Tu BiSh'vat - January 20, 2011

When God first created human beings, the Eternal showed them around the Garden of Eden and then warned, ‘Take care not to corrupt and destroy my world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.’

Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13

 

On the 15^th day of the month of Sh’vat the Jewish community celebrates the holiday of Tu BiSh’vat, or what is commonly known as the “New Year for the Trees”, the Jewish Arbor Day. The holiday is observed on the fifteenth (tu— טו in Hebrew) of the month of Sh'vat. Scholars believe that Tu BiSh'vat was originally an agricultural festival, marking the emergence of spring. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and the Diaspora of Jews around the world, this holiday was a way for Jews to symbolically bind themselves to their former homeland by celebrating and eating foods found in Israel. Tu BiSh’vat is not mentioned in the Torah, but rather is first described in the Mishnah, by the 3^rd century.

 

In Israel, the winter rains begin to subside and budding begins. Each tree is considered to have aged one year as of Tu BiSh’vat, no matter when in the year it was planted; therefore it is customary to plant trees and partake of the fruits of the land of Israel to mark the occasion.  To celebrate, we commonly eat fruits native to Eretz Yisrael – barley, dates, figs, grapes, pomegranates, olives, and wheat.

 

On Tu BiSh’vat, we celebrate and honor the sacred and unique connection which exists between Judaism and nature; a time when we remember the biblical teaching that “the tree of the fields is man’s life” (Deuteronomy 20:19).  The Tu BiSh’vat seder was created in the 16th by Isaac Luria and other Kabbalists, as a celebration of the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life”, a tree which is the visual representation of the flow of Divine energy into the world.

Tu BiSh’vat has also become a time to celebrate the world of nature around us, to consider our impact on our environment, and what we can do to preserve it. We express our joy and thankfulness for the beauty and fruit of trees which God has created and sustained and renewed. Our ‘tree of life’, our Torah, reminds us of our responsibility to care for God’s world of which we are the custodians, and of our responsibility for sharing the fruits of God’s earth. It becomes our opportunity to express our Jewish commitment to protecting the earth.