New Year of the Trees

LITTLE ROCK — Members of Temple Shalom of Northwest Arkansas will celebrate Tu B’Shevat today with a fruit-filled seder. Less common than the Passover seder, this one has roots in the mystical traditions of Judaism.

In Judaism, Tu B’Shevat is known as the New Year of the Trees.

Rabbi Jacob Adler of Temple Shalom said the name simply means the 15th day of the month of Shevat and it was originally a tax deadline for the tithing of fruit.

Jewish landowners would check their crops as the deadline neared and if fruit had formed on the tree before the 15th it was tithed with the previous year’s taxes. If not yet formed, it would be added to the coming year’s total.

According to the Union for Reform Judaism, when the tithing system ended, the holiday continued as a minor festival in the spring and some began marking the day by eating fruits from Israel.

“The basic custom was to eat the fruits of the seven species described in the Bible,” said Rabbi David Lipper of Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock. “Those are wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.”

From that tradition, the custom of having a seder, or ordered meal, featuring fruits gained popularity.

In the 16th century, Jewish mystics tied the holiday to their concept of the Tree of Life.

“The mystics have this concept of the Tree of Life and this tree has the attributes of God arranged in a pictorial tree form,” Adler said.

The tree includes such attributes as wisdom,power, majesty and mercy and the mystics developed a seder featuring fruit to symbolize the essence of God, as well as to celebrate the seasons of the year.

“It’s a way to celebrate this occasion and to be more aware of God’s presence in the world,” Adler said. “When you do it right, when you look at things, just ordinary things like the bushes in the garden, you are trying to see the divine power making each one of them grow.”

Although the seder was developed centuries ago, it’s a relatively new tradition for many congregations, Adler said.

“Until maybe 20 years ago it was celebrated mostly by the shephardim, mostly of a mystical inclination,” he said. “Most of us never heard of it but it has become more widespread and now it’s very common.”

The structure of Tu B’Shevat seders varies but a popular version includes 30 fruits and nuts, as well as four cups of wine or grape juice. The members of Temple Shalom will have this type of seder.

The fruits are divided into three categories: fruit with a hard, inedible outer shell or rind, such as pomegranates or coconuts; fruit with an edible exterior and an inedible pit, such as dates or olives; and those that are entirely edible, such as grapes and berries.

Adler said categories are tied to mystical concepts of the four worlds - making, formation, creation and emanation. During the seder each category includes the drinking of wine or grape juice and the eating of various fruits and nuts, except for emanation.

“The highest level is too high to be symbolized by any kind of fruit,” Adler said.

The wine is used to represent the season of the year, starting with white for winter, white with a drop of red for spring, half white and half red for summer and red with a drop of white for fall.

Finding 30 different types of fruit and nuts to fit the categories isn’t easy and members sometime resort to unusual choices, such as lychees and longan fruit from Asia.

“You have to have fruit that grows on a tree as defined in Jewish law,” Adler said.

That means it must persist season after season and must have a woody stem and be more than a few inches tall. That means strawberries don’t count, nor do tomatoes.

The first category often includes lots of nuts, Adler said, but most citrus fruit doesn’t qualify because the peel can be eaten, such as orange or lemon zest. One that can be included is the pomelo, which has a thin rind and a very thick, bitter membrane surrounding the fruit.

Adler said in the second portion, the seder will include peaches, plums, cherries, olives, mangoes and similar foods with pits. The third, in which the entire fruit is edible, will include grapes, apples and pears. The final portion includes drinking from the fourth cup of wine.

Lipper of Congregation B’nai Israel said Tu B’Shevat is one of the four new years within Judaism but it’s not a holiday with roots in the Bible.

“It’s from the Talmud and there’s really only a very small reference to this New Year for the Trees,” Lipper said.

Lipper said he likes reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein on the holiday.

“That’s what Tu B’Shevat is about - understanding what our trees give us.”

The members of Congregation B’nai Israel aren’t having a seder this year as they often do. Instead they will have a guest speaker from the Jewish National Fund, an organization in Israel responsible for planting trees. In more recent times the holiday has become like a Jewish Arbor Day, with an emphasis placed on planting trees, especially in Israel.

“He’ll talk about what he’s doing, projects for the fund and hopefully we’ll collect a little money and plant a few trees,” Lipper said. “We have a responsibility to the land.”