Tu B’Shevat

Tu B’Shevat

Innovations in Jewish Life Collections

2023

Gregg Drinkwater, Hilary Kalisman, Samira Mehta, Maggie Rosenau

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The peak moment for environmental activism in the Jewish calendar is the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, or Rosh Hashanah La’llanot (“the new year of the trees”). This annual marking of the age of trees emerges from a need to observe the biblical commandments to not eat of the fruit produced during a tree’s first three years of life and to bring fruits from a tree’s fourth year as a Temple offering (rules seen by Eco-Judaism activists as components of Biblical law promoting sustainable stewardship of the earth). Thus, the age of all fruit-bearing and agricultural trees needs to be recorded. Tu B’Shevat is the day of accounting a new “birthday” for trees.

The tree is a metaphor for God within Judaism, most notably in kabbalah, or the Jewish mystical tradition, in which God was understood as a “tree of life” rooted in heaven and extending God’s branches out into the universe. In the medieval and early modern Jewish world, Kabbalists developed traditions of celebrating this holiday with elaborate meals, or seders, in which the fruits and trees commonly grown in ancient Israel were given symbolic spiritual meaning and the links between God, creation, and the renewal of life in spring were intertwined.

This Tu B’Shevat seder is often structured as a celebratory meal similar to a Passover seder, with special symbolic foods mixed with song, blessings, and Jewish learning. Celebrating and blessing the fruits of the earth responds to a Jewish teaching that “one who enjoys the delights of the world without reciting a blessing is called a thief.” In other words, the Tu B’Shevat seder, and other moments of highlighting and blessing food in the Jewish tradition, emphasized mindful eating and respect for that which sustains life.

Today, Tu B’shevat functions as a sort of Jewish “Arbor Day” and has increasingly taken on significance as a day to reflect on the links between Judaism and environmentalism. The IJL collections here at CU Boulder hold multiple items emerging from Tu B’shevat celebrations in Jewish communities throughout the United States.