while it was potentially fruitful, out
of respect for its Divinely created
potential, it was kept at rest.
But in the fourth year, special
offerings were brought to the Tem-
ple from the tree's fruit. Finally, in
the fifth year the regular tithe could
begin and the fruit of the tree could
be eaten.
This once all-important process of
tithing has deep roots in our peo-
ple's agrarian traditions. Land hold-
ers, orchard keepers and nomadic
owners of sheep and goats owed
tithes. Why should they pay one-
tenth of the increase of their fields,
trees, and meadows? It's because
part of their success came from the
whole society and even beyond —
from earth and rain and sunshine,
from the Unity called God. So they
owed part of their income to the
greater reality.
Indeed, the Torah, in Deuterono-
my (26:12-14), instructs that in third
year, after completing the tithe,
each land holder declare before
God:
"I have cleared out what is holy
from the house, and I have given it
to the Levite, the foreigner, the
fatherless, and the widow, in
accord with all the commands with
which You commanded me.
"Look down from Your holy
dwelling-place, from heaven, and
bless Your people Israel and the
earth You have given us, a land
flowing with milk and honey, as
You swore to our forebears."
The logic is clear: Since from my
house I have taken what is holy _
because it is due to the poor and
have given it to them, look down
from Your holy house and give us
what is due to us, who without it
would all be poor.
Thus, the great flow of abundance
between the land and the people
must be primed with the small flow
of abundance between the land-
holder and the landless.
This version of the tithe attempts to
resolve the spiritual collision

...

But why does the Torah take such
care with tithing and what does it
have to do with Tu B'Shevat?
For biblical Israel, the crucial way
of bringing God, the Creative
Power of the universe, into fruitful
union with God, the Loving Con-
nection of the universe, was to join
food that grew across the land of
Israel to a sacred center — the
Holy Temple.
To our ancestors, fruit trees were a
powerful life-giving reality. Thus,
their imagery entered deep into our
most powerful literature. In fact, for
its first three years, a fruit tree was
in the state of orlah, meaning•that

between a sense of God as giver
of prosperity to the rich and a sense
of God as protector of the poor.
And there's a third choice: God as
the One who provides prosperity to
the people as a whole if the people
will protect the poor.
And it means that the abundance
that comes from rain, sun, and soil
cannot be divorced from issues of
wealth, poverty, and power. The spir-
ituality of this book of Torah lies pre-
cisely in the assertion that these two
spheres of life are intimately inter-
twined under God's governance.
And at Tu B'Sehvat, when the
trees are most dormant, the tithe
must be accounted. God passes
judgment on how the people have
acted by deciding how the fruit will
grow in the coming year.

aspects of this transformation was
the need to create forms of commu-
nity independent of living in a sin-
gle land and shaping a long-time
relationship with the earth. For
them, offerings of the mouth through
words of prayer and Torah-study
replaced offerings of the mouth
through eating and celebrating
food. The festivals were recon-
ceived as moments of history and
politics, or of psychological
rebirthing; understanding them as
markers in the spiral of earth, moon
and sun became far fainter.
Tu B'Shevat, so closely tied to
growing trees and Temple tithing,
became a casualty of this new life-
path. No tithes were taken, and the
community had scattered into many
lands. No longer was there a sense

God as giver of prosperity
and protector of the poor.

Changing Times

But in the year 70 C.E., with the
Roman conquest, and the crushing
of the Bar Kochba revolt of 135
C.E., this whole pattern of Jewish
life came to an end.
These events signaled that a great
rush of new capabilities for control
and domination had come into the
world — not only military force, but
new ways of organizing politics,
economics, and science — control-
ling the earth as well as human
societies. What might be seen as
the Divine power for "Doing, Mak-
ing, Controlling," had entered
human capabilities far more fully
than ever before.
Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and
(later) Islam became such efforts to
create new forms of being, resting
and communing that drew on bibli-
cal wisdom while digesting aspects
of Hellenistic-Roman civilization. For
the rabbis, one of the crucial

that the rain and sun and fruitfulness
of a single land would be shaped
by the actions of a single people.
So for hundreds of years, this mid-
winter fiscsal new year for fruit trees
was viewed as a minor — indeed,
minimal — holiday.
Yet, close to the severed stump of
the minor festival, some tiny shoots
grew. In central and eastern Europe,
the custom arose of singing Psalm
104 and the 15 Psalms of Ascent
(Psalms 120-134), which may have
been sung by the Levites as they
ascended 15 steps into the inner
court of the Israelites at the Temple.
Along with these psalms went eat-
ing 15 different kinds of fruit —
especially some from the Land of
Israel. A strong association arose
with carob tree as the chief food of
the mystical rabbi Shimon bar Yohai
during the years he hid in a cave
from Roman soldiers.
Other favored fruits were olives,

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