Tu B’Shevat is considered the New Year of the Trees, and marks the start of spring in Israel, when trees begin to bloom after a long, cold winter. Tu B’Shevat is often referred to as Jewish Arbor Day, but with today’s keen environmental awareness, it has also become something of a Jewish Earth Day.
Today, many people mark this holiday by planting saplings and participating in a meal that evokes the Passover seder, where fruits, nuts, and wine or grape juice are on the menu. Besides the seder, many families spend Tu B'Shevat planting a tree, working in a garden, eating special fruit, or doing something else to show some love for trees and the earth.
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- Tu B’Shevat is celebrated on the 15th of Shevat on the Hebrew calendar. “Tu” is Hebrew for 15.
- Tu B’Shevat is the birthday for trees and was originally meant to help farmers determine when the trees were mature enough for their fruits to be harvested.
- The Rabbis picked the 15th of Shevat because they believed that the climate in Israel was them suitable for planting and harvesting trees.
- Fruit trees are considered important in the Torah because of their symbolism for life, growth and nourishment. (Have you read The Apple Tree's Discovery by Peninnah Schram?)
- Parsley is often planted in areas of the world where it is too cold to plant trees during Tu B’Shevat. The parsley will often be used a couple months later on the Passover seder plate.
- Traditionally, a cedar tree would be planted for a baby boy and a cypress tree for a baby girl.
- There’s a ban against cutting down fruit trees during a battle siege in the Torah.
- When a fruit tree turned four, its fruits were given to the Temple Priests as a tax.
- The importance of Tu B’Shevat fell with the destruction of the second Temple (and there were no more Priests to receive the tax), but rose again with the Kabbalists during the 15th century.
- The Kabbalists created the Tu B’Shevat seder during the medieval period and modeled it after the Passover seder.