Tu Bishvat is a holiday intimately connected to the agricultural cycle of the Land of Israel.

Falling in the middle of the Jewish month of Shvat, the 15th day of the month is the New Year of Trees. Today, this holiday is often celebrated by planting saplings and also by participating in a seder-meal that echoes the Passover seder, in which the produce of trees, including fruits and nuts, are eaten.

An Ancient Holiday

Tu B'Shvat is an ancient holiday. Its original purpose was to calculate the age of the trees for tithing. Leviticus 19:23-25 states that no fruit may be taken from a tree during its first three years of life. Fruit from the fourth year was given to God as a burnt offering, and in the fifth year the fruit could be eaten. Trees aged one year on Tu B'Shvat, so in many ways Tu B'Shvat is the birthday of the trees.

Ideas and Beliefs

The Bible expresses a great reverence for fruit trees as symbols of God's bounty and beneficence. Special laws were formulated to protect fruit trees in times of war and ensure that the produce of trees would not be picked until the trees were mature enough and tithes were given from them. In order to calculate the age of trees, both for determining when they could be harvested and when they were to be tithed for the Temple, the Talmudic Rabbis established the 15th day (Tu) of the month of Shvat as the official "birthday" of trees.

Subsequent to the destruction of the Temple, Tu Bishvat lost much of its relevance, but in the middle ages it was rediscovered by Jewish mystics. In the modern period it has enjoyed another revival as a holiday that links Jews with the land of Israel and as a Jewish celebration of the environment.

Tu B'Shvat marks the middle of Israel's rainy season, when the fruit trees begin to awake from their winter dormancy. The name literally means "the 15 ^th (day) of (the Hebrew month) Shvat", and falls between mid-January and mid-February. In many regions of Israel, Tu B'Shvat is marked by white flowering almond trees, the first fruit trees to blossom in Israel.

Tu B'shvat was never a holiday in biblical times. It was the cut-off date for the annual taxation of fruit – the 10% tithe that was paid to Temple servants (the Cohens and Levites) and to the poor. It is a period when there were no fruit on trees that grew in Israel in ancient times and therefore a logical date to establish the start of a new "fiscal year for fruit." The agricultural significance of Tu B'Shvat was lost when the Romans conquered Israel, destroyed the Second Temple, and scattered the Jews to the far-flung lands of the Diaspora

With the establishment of the State of Israel, Tu B'Shvat was recreated as a tree-planting holiday. Today, many hold a Tu B'Shvat seder – similar to that of Passover, to mark an ecological connection and awareness of the cycle of nature in Israel.

Practices

When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, Tu Bishvat served as the day on which farmers offered the first fruits of the trees they planted, after the trees had turned four years old. The following Tu Bishvat signified when the farmers were allowed to begin making use of the produce of the trees they planted, whether for personal or economic reasons.

In the middle ages, the Jewish mystics of Safed developed a ritual meal celebrated on Tu Bishvat that was modeled on the Passover seder. Four cups of wine were drunk and seven "fruits" symbolic of those of the Holy Land were eaten. With the rise of Zionism in the late 19th century, Tu Bishvat was rediscovered as a celebration that links the Jews with their land. The holiday became one of rededication to the ecology of the denuded land, with the planting of trees taking center stage in the celebration. Jews outside of Israel contribute money to plant trees there and/or plant trees in their own communities.

With the increased concern for the environment in recent years, Tu Bishvat has taken on an additional meaning as a day on which Jews can express and act on their concern for the ecological well-being of the world in which we live. This has led to the rediscovery of the mystical Tu Bishvat seder, now transformed into a celebration of God's bounty and the environment.