This week, as we mark the new month of Sh’vat on the Jewish calendar, many of our neighbors around the world are celebrating the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Snake. As with our traditional Jewish calendar, this calendar is also not strictly lunar, but is adjusted to the solar calendar with which we are more familiar. One of our sharp-eyed members sent me an inquiry this week wondering why the observance of the lunar new year which begins on the new moon occurred on Wednesday, while the new moon of Sh’vat, Rosh Chodesh, was marked on Thursday. I hadn’t thought of that before, but it makes sense to me if one notes that these dates are based on two different concepts of the term “new moon.” In terms of the phases of the moon, the new moon is defined as the time when the moon is directly between the earth and the sun, thus the portion of the moon illuminated by the sun is facing away from the earth so we do not see the moon in the sky. Rosh Chodesh, our monthly celebration of the “new moon,” originally required the observation of the first light of the moon each month, the first little sliver of the waxing crescent by two or more witnesses who testified before the Sanhedrin, the high court in Jerusalem. So our definition was slightly different. The new month on our calendar today is also further adjusted to the sighting of the moon in Jerusalem rather than locally, which also causes some discrepancy between the two observances.
The lunar new year of our Asian neighbors is also referred to by many as the Chinese New Year or simply as the Spring Festival and it has a number of picturesque customs associated with it. As it happens this week, we have enjoyed unusually warm temperatures for this time of year, making us think that we are indeed celebrating a Spring Festival, at least until the big snow storm hits next week or whenever as is likely sooner or later. According to the Mishnah, the School of Shammai set the new year for trees on this date, on Rosh Chodesh Sh’vat. The prevailing view, however, was that of the School of Hillel which set the date on the 15th, Tu BiShvat. “Tu” represents the number 15, with the letter tet = 9 and the vav = 6. We customarily avoid using ten and five to denote 15, since yud and hay combine to form one of the names of God which one should not write out on paper that is likely to be discarded.
Tu BiShvat was not a real holiday at first, merely a date on the calendar. Rabbi Dalia Marx in her anthology on the Jewish calendar, “From Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar,” speaks of seven “stops” along the route of the development of Tu BiShvat into a holiday. Her first stop focuses on the requirement from the Torah of planting trees in the land of Israel and even prior to that, going back to the Garden of Eden, we are told that Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden “to till it and tend it.” Here we encounter also symbolic significance to trees when we are told of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as well as the tree of life planted in this idyllic garden setting.. Thus, from the beginning, God envisions humankind’s use of the fruit of the tree for food and other purposes as well as our responsibility to tend those creations in the Garden which is in fact the world in which we live.
Rabbi Marx continues on her journey describing the development of this holiday and opens the Mishnah, the earliest of our law codes to the passage in the tractate of Rosh Hashanah which speaks of four new years designated for different purposes and here we find the dispute between the School of Hillel and of Shammai as to the date of the New Year for trees. Of course, at that point, Tu BiShvat was hardly an occasion for celebration. It was primarily a convenient date for the laws of tithing fruit trees and for the restrictions on eating the fruit during its first few years. Marx points out that since this date is linked to laws incumbent upon property owners calling on them to provide for the needs of the poor, the nascent holiday becomes linked to a degree with a social justice agenda. It is in the Mishnah that we find the first mention of Tu BiShvat.
A third stop on the Tu BiShvat journey occurs after the destruction of the second Temple and the dispersion of Jews around the world. Tu BiShvat gradually becomes an opportunity each year to connect once again with our homeland in the land of Israel. We do so by eating the fruit of trees whether those mentioned in praise of the land in a passage in Deuteronomy or, when possible, obtaining actual fruit from the land of Israel. Some may recall Hebrew teachers distributing pieces of carob pods to give us a taste of Israel. Others may recall Israeli citrus products served at this season. Along with the taste, poets began composing liturgical pieces, piyyutim, to incorporate into our liturgy to mark the day.
