NowGen Celebrates Tu Bishvat - A Festival for the Trees

On Monday, February 2nd, NowGen hosted Tu Bishvat: A Festival for the Trees. The event took place in East Nashville at The East Room. Tu Bishvat, the celebration of the Jewish New Year for the trees, focuses on community and ecological awareness. One of the ways to celebrate is by planting trees. In Israel, there are many organizations that you can purchase trees through to support reforestation. 

Here in Nashville, the Jewish community celebrated by working with NowGen to put on the festival. The event was hosted by comedian Evan Berke, with musical performances from multiple artists. Samuel Herb, Kaylee Federmann, MASON, Meryl Rudy, Dan Harrison, Lexi Sidders, Jacob Rubin, and Madeline Rose were the artists that performed for the community at the festival.  

Samuel Herb was an integral part of organizing the event. Herb has been in Nashville for almost ten years, and in 2019, he wrote a song titled, Just a Tree, then decided to donate a tree to be planted for every 1,000 streams, and for every piece of merch sold. So far, Herb has planted just under 3,000 trees. This inspired him to want to do something for Tu Bishvat. “I wanted to put together a group of Jewish artists, and it was specific to artists because we have a lot of song writers in our community, and I love them and we need them.”  Herb wanted to use this event to showcase different artists in our community and use it as a way to give back. Herb's goal for this event was, "To do something for the Jewish community and build something that could be long lasting, because we're never going to have a shortage of artists in Nashville, and hopefully we never have a shortage of trees.”  

Each artist that performed had a 15-minute set. After their set, they were able to go be fans in the crowd and celebrate the holiday with friends while enjoying the live music from the other artists. Tickets to the show were 20 dollars, and with the 85 tickets sold, all proceeds were donated to The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville. Meryl Rudy was another artist who performed at the festival. She says that for her, it was about just having a really great time with a great community. “What I wanted to share with the audience, and have them remember from the night, was this kind of folk song about being happy by yourself, and being happy with your surroundings, and nature. And not needing someone else to validate you. Just being with the trees, and the earth, and the sun, and the moon is the point of that song, and that's what I wanted the crowd to take from my performance.”  Rudy voiced that with everything that is going on in our community, she loved that there was a space where everyone could come together and feel supported, loved, and seen. 

For Dan Harrison, the importance of the festival was to be there with the Jewish and the creative community, and to show that there is a strong vibrate creative Jewish community here in Nashville. Harrison says, “Especially with everything that has been going on the last couple years in the world, it was really special to have people come together like that and just play music and be at a place surrounded by other Jewish artists.” Harrison feels honored that he was able to be a part of a performance with so many other talented artists and is taken away at the growth of our community. He stated that, “Just seeing the growth of the Jewish community and then the creatives in the community, it's just been really amazing to see. It's really special to me that I can be part of the growth, and the story of that here in Nashville.”  

The festival demonstrated that even with the pain and suffering that is happening, the community can be united front and celebrate the holiday. Typically, Tu Bishvat is a holiday that slides under the radar, and many Jews don't celebrate, or are just simply unaware of it. Now with NowGen’s goal to make this an annual event, the Jewish community here in Nashville can come together to experience and share the beautiful meaning of Tu Bishvat.