From the “Tree of Life” song many of us sang at Sunday school (off-key, very fast, clap-clap-clap-clap), to the Tree of Knowledge, to Tu B’Shvat (a birthday celebration for trees), trees and Jews are intertwined.

I knew this from an early age. Walking through the ancient, majestic redwoods of nearby Muir Woods throughout my life has always felt like being in a cathedral of wisdom, of time, of living beings that were witness to all of humanity’s aspirations, foibles, failures, accomplishments, births, deaths, and decomposition.

There was one aspect of my visits to this national forest that always left me gobsmacked. At the entrance, there is a huge tree slice with metal plate labels marking historical events corresponding to the age of the tree. These trees lived during a deep past we will never know and most will live on into a deep future, also way beyond our lifetimes. Yet, they were all so patriarchal and colonialist, marking occasions like Christopher Columbus’s sail to America, the birth of Jesus, and the Battle of Hastings. I felt like I was being mansplained history from a Christian and patriarchal perspective. The only lines that spoke to me on an emotional level were the first center dot, “909 AD: A tree is born“ and the last one, “1930: Tree falls.”

Recently in my artwork, I’ve been reimagining what other histories could be told with tree rings. I created a Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, that distilled 50,000 years of feminist history into 32 milestones that was first in San Francisco, then installed on the National Mall last fall and and in Madison Square Park in NYC earlier this year. It feels good to bring this movable monument to different locations in our country, especially in this historic election year. Find out how to see the work here.

Perhaps the most challenging one to date is one I co-created with my husband, artist and professor Ken Goldberg, DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People for an upcoming exhibition for the Getty Museum’s PST Art & Science Collide, Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology that opened in October at the Skirball Cultural Center and runs through March 2, 2025. This new work, DendroJudaeology distills 5,000 years of Jewish history into 140 moments, burned onto a five foot in diameter poplar tree ring slice, illuminating a rich and complex history and a context lost in this social media soundbite world.

To compile the timeline, we spent the last two years writing, researching and consulting with scholars and rabbis. We started working on it long before October 7th. As you can imagine, that tectonic shift made us think even more deeply about representing the ancient history of our people.

We also learned so many things doing research. This entry is one of my favorites: “3500-1200 BCE Canaanites worship sacred goddess trees, asherim.” (That makes so much sense to me, feminist Jewess lover of trees.) And of course, a Jewish timeline has to have Jewish humor. The entry for year 0 reads, “The most famous Jew in history was born.”

After two years, and a complicated design process, it was time to burn the words into the wood. It takes me hours and hours of focused attention. I love the smell. It smells like history. I have to focus on every letter, every word, and every entry. I think about people who copied the Torah over the generations, and all the time and attention that takes too.

What to leave out, what to keep in. I am almost done burning the text into the wood.  Ken and I both burned our signatures onto the side of the poplar slice—the same kind of tree that was found in the ancient Middle East and mentioned in the Torah.

Maps tell us where we are. Monuments show us where we’ve been. This new type of tree ring sculpture explores where we’ve been as well as asking us where we want to go.

Tiffany Shlain is an artist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards and author of the national bestselling book 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection. This fall she had both a solo exhibition YOU ARE HERE, called by Artnet and ArtForum as one of the Must-See Gallery shows in NYC  at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, in Chelsea, NYC and has a new joint exhibition with Ken Goldberg, Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees,Time and Technology, for the Getty Museum’s PST Art & Science Collide at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA that includes DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People- on view until March 2, 2025. Info on all events with Shlain in the Bay Area and LA this fall ->  tiffanyshlain.com