Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Tu BiShvat, Top Ten Tu BiShvat Facts
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Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- Tu BiShvat is a date (not the type you can eat, though that is connected!).
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- Tu BiShvat is called Rosh HaShana (for trees) in the Mishna.
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- Beit Shammai taught that the date of the new year for trees should be on the first day of Shvat (which would have meant the festival would have become known as Alef BiShvat!).
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- Tu BiShvat is not mentioned in the Torah, only in the Talmud.
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- The original purpose of Tu BiShvat was a tax deadline (for tithing). Only later was it developed into a festival to celebrate trees and (eventually) the environment.
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- The almond tree is the first to blossom in Israel, around the time of Tu BiShvat, and this is considered a very early sign of the oncoming spring.
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- It is a Torah law that you are not allowed to cut down a fruit-bearing tree.
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- The Talmud describes a beautiful custom in which a tree is planted when a baby is born (a cedar tree for a baby boy and a pine tree for a baby girl). When the baby grows up and gets married, the tree’s wood is used for the Ḥuppa (Gittin 57a).
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- There is a custom to eat extra fruit on Tu BiShvat, especially fruit from the land of Israel, and some have the custom to eat a type of fruit they have not eaten that season (so that they can make the blessing Sheheḥeyanu).
Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023
- The famous kabbalist teacher Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (the Arizal) had the custom to eat fifteen different varieties of fruit on Tu BiShvat.