The Daffodil Project TB Berachot 43

Today’s daf is dedicated and honor of my great-niece Sophie Diamond on her bat mitzvah.

Today’s daf TB Berachot 43 discusses what blessing should be recited over fragrant flowers, bushes, and trees.

Rav Mesharshiya said: Over this garden daffodil one recites: Who creates fragrant trees (בּוֹרֵא עֲצֵי בְשָׂמִים), while over a wild daffodil that grows in the field, one recites: Who creates fragrant plants (בּוֹרֵא עִשְׂבֵי בְשָׂמִים). Rav Sheshet said: Over fragrant violets one recites: Who creates fragrant plants. Mar Zutra said: One who smells a citron [etrog] or a quince recites: Blessed…who gave pleasant fragrance in fruits. (Sefaria.orgtranslation)

My synagogue Marathon Jewish Community Center along with Congregation L’Dor V’Dor, and Temple Torah have been planting daffodil gardens in front of our respective synagogues and throughout our community as part of The Daffodil Project. The Daffodil Project aspires to build a worldwide Living Holocaust Memorial by planting 1.5 million Daffodils in memory of the children who perished in the Holocaust and in support for children suffering in humanitarian crises in the world today. We plant these daffodils around Kristallnacht knowing that they should bloom around Yom Hashoa. These yellow flowers reminds us of the yellow Star of David the Nazis made Jews wear.

As I walk to my synagogue entrance by our daffodil garden, I notice that some of the green stalks of the daffodils had poked through the dirt. I’m not surprised because in January we enjoyed six days with the temperatures between 50° and 60°F and 18 days with temperatures between 40° and 49°F! Already during the first half of February we experienced more days in the 40°s and 50°s! In the middle of winter our daffodil garden is proving that there is climate change despite all the naysayers in government today.

I am haunted by the Midrash found in Hammer on the rock: a Midrash Reader edited by Nahum Glatzer: “In the hour when the holy one, blessed be he, create the first man, he took him and let him pass before all the trees of the garden of Eden, and said to him: see my works, how find an excellent they are! Now all that I have created for you have I created. Think upon this and do not corrupt and desolate my world; for if you corrupted, there’s no one to say right after you.” (Page 13)

Climate change is real and unless we want to make earth uninhabitable for humankind, we must make changes now and reduce greenhouse gases.