• Home
• About
  • About
  • Contact
  • Mission
• Datebook: Events Calendar
• Women's Philanthropy
• Subscribe to e-newsletter
• Young Adults
• Contribute
• Where Your Money Goes
  • Where Your Money Goes
  • Annual Report (PDF)
• Professional Groups
  • Legal Professionals
  • Healthcare Professionals
  • Jewish High Tech
  • Business & Bagels
  • Professional Directory
• Community Resources
  • Community Resources
  • Community Rabbi
  • JCRC
• Volunteer
• Local Jewish News
• Search
•  

Jewish Community News

Ask the Rabbi: February 2005

By Rabbi Hugh Seid-Valencia (Kehillah Jewish High School)

Question: My question is about the holiday of Tu Bishvat. I don’t understand why the Jewish calendar, which generally celebrates sacred moments, includes a holiday for trees. Shouldn’t Jews focus on religious matters and leave the trees to the Wiccans?

Answer: As Jews living in the United States, influenced as we are by the split between church and state, we tend to think of Judaism primarily as a religion. Our ancestors, however, did not always make such a sharp distinction between religious and secular life. While one can certainly find religious content in Tu Bishvat celebrations, I think the questioner is right to notice that Tu Bishvat feels quite different in tone than, for instance, that other New Year, Rosh Hashanah. Still, Tu Bishvat is every bit as Jewish as Rosh Hashanah. In fact taking Tu Bishvat seriously might help us broaden our sense of what is Jewish. Perhaps by exploring Tu Bishvat’s evolution through Jewish history we can begin to expand our working definition of Jewish religious life.

There is not even a trace of Tu Bishvat in the Bible. The first inkling we find of the holiday is in a passage in the Talmud that divides the year into six seasons. By this reckoning, the 15th of Shvat (Tu Bishvat) marks the transition from horef (winter) to kor (cold). In another passage from the Talmud (B.T. Rosh Hashana 14a), Beit Hillel declares that the 15th of Shvat should mark the New Year for trees. By this point in the winter, most of the rain in the land of Israel has fallen, the sap begins to rise in the trees, and the fruit begins to form. Establishing a New Year for trees had some practical purpose: fruit that blossomed after this date belonged to the following year for purposes of tithing. Also, for the first three years that a tree bore fruit, that fruit was considered orlah—set aside for God. At its roots (pun intended), Tu Bishvat marked a connection to the agricultural cycles of the land of Israel and a recognition that those cycles and that land really belonged to God and not to its human inhabitants.

Because of its initial strong connection to Israel, after the exile, Tu Bishvat became a chance to commemorate one’s attachment to the Land. Those marking Tu Bishvat ate 15 types of fruit and made an effort to obtain these fruits from the Holy Land. Later, the kabbalists of Sfat expanded on this practice. Reading the verse, “For a human is like the tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19), they personalized Tu Bishvat and established the practice of conducting Tu Bishvat seder, modeled after the Passover seder. With the growth of Zionism and the establishment of the state of Israel, the connection of Tu Bishvat to the Land of Israel again gained prominence. In Israel, Tu Bishvat is celebrated with tree-planting ceremonies that often feature schoolchildren.

Of all the practices described above, the most overtly religious would probably be the kabbalists’ Tu Bishvat seder. It should not surprise us then, that this practice takes center stage for those currently seeking to celebrate Tu Bishvat. Still, I think it is worth noticing the agricultural, national and ecological elements in Tu Bishvat’s development. In the fact that Tu Bishvat once marked a moment between “winter” and “cold,” or that nostalgic Jews in exile sought fruit from Israel to eat on this day, we might find permission to imagine our own Judaism more expansively. Yes, Judaism is a religion, but it is also a nationality, a culture and a civilization. It even has room to contain a New Year for trees.