What Will You Tend — And What Will You Let Rot?
- Leah
- Feb 2
- 5 min read
Did you know that Jewish tradition has four New Years — four deliberate stopping points built into the calendar? Not for celebration and binging, but for accounting. For taking stock. For stopping and noticing. For recognising that we must answer to something far greater than ourselves. Which is precisely what we need right now.
We are living through a moment of reckless leadership, institutional erosion, and widespread public passivity. Decisions are being made that will shape decades — and the future itself — while too many of us watch from the sidelines, numbed by noise, distracted by daily life, or lost in the endless scroll of spectacle disguised as entertainment.
Tu BiShvat — the Jewish New Year for Trees — was originally about fruit and tithing. But at its core, it was also about stewardship. About not consuming everything in the present without thinking about what comes next. It was a yearly reminder that what we build today either nourishes the future — or starves it.
Stand under an old oak in late winter. Above, bare branches. Below, invisible roots as wide as the canopy, pulling water from frozen earth. In between, a trunk whose rings record every drought, every abundance.
If we look at society and democracy as a tree, the warning signs of neglect are everywhere.
So are the remedies.
Roots: Identity, Memory, Consent
A tree lives or dies by its roots. Without strong, well-grounded roots, growth is fragile. Roots intertwine underground in ways we rarely see. A forest's roots connect trees to one another, sharing nutrients and supporting the weak. For a democracy, roots are values, the rule of law, and the bonds of civic trust — the invisible connections that allow strangers to cooperate, uphold justice, and weather storms together.
But look at our roots today. Trust is eroding. The rule of law is being treated as negotiable — applied selectively, bent for convenience, ignored when politically expedient. We see leaders rewarding rule-breaking en masse, not because they've reconsidered the rules through democratic deliberation, but because it's politically expedient. Policies framed as compassion have too often produced perverse incentives, enriching criminal networks while eroding social trust, civic fairness, and public safety.
When rules become optional for some, the foundation of equality and consent crumbles. The invisible networks that bind us together are fraying — not from storm, but from neglect and deliberate undermining.
Weak roots mean the tree can fall at the first strong wind. We are testing how weak ours have become.
Trunk: Stability and Character
The trunk carries the weight of the tree, linking roots to branches. In civic terms, this is our institutions and social structures — the everyday frameworks that turn abstract values into a shared reality.
Trunks grow in rings, each layer a mark of the year. Institutions carry their history in these rings: the scars of past crises, the growth spurts after reform. Healthy trunks can surround old wounds with new growth. This teaches humility and hope: failures are written into the structure, but renewal is always possible.
Our institutions are rotting from within — not from age, but from cynicism, capture, and leadership who serve themselves, not society. Decisions are pushed through without consensus, bypassing the democratic process that gives them legitimacy. Justice has lost its way. Regulatory bodies serve partisan interests or protect their own. The civil service has forgotten who it exists to serve. When the trunk rots, healthy roots and beautiful leaves won't save the tree.
We are rotting the very structures that hold us together, and calling it progress.
Branches and Leaves: Outcomes and Legacy
Branches reach, adapt, and bear fruit. Leaves photosynthesise sunlight, turning raw energy into nourishment for the whole tree. For democracy, the fruit is the society we cultivate: citizens who are responsible and engaged, public debate that converts conflict into collective growth, and a legacy for future generations.
A healthy tree grows in multiple directions. A healthy society embraces pluralism: multiple visions of how to flourish, multiple ways of living well. We don't judge the tree — or society — by a single leaf but by years of harvests.
What fruit are we bearing right now? Cynicism. Passivity. Citizens who have learned helplessness, watching their future being decided by others — and choosing to do nothing. A public square filled with noise but starved of meaningful dialogue. Young people who see no path forward, inheriting our debts and institutional failures.
This is not the harvest we want. But it is the harvest we are cultivating.
Sap: Invisible Nourishment
Tu BiShvat falls in late winter, when trees are dormant and the first sap is rising — a reminder that much growth happens invisibly. Democratic renewal, like the rise of sap, requires faith in slow, unseen processes.
Trees need dormancy; constant growth exhausts them. Perhaps democracy does, too: periods of rest, reflection, and careful tending of what exists, rather than always demanding the new. Lasting change takes time, patience, and attention.
But we've lost patience for invisible work. We demand instant results, performative action, the appearance of progress. Meanwhile, the real work — the slow building of trust, the patient reform of systems, the unglamorous tending of institutions — goes undone. We want fruit without tending the roots — the harvest without waiting for spring.
The sap is what feeds everything. Yet we’ve allowed corruption, negligence, and manipulation to make it toxic.
Pruning: Hard but Necessary Work
Farmers prune trees to strengthen them, cutting away what drains energy so fruit can flourish. Democracy requires similar care: reforming outdated policies, letting some structures die so others can thrive.
The wisdom is knowing what to cut. A dead branch that once bore fruit. A policy that served its time. The courage to wound in service of health.
Instead, we see either paralysis — afraid to cut anything, letting dead wood accumulate until the whole tree is burdened — or reckless pruning — cutting what should live, leaving what should die, trimming for appearance, and preventing the tree from growing strong.
Those in charge of pruning are failing to safeguard the tree’s future. And we know it.
What Must Be Done
Not every tree survives every storm. Some fall, some are cut down, some simply die. But a well-tended tree, rooted deep and pruned with care, has the best chance. That's all we can ask — and all we can offer to those who come after us.
Tu BiShvat falls when trees look dead but sap is already rising. The question facing us is not whether the tree can be saved. It can.
The question is whether we will do the work. Whether we will tend the roots by defending our values and rebuilding trust. Whether we will strengthen the trunk by protecting and reforming our institutions with care, not contempt. Whether we will prune what must be cut — outdated policies, corrupt practices, leaders who serve themselves rather than our shared future. Whether we will work for a harvest we may not live to see.
This is not a moment for passive reflection. It is a moment for active stewardship. The tree is sick, but not dead. We see it withering — and we know what must be done.
The questions left are clear: Will we tend? Will we build? Will we act?
Or will we keep scrolling, while the roots weaken, the trunk rots, and the tree is allowed to fall — not by accident, but by neglect?
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