(JTA) — The man accused of disrupting Shabbat services at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue last week now faces federal hate crimes charges in addition to the state ones leveled against him immediately after the attack.
“These charges serve as notice that the Department of Justice will intervene to protect the public in the face of antisemitic and racially motivated attacks,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement on Tuesday.
Larry Montes, 46, of the Bronx, New York, was charged with two counts of committing hate crimes, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, and one count of damage to religious property resulting in bodily injury, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
During the attack last Friday at the Reform synagogue in Manhattan, Montes, who was sitting near the front of the sanctuary, allegedly stood up nine minutes into the service and began shouting, “You know who the f–ck I am.”
Montes then approached the stage of the synagogue and knocked over two ceremonial silver candle sticks, causing them to be damaged, according to the complaint filed by an FBI agent investigating the case.
As the synagogue’s head of security attempted to remove Montes from the sanctuary, he then said “F–ck you people” and “I don’t f–ck with you people” before punching a 63-year-old congregant in the face and knocking her to the ground.
While Montes was handcuffed and arrested in the lobby of the synagogue, he then allegedly told a security guard “F–ck you [n-word]” and headbutted him near his left eye socket.
During his subsequent interview with NYPD officers following his arrest, he allegedly told officers, “F–ck the Jews. … It’s racial” and “I will never affiliate with no filthy f–cking synagogues, either here or in fucking Israel.” Montes allegedly told officers that he had felt disrespected at the service, so he “got up, start[ed] some sh–t, [and] smacked somebody around.”
When asked by NYPD officers why he felt disrespected at the service, Montes allegedly replied, “it’s all a racial thing” and that it was “all religious motivated.” Montes also stated during his post-arrest interview that he identified as Jewish, according to the complaint. Montes’ aunt previously told the New York Post that he was “mentally traumatized because of his desire to belong to that religion [Judaism].”
Montes has been in custody since his arrest immediately after Friday’s attack. He was arraigned that same night and is due in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday.
The federal charges come as the attack has sparked widespread condemnation from New York leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and spurred a Jewish security watchdog group to call on the NYPD to place more officers in hotspots for potential hate crimes.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Manhattan Central Synagogue attacker faces federal hate crime charges appeared first on The Forward.
