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Tu Bishevat - Fruit for Thought

 by Rabbi Goldie Milgram, author of

Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice, Meaning and Mitzvah, & Make Your Own Bar/Bat Mitzvah

Until recently Tu Bishevat (the 15^th of Shevat) was a little known festival. Shevat is the lunar month that falls around January most years, the month the Israelites established which trees were of an age to be tithed a percentage of their fruit. Tithing is based on a spiritual principle that you really don't own the land or its fruits, what comes is a gift of Creation, and a percentage was given in gratitude in days of yore to the Temple. Today, the equivalent value is given to support Jewish scholars and educational institutions. It is customary to also partake of a fruit you have not yet eaten during the year at this time, to pause, bless, and savor the special moments that are part of our contact with nature. With the re-establishment of Israel as a sovereign nation, having a feast of Israeli fruits where ever in the world you may live has developed as part of this festival. The planting of seedlings to reforest Israel is an another custom which has become attached to this holiday.

The Kabbalists built additional meaning onto this holiday for the trees. Looking back at the episode of Adam eating from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, they developed a holistic ritual for the healing of consciousness, called a Tu Bi-Shevat Seder. This seder is an evening of progressive ritual intending to yield a feeling of wholeness to those who partake. This is the kind of wholeness depicted in the Garden of Eden before knowledge got in the way of the sweet state of just being alive.

Journal from the Journey

Cape Town, South Africa, my husband's country of birth. Sandwiched between the eerily flat-topped Table Mountain and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans is the beautiful Cape Peninsula with more species of flora and fauna than the entire continent of Europe. Architecturally stunning homes overlook the seething seas, lush vineyards ascend the mountains. On each visit I stand agape within Kirstenbosch Gardens which guard the remaining species of trees that go back to primordial times, a vision of the Garden of Eden.

This visit I'm picked up by my dynamic colleague, Rabbi David Hoffman, head of the Cape Town Reform congregations. It is Tu Bi-Shevat and he has promised something unique will take place. Outside in the waiting mini-van is something surprising to start with, the Cape Town rabbis of every denomination are waiting inside. Our mystery trip takes us into the hills, it seems all are in on the surprise and won't tell me where we are going.

We stop for refreshment and each of us is presented with an overflowing platter of fifteen fresh fruits of the season. The fruit in South Africa exceeds imagination in diversity and sweetness. I'd never tasted fresh lichees before, or Cape gooseberries, or Hanepoot grapes which redefine nectar, fresh, soft, sweet loquats, the papaya and mango - ripe to perfection. We do not dive into the platters, rather we eat and bless in accord with the order of the Tu Bishvat seder of the Kabbalists and muse on the metaphors and rise with the spirituality each level offers:

Assiyah Level: Tree fruits with a rind or shell

Yetzirah Level: Tree fruits with a soft exterior and seed within

Beriyah Level: Totally edible tree fruits

Atzilut Level: Tree fruits of entrancing fragrance

Each course of the ritual begins with a glass of wine or fruit - white, then pink, then light red, then full red, winter, spring, summer, fall. We bless the wine and the fruits each in their turn and discuss the spiritual meaning of the symbols. Rabbi Sherman, well into his nineties, is the emeritus Reform rabbi, he gets into the spirit of the first level of fruit by suggesting that we look at the polarities of having a tough skin. We take each other higher and deeper. My orthodox colleague, Rabbi Steinhorn, expands upon a mystical passage from the Zohar between courses of wine and fruit.

This is the way a Tu Bi-Shevat seder is meant to be!

Everyone back in the van? We're off to our next stop on the mystery trip? Apparently they have yet another surprise in store.

Tu Bi-Shevat is meant to help repair this world, to realize that it once was the Garden of Eden, to experience that awareness so that we will want to maintain it, to restore it. South Africa could have been such a garden, but it is not. To give this Tu Bi-Shevat meaning beyond the ceremonial, my colleagues take me to the edge of the other South Africa, Cape Flats. The Flats are townships of hundreds of thousands of families living in tiny houses and shacks of corrugated metal sheets in abject poverty and terrible internal turmoil.

Gangs, addictions and an out of control AIDS epidemic are among the conditions that plague these humans who were once required to live here under the racist policies of Apartheid, and now in a climate of 60-80% unemployment have nowhere to go.

