If you were to choose a time to celebrate the new year for trees, when would you make it? Springtime, when budding leaves announce the tree’s renewal? Summertime, when trees and flowers are in full bloom?
Or how about the dreary, barren dead of winter?
Even in Eretz Yisrael, the month of Shevat is deep into the winter season—an odd time to celebrate trees. But then, there’s much that is seemingly odd about the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, starting with the premise of the day itself. A New Year just for trees? What, exactly, are we celebrating? And why the big emphasis on eating fruit? One would think decorating our homes with plants and greenery would be a more fitting way to declare our tree appreciation.
It’s no accident that Tu B’Shevat seems rooted (pun intended) in mystery. Indeed, it’s a holiday where the esoteric comes out full force: a special, kabbalah-laced Tu B’Shevat seder is held, and there are joyous songs and minhagim celebrating the fruits of our holy land. What, then, is the secret of Tu B’Shevat?
It seems clear that the message of the day is directed not toward the trees, but to us. As the pasuk in Parshat Shoftim (Devarim 20:19) states, “Ki Ha’adam eitz hasadeh.” According to the Maharal, the Torah here is homiletically comparing man to a tree. What, then, is the lesson we can take from Tu B’Shevat and apply to our own lives?
To suggest one possibility: the message is in the fruit. We look at a tree at this time of year and we see something bare, apparently lifeless. But what do we, with our limited vision, know? In reality, there is a seed inside lying frozen that is being nurtured and growing—a seed that will eventually bear fruit. So, too, there are times in our own lives when we feel frozen, barren, accomplishing nothing of significance. But growth isn’t about accomplishment; it’s about what is happening on the inside, and sincere internal growth will always bear fruit in the end. The Mishna Berura (131:31) quotes the Magen Avraham that there is a minhag to eat fruit on Tu B’Shevat—because the fruit is integral to the day. Fruit on Tu B’Shevat represents our hidden potential waiting to emerge.
Working at PUAH, I find this message particularly poignant. Every day we receive hundreds of phone calls from couples waiting desperately to produce their own “fruit.” How long will their winter last? How much time does the longed-for little neshama need to incubate before it can join them in this world?
These are the great mysteries of life that we humans are not privy to. But sometimes it is enough just to know that—as Tu B’Shevat teaches us—beneath the cold, dark earth there is hope and there is life.
By Lea P. Davidson, Puah Institute
