Reboot Network member Jacob Kornbluth, an Emmy-winning director of TV, film, and theater, had never really thought much about Tu BiShvat and the ancient Jewish connection to trees. Growing up, dinner discussion in his family was about landlords, not about connection to the land. He didn’t think of the external world as changeable. It simply was.

But somehow during the pandemic, he, a completely non-handy, urban Jew wound up building an office in his backyard from found wood and discovering a new reverence for trees and the revival of nature. Read about his journey here.

To mark Chinese New Year, we are revisiting Season 2 Episode 6 of the In Quarantine with Steve Bodow podcast originally aired in September 2020. After five months quarantined in Sydney, the Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng tells host Steve Bodow about returning to NYC, why Australia kicked our Corona response ass, and what Chinese New Year can teach Rosh Hashanah. (It’s dragons. The answer is dragons.) Produced during the pandemic lockdown with 14-time Emmy-winning former Daily Show executive producer Steve Bodow, In Quarantine is about how creative people are living, personally and professionally in this very weird time. Listen here!

Detroit artist Olivia Guterson has created a series of gorgeous “earth portals” as an offering to Mother Earth as part of a Tu BiShvat exhibition, Environmentally Speaking, with the JCC of Metro Detroit, and has contributed to a live artistic celebration of the trees with Hazon.

Engaging in a critical conversation about our changing climate and the related perils we face, Environmentally Speaking is a multi-sensory and accessible exhibition examining our interspecies connectedness, offering viable ways we can positively impact our collective future now, Guterson said.

Read more about Guterson’s connection to Tu BiShvat in her blog.