Spirituality

HOLIDAY 101

Tu B'Shevat

It's the Jewish New Year of the Trees.

Elizabeth Applebaum
Special to the Jewish News

hen: This year, Tu b'Shevat
begins at sunset on Wednesday,
Jan. 19, and continues till sunset
Thursday, Jan. 20.

W

What the name means:
In Hebrew, every letter of the alphabet has
a numerical value. "Tu" in Hebrew is made
up of the letters tet, which has a value of
nine, and vav, which has a value of six. B
means "in" and Shevat is the name of the
month, so Tu b'Shevat literally means "15
in Shevat," or "the 15th day of the month
of Shevat."
• Other names: Jewish Arbor Day and
Jewish New Year of the Trees. Tu b'Shevat
also is known as Chamisha-Asar b'Shevat,
which in Hebrew means the 15th of
Shevat. Chamisha-Asar is Hebrew for "15."

Why Ws Important:
This holiday is all about tithing, a manda-
tory contribution (or tax) paid by farmers
in the Land of Israel, calculated as a per-
centage of the harvest. (Here, the reference
is to Halachah, Jewish law, and not civil
law of the modern State of Israel.)
One of the agricultural tithes is in the
form of fruit grown on trees. As in any
economic system, the tax year must be
identified; and for tree-borne fruit the
year begins on the 15th of Shevat.
Furthermore, none of its fruit can be
used during the first three years after a
tree is planted. For this purpose, the 15th
of Shevat is also the cut-off date for calcu-
lating the age of the tree grown in Israel;
on Tu b'Shevat, a tree is considered to have
aged one year — even if a farmer plants
a tree on the 14th of Shevat, on the 15th
it is one year old. The Talmud describes
the 15th of Shevat as a new year (Rosh
Hashanah) with reference to trees —
hence, the new year of the trees.

How its observed:
There are no prayers for Tu b'Shevat, but
the penitential Tachanun prayer is not
said; and if Tu b'Shevat is on Shabbat, the
Av-Harachamim prayer is not recited.
Throughout much of Jewish history,
Tu b'Shevat was only a bookkeeping day,
part of the agricultural fiscal year. During
the Middle Ages, the Kabbalists, or Jewish
mystics, took a cue from the talmudic

Children planting trees in pre-state Israel

description of Tu b'Shevat as a "Rosh
Hashanah" and celebrated the day in ways
similar to the Rosh Hashanah of the cal-
endar year.
Taking customs from Passover, they
established a Tu b'Shevat seder, a feast
of fruits along with four cups of wine,
accompanied by the appropriate blessings.
The famed Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Luria
(1534-1572) ate 15 fruits for the 15th of
Shevat.
Some have revived the kabbalistic Tu
b'Shevat seder and published guidebooks,
similar to the Pesach Haggadah. Some
Chassidic Jews pickle or candy the etrog
used on Sukkot and eat it on Tu b'Shevat.
Other Jews see significance in Tu b'Shevat
as a time of new beginnings, and thus an
opportunity to embark on projects of self-
improvement.
The religious Zionist movement viewed
Tu b'Shevat as symbolic of the revival of
the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. In
1890, one of the movement's leaders, Rabbi

Ze'ev Yavetz, took his students to plant trees
in the Jewish settlement of Zichron Yaacov
during Tu b'Shevat. The idea caught on,
especially with the Jewish National Fund,
which was founded in 1901 to purchase
and reclaim land in the Land of Israel.
For more than 100 years, on every Tu
b'Shevat the JNF holds a day of tree plant-
ing in Israel in which thousands of Israelis
and tourists take part. (It will be especially
important this year, in the aftermath of
the huge forest fires that hit northern
Israel.) Outside of Israel, on Tu b'Shevat
the JNF distributes its familiar blue-and-
white coin boxes, especially in Jewish
schools.
The JNF has planted hundreds of mil-
lions of trees in the rocky soil of the
ancient Jewish homeland. In Israel, the
almond tree blossoms on Tu b'Shevat and
has become symbolic of the day.
For Jews around the world, Tu b'Shevat
is a day to eat fruit grown on trees, with
the opportunity to recite the blessing,

boreh pri ha-etz ("who brings forth the
fruit of trees").
In Israel, some Hebrew names for trees
are used as given and last names, such
as Oren ("pine"), Erez ("cedar"), Alon
("oak"). Many Jews whose roots are in
Europe have last names derived from the
various species of trees. This is especially
true among Jews whose names end in the
German word baum ("tree").
Tu b'Shevat is an opportunity to teach
and learn the ecological importance of
trees. Humans breathe in oxygen and
breathe out carbon dioxide. Trees absorb
carbon dioxide and release oxygen.
Trees provide food, fuel, medicines
(aspirin was first derived from the wil-
low) and useful materials (lumber, paper,
rubber, oil). Trees stabilize soil and pre-
vent erosion and flooding. In spite of
their roots growing into sewer lines, trees
planted in urban areas keep the summer
heat off of streets, sidewalks, houses and
buildings.

,IN

January 13 • 2011

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