Tu B'Shevat Seder

This Tu B'Shevat Program was created by:
Foundation for Family Education
Site: www.jewishfreeware.org
Email: bdlerner1@comcast.net

1. RABBINIC TEXTS

A. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai taught: If you have a fruit-tree on your hands and someone says to you: Here is the Messiah. Go and finish planting your fruit-tree just the same, and afterwards go out and welcome the Messiah. (Avot d’Rabi Natan 31).

The Tree and the Mashiach (The Messiah)
Danny Siegel

No matter what reasonable people
or foaming enthusiastic youth tells you:
that this messiah or that messiah
is imminent –
plant!
The Mashiach is in no rush.
When you have planted down the last clods of
dirt
And watered your pines, your cedars,
your gum trees and cypresses,
he will still be wherever he is supposed to be,
and more than happy to admire the sapling with
you.
Messiahs don’t come to uproot things . . . .
( A Spiritual Travel Guide, Hoffman, p. 211)

B. What was the tree from which the first Man ate? Rabbi Meir says a vine, for nothing brings greater lamenting to Man than wine does. Rabbi Nehemiah says that it was the fig, by which our forebears were both corrupted and corrected, for is it not written that Adam and Eve did sew fig-leaves? (BT Ber. and San.)

C. What was the tree whereof Adam and Eve ate? R. Meir said that it was wheat, for when a person lacks knowledge, please say, “that man has never eaten bread of wheat.” But it says “tree.” “It grew lofty like the cedars of Lebanon. . . . R. Judah bar Illa’i said: It was grapes, for it says, “their grapes are grapes of gall, they have clusters of bitterness [sorrow] into the world.” R. Abba of Acco said: It was the etrog (citron) for it was written, “and when the woman saw that it was good for food” [the only tree whose wood is as tasty as its fruit]. R. Yosi said: They were learning the obscure from the explicit and the meaning of a statement from its context [the fig tree provided leaves out of guilt]. . . . R. Azariah and R. Judah b. R. Simon in the name of R. Joshua ben Levi: Heaven forfend [that we should conjecture what the tree was]! The Holy One, blessed be He, did not and will not reveal to man what that tree was. (Midrash Rabbah 15. 8).

D. Israel is compared to the walnut-tree. We clip and prune it for its own good. Why? It is like the hair that is trimmed and is replaced, or finger-nails that we pare and new ones grow. In the same way, whatever Israel saves his labor and dedicates to works of Torah [whatever a Jew spares from his earnings and gives to charity] is to his own advantage in this world multiplying his happiness and will be a blessing for him the world to come.

E. Once while Honi HaMa’agal (the circle-maker) was walking down the road, he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked, “How many years will it take for this tree to bear fruit” The man answered that it would take 70 years. Honi said, “Are you so healthy that you expect to live that long to enjoy its fruit?” The man answered, “I found a fruitful world, because my forebears planted for me. Thus I shall do for my children.” (BT Ta’anit 23a)

F. There are four New Years. On the 1st of Nisan is the New Year for Kings and Festivals; on the 1st of Elul is the New Year for the tithe of cattle; . . . on the 1st of Tishrei is the New Year for years, for Sabbatical years, Jubilee years, for planting and for vegetables; on the 1st of Shevat is the New Year for trees, according to the view of the School of Shammai, but the School of Hillel say, on the 15th of Shevat. (Mishnah Rosh HaShanah 1:1)

G. The world is judged at four periods in the year: at Passover for grain; on Shavuot for the fruits of trees; on Rosh HaShana all the inhabitants of the world pass before Him like flocks of sheep; and on Sukkot they are judged for water. (Mishnah Rosh HaShanah 1:2)

For Seeing or Hearing Hebrew All Around Your
Danny Siegel

I’ll tell you how much I love Hebrew:
Read me anything –
Genesis
or an ad in an Israeli newspaper
and watch my face.
I will make half-sounds of ecstasy
and my smile will be so enormously sweet
you would think some angels were singing psalms
or God Himself was reciting to me.
I am crazy for her Holiness
and each restaurant’s menu in Yerushalayim
or Bialik poem
gives me peace no Dante or Milton or Goethe
could give.
I have heard Iliads of poetry
Omar Khayyam in Farsi,
and Virgil sung as if the poet himself
were coaching the reader.
and they move me –
but not like
the train schedule from Haifa to Tel Aviv
or the choppy unsyntaxed note
from a student who got half the grammar I taught
him
all wrong
but remembered to write with Alefs and Zayins and shins.
That’s the way I am.
I’d rather hear the weather report
on Kol Yisrael
than all the rhythms and music of Shakespeare.
(A Spiritual Travel Guide, Hoffman, p. 209-10)

H. The Rabbis had special blessings when you have an opportunity to walk through the fields and orchards and pick some fruit or produce.
Kama na’ah t’nuvat hasadeh zo (name the food), Barukh haMakom sheb’ra’ah.
How good is this (name of food), Blessed is God who created it

Before eating fruit from trees add:
Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam borei pri ha-etz
Blessed is Adonai, our God, for creating the fruit of the trees.

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