The New Year of the Trees

[dorchadas]

Sunday was Tu B'Shevat (ט״ו בשבט, "The 15th of Shevat"), also called "The New Year of the Trees." In modern terms it's a lot like Arbor Day, with planting trees and thinking about environmentalism and conservation and so on, but originally it was for tax purposes--re: Leviticus 19:23-25, there needed to be a way to determine how old trees are, and so all trees are one year older on Tu B'Shevat. Religious communities in Israel (and probably elsewhere?) still uphold this law, but I don't own any fruit trees. However, five hundred years ago the kabbalists decided to model a Tu B'Shevat Seder on the Passover Seder, including four cups of wine, songs, and discussion of the multilayered nature of reality, and when I posted about how it might be too much kabbalah for people and my friends were all like "WHAT, MYSTICAL TREE SHIT!??" I decided to throw a Seder after all.

Here's the table setup:

Divisions provided by Waddle Dee, Waddle Doo, and Kirby, in ascending order of spiritual elevation.

These four divisions represent the four levels of reality: עשיה Assiyah, יצירה Yetzirah, בריאה B'riyah, and אצילות Atzilut, respectively the worlds of Action (The physical world, the season of winter, the element of Earth, the concepts of groundedness and protection), of Emotion (The internal world of the heart, the season of spring, the element of Air, the concepts of growth, inspiration, and striving), of Thought (The internal world of the mind, the season of summer, the element of Water, the concepts of creation and independence), and of Spirit (The world of the soul, the season of autumn, the element of Fire, the concepts of completion and unity). Respectively, the fruit has a hard exterior but a soft interior, a soft exterior but a hard interior, a soft both interior and exterior, and does not exist--at the level Atzilut, no sustenance is needed because all is unified with Ein Sof (אין סוף, "Without End").

...and that's about the limit of my understanding, because I've done very little formal study of kabbalah and absolutely none in a religious context. So instead, a lot of what we talked about was the concepts of place and home. What does it mean to be home, can you have a community that doesn't have a location (physical or virtual) to gather, that sort of thing. We had repeatedly diversions into other content, puns based on bits of the haggadah, and at one point there was an extended Talmudic discussion until we realized that all the non-Jews in attendance were getting bored because they couldn't contribute--it started with gothiklezmer bringing up how much of an asshole Rabbi Gamliel was based on a variety of things, but mostly on his behavior to his fellow rabbi who had to work for a living:

Rabbi Gamliel: "From the walls of your house it is apparent that you are a blacksmith"
Rabbi Yehoshua: "Woe unto a generation that you are its leader as you are unaware of the difficulties of Torah scholars, how they make a living and how they feed themselves."

and then when I heard about rabbis being dicks to each other, I asked if it was better or worse than the rabbi hiding under his mentor's bed and then criticized his mentor when he was having sex with his wife:

"Rav said to him: Kahana, you are here? Leave, as this is an undesirable mode of behavior. Rav Kahana said to him: It is Torah, and I must learn."

We had a great time talking about all of this, but I guess it sounds ridiculous if you don't have any background.

And then we ate! We didn't know the melodies to any of the songs, but hillel.wayne led us in a slam poetry version of The Tree Song (actual melody within), and then I served dinner, which was mostly Israeli breakfast just like I ate with thosesocks over Thanksgiving weekend. gothiklezmer brought a fruit kugel and meowtima made mango lassis, and people ate and told me how much they liked the food and how they had a wonderful time.

There was one other event that didn't get as big of a place as I would have liked. I saw an article on Twitter about a custom called Malida practiced by South Asian Jews, including an invitation for other Jews around the world to participate in order to spread their customs to Judaism as a whole. I'm definitely in favorite of diaspora diversity, so I ordered some poha and, after the Seder was over, I whipped up the dish:

It's supposed to look like Mount Sinai and due to the dish I put it in, it's buried under a mountain of fruit, but everyone who tried it liked it. It's a sweet rice dish, like a rice porridge but a little crunchy due to the rice not being boiled, and the fruit added some crunch as well.

There's a ceremony to go with it, but since we were done with the Seder before I made it (since I didn't have time to make it beforehand), and since I wasn't familiar with it, we didn't do it. Since it had prayers to Elijah, maybe we should have at least sung Eliyahu haNavi. More about the ceremony here.

The haggadah we used is online here, if you want to see it!

Chag Sameach, and happy New Year of the Trees!

Comments

[corvi]

I saw the holiday on my calendar - trees and food and ritual, some of my favourite things - and was looking forward to whatever you'd say about it. Much enjoyed reading this and following links, thank you.

[dorchadas]

Oh hooray!! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. And I'm extra-happy to know that someone was anticipating me writing about it!