Some years ago a non-Jewish co-worker asked me how important a holiday Hanukkah is, and I replied that Hanukkah had all the importance of Tu B'shevat. Well, my co-worker became fascinated with Tu B'shevat. He put up a grease board on his desk announcing the number of shopping days to Tu B'shevat and, when the day finally came, the message on his board proclaimed "Happy Tu B'shevat." Years later, my co-worker has retired, but we still send Happy Tu B'Shevat greetings to each other every Tu B'Shevat.
So, what is Tu B'shevat?
Tu B'shevat is the 15th day of the Jewish lunar calendar month of Shevat. This year the 15th day of Shevat is Wednesday night January 15th and Thursday January 16th. But why is the 15th day of Shevat different from the 14th or 16th day of Shevat? What is this minor holiday all about? The answer lies below the orange squiggly.
The Mishnah, Rosh Hashanah 1:1, states:
There are four new year days. The first day of the month of Nisan is the new year for kings and for festivals. The first day of the month of Elul is the new year for the tithing of cattle. However, Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Simeon say, "the first day of the month of Tishrei." The first day of Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah) is the new year for determining the years, for the Sabbatical years, and for jubilee years, for planting of trees, and for tithing of vegetables. The first day of the month of Shevat is the new year for trees according to the ruling of the House of Shammai, but the House of Hillel places it on the 15th of that month.
Ok, what does all this mean? Most of us, Jews and non-Jews alike, are familiar with Rosh Hashanah, but what are these other three new year days? I won't go through this all and just hit the highlights. According to the rabbis, the ancient Kings of Israel and Judea reckoned the length of their reigns by the number of first days of Nisan in their reign. Thus, if the king was crowned on the last day of Adar (the month before Nisan) the king had already ruled for one year on the first full day of his reign. So when we read in the Bible, Second Kings 17:1 that "Hoshea son of Elah became king over Israel in Samaria for nine years," according to the Mishnah, this means that there were nine first days of Nisan while he was king. Whether the ancient kings actually counted their reigns this way is anybody's guess - the Mishnah was written almost 800 years after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and ended the Judean monarchy, but the rabbis were sure this is how the ancient kings calculated the length of their reigns.
The first of Elul is the new year for tithing cattle (with two rabbis dissenting): Leviticus 27:32 states:
All tithes of the herd or the flock, of all that passes under the shepherd's staff, every tenth one shall be holy to the Lord.
The shepherd or cattle or sheep owner then takes the tithed sheep and cattle to be sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem. In another part of the Talmud, the rabbis state that the tithing must be done among animals born during the same year, and this Mishnah states that all cattle and sheep born from the first of Elul to the last day of Av in the following year are considered born in the same year and are separately tithed. Of course, this has zero application since the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.
Which brings us to Tu B'shevat, the 15th of Shevat, with Rabbi Shammai dissenting and arguing the correct day is the 1st of Shevat. Note: Throughout the Talmud Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai argued over just about everything, and poor Rabbi Shammai lost every single argument! But back to Leviticus, this time at chapter 19, lines 23-25:
When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God.
So how did the ancient Hebrews calculate the age of their trees to determine when the tree was four years old and they had to bring all the fruit to the Temple, and when the tree was five years old and they could finally eat all the fruit? The answer - the number of years since planting that the tree has passed through the 15th of Shevat. If the farmer planted a fruit tree on the 14th of Shevat, than the tree was considered one year old the very next day, but if the farmer planted a tree on the 15th of Shevat, the farmer would have to wait an entire year before the tree became a year old, and wait the full five years before eating the fruit. According to Rabbi Hillel, Israel's rainy season had largely passed by the 15th of Shevat, while Rabbi Shammai argued that the rainy season starts to end by the first of Shevat. Both rabbis, of course, agreed that trees grow from rain water - particularly in Israel, where there are few rivers and streams.
Somehow, unlike the first of Elul and the first of Nisan, this new year did not completely fall by the wayside after the Romans destroyed the Temple in the year 70. While this minor holiday was largely discarded by Ashkenazi Jews - those Jews living in the colder climes of northern and eastern Europe (see Jeremiah 51:27 - Ashkenaz being the Biblical name for Germany), Sephardic Jews, living in Spain and elsewhere in the warmer climes along the Mediterranean and Middle East (see Obadiah 1:20, Sepharad came to be seen as a reference to Spain), kept the holiday alive. In Germany and Poland and Russia, before the days of modern rapid transportation, Jews and non-Jews could eat only dried or preserved fruit in the winter, but in Spain, Italy, North Africa, Babylon, and Persia, the rainy winters are the heart of the growing season, and fresh fruit was abundant. Sephardic Jews began the annual custom of the Tu B'Shevat sedar, where families gathered around the table and sampled all the fresh fruits available in the markets.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the early Zionists revived Tu B'Shevat, planting trees in what was then the largely deforested section of the Turkish Empire known as Palestine. This Thursday and every Tu B'Shevat, Israeli school children will be sent on field trips to plant trees. (And please, no I-P pie fights!) In Israel and in the United States and around the world, Jewish environmentalists dedicate this day to increase environmental awareness and to urge action to halt pollution, the destruction of our forests, chemicals contaminating our water (think West Virginia) and climate change. In the southern parts of the United States, the members of some synagogues and other Jewish organizations will even be planting trees!
So Happy Tu B'Shevat!