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From the Past

During this 120th anniversary year of the Mizrachi World Movement,
we are delving into the HaMizrachi archives. Here’s a piece from 1919.

Yitzchak Rivkind

ews of the Diaspora and the “Rosh empty! Is this not similar to our custom “The heavens declare the glory of G-d,
Hashanah for trees?” Children of to recite the beautiful poem of Barchi and the firmament shows His hand-
the ghetto and a holiday in honor Nafshi [in celebration of G-d’s world] on iwork.” “How many are Your works,
Jof nature and its rebirth? We, who Shabbatot that are short, cloudy and Hashem! In wisdom have You made
have distanced ourselves and been dark? them all.” “Lift up your eyes on high,
distanced from the blessed land, to and see Who has created these!”
whom the beautiful blue skies of our No! We have not always been distant  Originally published in HaMizrachi, no. 5,
land are far away and unknown to us… from nature and its magic! The Tanach 14 Shevat 5679 (Warsaw, 1919).
not for us are the golden fields, the is our witness; our Book of Books testi-
blooming trees and grass; not for us fies eternally to our people’s longing for
are the flowers and roses whose scent nature, our love of nature and the lives
bound up with nature that we lived in
blows in the wind. Yitzchak Rivkind was born in Lodz, Poland,
earlier generations. We are the children
And yet [tomorrow] we are celebrating of the ancient nation which came to and he studied in Yeshivot in Volozhin and
Tu BiShvat, the holiday of nature; we faith through nature. Unlike the other Ponevezh. He was one of the main organizers
of Mizrachi in Poland, through which he
have set aside a day for the beginning of nations, we did not treat the forces of published a book detailing the Netziv’s
its renewal, even as all that surrounds nature as gods but instead used nature connection to the Hibbat Zion movement.
us is frozen and dead, chaotic and to perceive G-d’s providence and unity. He moved to New York in 1920.

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