Tu Bishvat
This once-obscure holiday has become a focus for mystics and environmentalists alike. This holiday celebrates the life that is all around us, we recognize and appreciate the different forms of fruit that are in this world, the spiritual realms, and in ourselves.
Tu BiShvat, like Passover, takes the format of a Seder, we move through different worlds as we move through the order of the holiday.
Click on the question to be brought to the answer
What's happening this year? | What is Tu BiShavt? | Where is the Meaning?
More details will follow, check back soon to stay in the loop.A Little History | So what is Tu BiShvat and why do we celebrate it?
The 15th of the Month of Shvat, is known as Tu Bishvat. This day marks the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle. It is the new year of the trees and when their sap begins to move again.
This Holiday was initially instituted to give a mark of time so that people who tended the land could know how to count the years in the Shmita cycle, an agricultural and societal cycle of seven years which ended in a sabbatical year where all fields were not worked and all fruit was ownerless and free for the taking by all, the land was able to rest every seven years.
We eat fruit of all kinds on this holiday, celebrating the different forms fruit takes. We especially eat grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates which are fruit mentioned in the Torah. We also drink four glasses of wine or juice during the Seder, a prelude to the better know seder of Pesach or Passover.
The Mystical Meanings | Some Psycho-Spiritual Meanings and Themes
Tu BiShvat, like all other Jewish Holidays, has a myriad of themes to connect to on a psycho-spiritual level. Each holiday has the ability for interpretation and reflection. Each year the holiday can mean something else because, as the years pass we change, and how we see the holiday changes with us. Here are some themes that you may want to work with this year or in years to come.
- It is written in Deuteronomy 20:19, that man is a tree of the field. How do you relate to this idea?
- How do you relate to trees? What are some good memories you have of trees? Share them with friends and family and see what others have to share too.
- How does marking time help us see our place in the larger context of life and the world? How are we forever connected to time and how does that influence what we do?
- What fields do you work every day and every year? What would it be to not till your "soil" every seven years?
- What can the different types of fruits and trees tell you about yourself? What are the shells we put around ourselves? What are the pits we carry around? What of us do we allow to be totally soft? What parts of us are not of this world and only give scent?