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Israel Air Force personnel and a group of Ethiopian immigrants
plant trees for Tu b'Shevat near Modiin, home of the Maccabees.
Tu B'Shevat Celebrates
Liberation From Exile
RABBI NORBERT WEINBERG
Special to The Jewish News
s
ip erusalem —
Popular
writings make us im-
agine the Jews of yore to
have been constantly locked
away within the walls of the
yeshivah, the religious
academy. It was, it would
seem, a world without the
green buds of spring, or the
chirping of forest birds.
But every year, just as the
winter winds seem their col-
dest, there comes along a holi-
day in the Jewish calendar
which shatters the stereotype
— the holiday of Tu b'Shevat,
the fifteenth of the month of
Shevat, often called Rosh
Hashanah Lallanot, the New
Year of the Trees, which begins
at sundown today.
By tradition, the date marks
the start of the rise of sap from
the trees' roots back to the
branches. The winter days
were long enough, by this sea-
son, to allow the wood, chopped
at this time, to be ready for use
in . the ancient Temple of
Jerusalem for the spring festi-
val of Pesach. It also served as
the date from which the age of
trees was calculated, in deter-
mining when the trees' fruit
were to be brought for the offer-
ing of the first fruits.
'When the Temple was de-
stroyed, in the year 70 CE, the
Jewish people lost its sover-
eignty over the Land, and
gradually became exiled, not
only from the physical
presence of the land, but es-
tranged, in some ways, from
the soil. The fruit of the trees
could no longer be brought to
the Temple, nor was the wood
cut for use in the offerings, and
the celebration of the date fell
into disuse.
The attachment to the Land
of Israel never died and, with
.
Applegate Square • Northwestern Hwy. at Inkster Road
42
Friday. February 13, 1987
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
the return to the Land, the fes-
tival itself was revived — not
in 1948, when Israel estab-
lished its independence, but in
the 16th Century.
In 1492, the Jews of Spain
were scattered to the four
winds by the newly united
kingdom of Castille and Ara-
gon. Many headed to the East,
to the Ottoman Empire, but
one group of dedicated
visionaries made its way to the
Land of Israel and settled in a
mountaintop village known as
Safed.
They came to see the tragedy
of expulsion as not an immiti-
gated catastrophe, but as the
beginning of the era of mes-
sianic redemption. What had
happened on a human, histori-
cal plane was a manifestation
Of a cosmic, divine struggle.
The Jew, in his observance of
Judaism, was a participant in
the battle against the forces of
cosmic evil. The fact that they
had been able to come to Israel
was, for them, proof that rede-
mption was near.
They revived the festival of
Tu b'Shevat and gave it a new
meaning. Just as the tree was
gathered at that season for use
at Pesach, so, too, was the New
Year of the Trees a symbol of
redemption and liberation of
the Land of Israel and of the
world in anticipation of a fu-
ture Passover, a festival of ul-
timate liberation from exile.
They created for this occa-
sion a new kind of seder which
revolved around the fruit of
trees; instead of unleavened
bread. The metaphysical as-
pects of the universe are sym-
bolized by the types of fruit
eaten. Those surrounded by a
hard shell, such as nuts, repre-
sent the world of Assiyah, of
physical creation, a world in
which the holy is hidden by the
hard shell of unholiness. The
next category of fruit, peaches
,
,