I HOLIDAYS

I

11A.

Dress Shop

CARAVAN P Oreseits FASHION

Suits and Dresses
From Day to Evening
7 Designer Lines

Thursday, Feb. 15, Friday, Feb. 16
And Saturday, February 17

APPLEGATE STORE ONLY

,--NMon.-Sat. 10-5:30
eve. till 8:30

f

29839 Northwestern Hwy.
Between 12 & 13 Mile Rd.
At Inkster Road

A MAGIC CARPET RIDE THROUGH THE
WORLD OF LUXURIOUS FLOOR COVERINGS.
UNDERWRITTEN BY AZAR'S GALLERY
OF ORIENTAL RUGS IN BIRMINGHAM, MICH.
AND BROADCAST BY WTVS/TV 56.
STARTS Feb. 10th

Expert John Kurtz is host of this ten-part
series which focuses on the artistic, historic,
cultural and financial value of oriental rugs.

VISA"

Observe Tu B'Shevat
With Creative Seder

ROBERT L. COHEN

Special to The Jewish News

I

t's a Jewish New Year, but
not Rosh Hashanah. Cele-
brants drink four cups of
wine and read from a "hag-
gadah," but it's not Passover.
Since it's a Jewish occasion,
though, the focus is on food
and (serious) talk.
Happy Tu. B'Shevat! (The
Jewish New Year for Trees),
marked this year on Shabbat,
Feb. 10. And welcome, as a
growing number of Jews are,
to a Tu B'Shevat Seder, a
ritual banquet with 16th cen-
tury mystical antecedents
and, apparently, much to say
to today's Jews.
For many, it is a means of
connecting to the land of
Israel and its special beauty
and richness; for others, a
reminder of our responsibility
to the natural world and to
each other; for still others, a
meaningful meditational ex-
perience. Tu B'Shevat seders
contain the possibility of at-
taining a greater harmony
with the cosmos and the
Creator — and thereby (as the
mystics put it) "fixing the
world."
In the Mishnah, the 15th
day of Shevat is merely desig-
nated as the fiscal new year
of trees for purposes of tithing
the fruit yields. The date is
not arbitrary: By this time in
Israel, the heavy rains are
over; water begins to glow in
the ground and sap to rise in
the trees. Trees and plants
begin to bud: Spring is
coming.
Almost no law governs the
day's observance, but layers of
graceful custom have arisen
in different Jewish com-
munities. The most universal
has been simply eating fruits,
especially those native to
Israel.
In medieval Eastern Eu-
rope, obtaining and eating
dried fruits and bokser (carob)
in the midst of winter
reflected a poignant yearning
for the Holy Land. It was
largely the descendants of
these Ashkenazim who began
the Israeli tradition of plant-
ing saplings on Tu B'Shevat
or, in the Diaspora, giving
money to the Jewish National
Fund for afforestation.
Sephardic Jews developed
more elaborate rituals which
they called Las Frutas (the
Feast of Fruits). Children
were given bags of fruit to
wear as pendants around

Robert L. Cohen is a writer
in Brooklyn, N.Y.

60

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1990

their necks; in some coun-
tries, the rich would host
lavish feasts for the whole
village, at which as many as
100 different kinds of fruits,
nuts and vegetables were
eaten.
It was 16th century Sep-
hardic kabbalists (Jewish
mystics) in Safed, creators of
the Friday night Kabbalat
Shabbat service, who devised
a ritual meal for Tu B'Shevat
modeled after the Passover
seder: a banquet of four cups
of wine and four courses of
fruit, consumed with appro-
priate blessings over a festive
table decorated with flowers
and candles, and accompan-

For many, the
seder is a means
of connecting to
the land of Israel;
for others, a
reminder of our
responsibility to
the natural world.

ied by the reading and study
of passages on trees and fruit
from the Torah, rabbinic com-
mentaries, and the Zohar (the
kabbalists' interpretation of
the hidden meanings of the
Torah).
This tradition, still prac-
ticed in many Sephardic
homes (especially among
Turks, Moroccans, and
Iraqis), is enjoying a
renascence: at a "New Age"
minyan in Berkeley, Calif.,
and Orthodox Synagogues in
New York and Skokie, Ill.; at
an Israeli folk dance weekend
in the Catskills and creative
Jewish schools in Cleveland
and Los Angeles; in
Hadassah chapters and Jew-
ish Community Centers
around the country.
•
Jonathan Wolf, a modern
Orthodox Jew, will be con-
ducting his 15th Tu B'Shevat
seder this year on Manhat-
tan's Upper West Side. Wolf,
New York's Lincoln Square
Synagogue's director of com-
munity action, uses a tikkun
or seder — that he has compil-
ed from rabbinic commentar-
ies, the prophets, the Song of
Songs and the P'ri Eitz Hadar
(The Fruit of the Godly Tree),
the first published liturgy for
Tu Bishvat. He also includes
songs and poetry such as
Joyce Kilmer's "Trees."
For Wolf, the holiday is
especially rich: It is "the post-
biblical holiday correspond-
ing to entering the Land of