Though I want to explore, they assure me it is not safe to stop for long. Our ride continues and next we approach a forest. Why are we coming here?

The sign over the entrance reads The Nelson Mandela Peace Forest and below it something to the effect of, "a project of the Cape Town Jewish National Fund." As a child in Hebrew school we received card board circles with slots for coins to be hung on a tree in the school court yard. A filled circle would make the planting of a tree possible in Israel, such work is assigned to the Jewish National Fund, JNF.

Inside a team of local women meet and escort us to hear a children's choir. The center director explains the program. Here people from the flats can come to learn agriculture, to help reforest the devastated land, teens receive mediation training skills. One by one the mothers get up to explain the hope this project has brought into their lives for their children's futures.

The Cape Town rabbis tell me the JNF Peace Forest project was originally developed by a volunteer, a Cape Town dentist. It was considered radical at first and now is embraced, a small God-spark in a seemingly helpless situation.

Each of us make our own donation and the local rabbis recommit to bringing notice of this project to their congregations as a serious part of the Jewish community's tzedakah, "charity/justice" commitment to humanity. This was the perfect completion of the Tu Bi-Shevat seder, expressing true spirituality, a going beyond the self and planting a tikkun, a "repair" that touches creation back to the beginning of time.

Blessings over the wine

Traditional: Baruh atah Adonai Eloheynu melh ha-olam

Boray p’ree ha-gafen - Creator of the fruits of the vine.

New gender neutral formulation introduced by Rabbi Marcia Falk in her prayer book published in 1996, The Book of Blessings:

N’vareyh et eyn ha-hayim matzmihat p’ri hageh-fen.

Let us bless the source of life that ripens fruit on the vine.

Blessings over fruits from trees

Baruh atah Adonai Eloheynu melh ha-olam

boray p’ree ha-eitz - Creator of the fruit of the tree.

And the blessing for reaching a new season, the Sheh-heh-heh-yanu, made possible to say because you will be having at least one fruit for the first time this season. [See page ].

1. Prepare a plate of fruits according to the Tu Bi-Shevat categories above.

2. Invite family or friends to explore the metaphorical significance of the fruit as you come to each category. Here is a clue: The mystics say "a person is like a tree."

3. Participants might be assigned a fruit from Torah and research some scientific facts about it as well as share the stories in which the fruit appears. The pomegranate, for example, appears in the embroidery on the robe of the high priest between sewed on golden bells. This fruit is said to have 613 seeds, one for each type of mitzvah in the tradition. Here's a challenge for you: What is the fruit Eve gives Adam to eat? (No, the obvious answer is not correct.)

4. Say the blessing for your fruit, and ever so slowly savor its taste. You might model for young people present the act of savoring, and have them mirror this back to you. In our nano-second driven society, savoring is become a lost part of the art of being human.

5. At the end of your mini Tu Bi-Shevat Seder you might read this parable of a tree, inviting teachers and parents to be honored by this reading:

Rabbi Nahman once asked Rabbi Isaac to bless him as they were saying goodbye. Rabbi Isaac replied: "Let me give you a parable:

A person had traveled a long way in the desert

and was feeling hungry, weary and thirsty.

Suddenly the traveler came upon a tree,

covered with broad leaves that provided shade,

filled with fruits that were sweet,

its shade pleasant,

and a stream of water was flowing beneath it.

The traveler rested ate of its fruits,

rested in its shade and drank of the water.

About to leave, the traveler turned to the tree and said:

"Tree, oh tree, with what shall I bless you?

Shall I say to you: May your fruits be sweet? They are sweet already.

That your shade be pleasant? It is already pleasant.

That a stream of water may flow beside you? A brook does flow by you.

Therefore, I say, may it be God's will, that all the shoots taken from you be like you."

So it is with you, Rabbi Isaac said to Rabbi Nahman.

What can I wish you? More Torah-wisdom? This you have amply already.

Riches? You are, fortunately, well-off.

Children? You [are a teacher], you have children.

Therefore I say: May it be God's will that all your children will be like you! [Talmud, Ta'anit 5b-6a]

More Tub Bi-Shevat Thoughts and Traditions

Written with blessings for joy and increasing peace on our planet. Reb Goldie