Celebrating Tu Bishvat

The name of this festival is actually its date: “Tu” is a pronunciation of the Hebrew letters for the number 15, and it falls in the Hebrew month of Shvat.

trees2.jpgTraditionally, Tu Bishvat was not a Jewish festival. Rather, it marked an important date for Jewish farmers in ancient times. The Torah states, “When you enter the land [of Israel] and plant any tree for food, you shall regard its fruit as forbidden. Three years it shall be forbidden for you, not to be eaten” (Leviticus 19:23). The fruit of the fourth year was to be offered to the priests in the Temple as a gift of gratitude for the bounty of the land, and the fifth-year fruit–and all subsequent fruit–was finally for the farmer. This law, however, raised the question of how farmers were to mark the “birthday” of a tree. The Rabbis therefore established the 15th of the month of Shvat as a general “birthday” for all trees, regardless of when they were actually planted.

Fruit trees were awarded special status in the Torah because of their importance in sustaining life and as a symbol of God’s divine favor. Even during times of war, God warns the Israelites, “When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees… Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed” (Deuteronomy 20:19-20).

At a later time, the Rabbis of the Talmud established four “new years” throughout the Jewish calendar–Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish new Year for the calendar date; a new year for establishing the reign of kings; a new year for tithing animals of Jewish farmers to be given to the Temple; and finally, Tu Bishvat, the new year for the trees (Mishnah, Rosh Hashanah 1:1). The Rabbis discussed why this date was chosen; saying that Tu Bishvat falls after mid-winter (usually in February), they concluded that the majority of the annual rainfall has usually already fallen by this time in the land of Israel, thus yielding a healthy, water-logged soil in which to plant new trees (Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 57a).

In medieval times, kabbalists (Jewish mystics) gave Tu Bishvat greater spiritual significance. Seeing in Tu Bishvat a vehicle for mystical ideas, the kabbalists imbued Tu Bishvat with new religious significance as well as created elaborate new symbolic rituals. According to Lurianic Kabbalah (which is a form of mysticism studied by the students of Isaac Luria), all physical forms–including human beings–hide within them a spark of the Divine Presence. This is similar to some kinds of fruits or nuts, which hide within them seeds of new life and potential growth. In Jewish mysticism, human actions can release these sparks and help increase God’s presence in the world. On Tu Bishvat, the kabbalists would eat certain fruits associated with the land of Israel as a symbolic way of releasing these divine sparks.

In modern times, Tu Bishvat has become a symbol of both Zionist attachment to the land of Israel as well as an example of Jewish sensitivity to the environment. Early Zionist settlers to Israel began planting new trees not only to restore the ecology of ancient Israel, but as a symbol of renewed growth of the Jewish people returning to their ancestral homeland. While relatively few Jews continue to observe the kabbalistic Tu Bishvat seder, many American and European Jews observe Tu Bishvat by contributing money to the Jewish National Fund, an organization devoted to reforesting Israel.

For environmentalists, Tu Bishvat is an ancient and authentic Jewish “Earth Day” that educates Jews about the Jewish tradition’s advocacy of responsible stewardship of God’s creation as manifested in ecological activism. Among them, contemporary versions of the Tu Bishvat seder, emphasizing environmentalist concerns, are gaining popularity.

January 21, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest

Leave a Reply

5 Comments / 5 Comments

  1. This is London’s pay back to the Israelis for kicking them out of Israel. They have sided with the Palis becuse no one wants to be a loser. That is exactly what the Brits are…LOSERS.

  2. On second thought I can’t think of a more deserving penalty if not historical retribution than seeing all of Europe become either Muslim or Muslim dominated. They really are deserving and no sympathy from me on this.

  5. From Hugh Fitzgerald:

    While it may seem, and certainly the BBC, Agence France-Presse, and CNN International are among those attempting to make you believe, that there is great outrage everywhere, by all kinds of people, at Israel’s incursion into Gaza, the reverse is actually true. The demonstrations have been remarkably small, and almost entirely Muslim, with a sprinkling of “Palestnian” islamochristians, the usual floating gaga far-left, but very little else. If in London, with 10 million people and a million Muslims, only 10,000 people (at most) can come out, if fewer still come out in Paris, if the demonstrations in the rest of the West amount to, here and there, a few hundred or a few thousand at most, and the television captures their murderousness-concealed murderousness, the spectacle, I maintain, has served to disturb and even horrify many in Western Europe, as they are becoming more and more aware that the war against Israel is in fact part of a larger war, and that they, right now, in Western Europe, are also the intended victims of Jihad, just like Israel. The political and media elites, and even the votes in the comical increasingly absurd (and seen to be absurd, morally absurd and politically irrelevant) U.N., do not reflect what people are beginning, dimly at first, to grasp. And they see these hysterical and hate-filled demonstrators, and the view, whether in person, or via television cameras, is not causing support for Israel to diminish but, in some cases almost unconsciously, to rise as the danger of Muslim violence — and every new terrorist attack, anywhere in the world, no matter what the intended victim, helps reinforce the understanding that Islam, and Muslims, are a menace to all Infidels everywhere.