The fourth stop takes us to Safed (Tzfat) in the 16th century, the center of Kabbalah, Jewish mystical tradition. The mystics developed an elaborate system emphasizing the outpouring of divine plenty into the world. It was among the disciples of Rabbi Isaac Luria, the leading authority of that time, that the elements of a Tu BiShvat Seder took shape. Lurianic Kabbalah spoke of four different levels of creation and, at the seder they linked the first three levels to different kinds of fruits, those with hard protective coverings were at the lower level, followed by fruits with a hard inner core or pit on the next level. Fruits which were entirely edible (except for some seeds or stems) were eaten next. On the fourth and highest level, the fruit had no physical substance to it at all; it was represented by the words of Torah. Adding four cups of wine, mixtures of red and white, helped make it a festive occasion with as many as thirty different varieties of fruits and nuts suggested by the author of the earliest such works. Various readings and study texts were added to the Haggadah produced for these seders. It seems that the Tu BiShvat seder became rather popular particularly in the Mediterranean climate where one could find a wide variety of fruits even at this season. In areas where last year’s remaining apples were the extent of available fruit, the Tu BiShvat seder was understandably less popular.
For the fifth stop, Rabbi Marx takes us to pre-modern times and the return of Jews to their homeland beginning in the late19th century. Many of us recall the campaigns conducted each year in Hebrew School by the Jewish National Fund, to purchase trees in Israel not only for fruit, but also for reclaiming the soil, providing shade, and a plethora of other purposes. We were given cardboard cards with slots for saving our quarters which we sent in to purchase trees to be planted in Israel. In 1890, Rabbi Ze’ev Yavetz organized a group of students to go out and actually plant trees throughout the land each year. I recall an essay many years ago, bemoaning the fate of many of these well-intentioned saplings that were planted at this season in honor of this holiday yet failed to survive the elements. Right now, we are urged to contribute to the JNF to replace many trees destroyed during the current war.
We continue on our journey to the sixth stop. Here we are urged to reach out beyond the land of Israel to more universal concerns for the environment of the entire world. This is an area which continues to be of concern as we see the importance of trees for maintaining the soil. Rabbi Marx includes in this chapter an alphabetical acrostic by Rabbi Moti Rotem similar to the confessionals on Yom Kippur, listing various sins we have committed against the environment. He begins “Afafnu, we enveloped Your world in fog, smoke, and soot. Bizbaznu, we wasted natural resources that we received in trust. Gazalnu, we stole the vast expanse of the horizon with ugly construction.” And he continues letter after letter to the letter tav, “Ta’asnu, we industrialized at the cost of air and water quality.”
He concludes the prayer with a plea for divine forgivenesss. “We exploited Your treasures, and it has not been worth it. Open our eyes to Your presence in nature, make our hearts cling to the mitzvah of guarding Your world, unite our hearts to accept our limits and find our place in Your world.” This modern effort for tikkun olam, repairing the world, is not unlike that of the Kabbalists to repair the sin of the first humans.
Rabbi Marx sees beyond these three stops a seventh one in which we might move Tu BiShvat from the general to the more personal and place the human being at the center. This stop she calls “self-tikkun” in which we reverse the imagery of trees like humans and see humans as trees. As she explains, “Lately, we have heard interpretations according to which everything that happens in the world or in nature can serve as a reflection of an individual’s physical, spiritual, and emotional situation.” She tells of a seder in recent times in which the three types of fruits were explained as representing three types of people. The fruits with hard outer shells represent people who close themselves off from their surroundings, who bind themselves up in their selfhood and are not open to others. The ones with the hard cores, the pits within, are people whose bellies are full of trauma, wounds, and difficult situations they have suffered in the past, that they are unable to digest or to swallow. The fruits that are entirely edible, present people who have difficulty setting boundaries and hold themselves back from reality. At this seder, it was argued that we all have elements of all three types of fruit, and we are all called to perform tikkun, to work on repairing ourselves.
All of these stops through history have built upon those which preceded them, thus building an elaborate structure of values seen through the fruits and the trees that are a vital part of our lives. During the winter months, spring sometimes seems distant, yet the marking of this new year of the tree, helps connect us to the tree of life, the Etz Hayim that we call the Torah, and to the values it strives to bring into our lives, caring for the land, taking care of those less fortunate, connecting with our brothers and sisters throughout the world and in particular in the land of Israel, recognizing the outpouring of divine grace upon the world, planting for those who will follow, guarding our environment and recognizing our part in nature as we work to repair the world and to work on ourselves as well.
Our Tu BiShvat Seder will take place this year on the Sunday before Tu BiShvat on February 9, at 1130 am. We will join with our friends from New Hope Church who meet in our building to jointly mark the New Year for Trees.
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