The Headwaters forest in Humboldt County is home to old-growth redwood trees — some measuring 26 feet in circumference and 250 feet tall — and a number of endangered species, including the marbled murrelet, the northern spotted owl and the coho salmon.
On Sunday, Jan. 26 the forest’s animal inhabitants will share their home with 250 Jews celebrating Tu B’Shevat, the new year of the trees.
Rabbis Margaret Holub of the Mendocino Coast Jewish Community, Lester Scharnberg of Temple Beth El in Eureka and student rabbi Naomi Steinberg of Congregation B’nai Ha-Aretz in Garberville will lead a seder incorporating wine, fruits and nuts in a nearby public grove. They will be joined by Jewish Renewal leader Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
As an act of political and environmental consciousness, the group will plant tree saplings on the nearby property of timber-company owner Charles Hurwitz.
“God created the world and we are partners with God in keeping creation going and sustaining it,” said Ilana Schatz, outreach coordinator for the redwood seder. “It’s our responsibility to make sure trees thousands of years old aren’t cut down. It’s our covenant with God.
“Tu B’Shevat is the holiday when you plant trees and help keep them alive.”
For nearly 10 years, environmental advocates and forestry officials have been battling Hurwitz, a Houston Jew and financier who is the owner of Maxxam Inc. — the parent company of Pacific Lumber, located in the Humboldt County town of Scotia — and of the disputed Headwaters forest and other redwood groves in Humboldt County.
Since purchasing Pacific Lumber, a company known for its environmentally sound practices, Hurwitz tripled the tree-harvesting rate and vowed that the land would be clear by the year 2006.
The North Coast squabble heated up this fall when the federal government stepped in and engineered a deal through which Hurwitz will receive $380 million in cash or trade in exchange for two of the six ancient groves of the 60,000-acre Headwaters forest, which is southeast of Eureka.
The deal is contingent upon government approval of a “Habitat Conservation Plan” that is being written by Pacific Lumber and due to be released in late January.
Activists fear the plan “won’t protect the trees or the endangered species,” Holub said. But the seder “has you do things which you hope will move God to preserve the trees.”
Seder participants will meet at 11 a.m. for religious and environmental talks. Following lunch, the seder begins at 2 p.m.
Celebrants will drink four cups of wine — first white, then white mixed with some red, then half white and half red and finally pure red. They will eat nuts as well as fruits with hard coverings, such as oranges; fruits with pits on the inside, such as dates; and fruits you can bite all the way through.
“The seder is solemn and intense. It’s like sympathetic magic,” Holub said. “This is a day of prayer in the natural world.”
Following the seder, participants will move to Hurwitz’s land to plant saplings — “redwoods, or something which helps prevent erosion,” Holub said.
Local law enforcement will be apprised in advance of the act of civil disobedience, and volunteer legal advisers will be on hand to aid those who choose to risk arrest for trespassing on Hurwitz’s land.