Shevat 5784: On the Supposedly Sabbatean Origins of the Tu bi-Shevat Seder

🌱 The practices surrounding Tu bi-Shevat, the new year of the trees, go back to Geonic times and pick up Kabbalistic meaning before a brief entanglement with a potentially Sabbatean source.

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to the month of Shevat, which I pray will be filled with renewal and life. It’s difficult to hold onto such hope as we reach the 100th day of captivity for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, but ever more important. Today, we’ll consider the beauty and danger of renewing traditions and adding further layers of meaning to our practices, with a close look at the development of the Tu bi-Shevat seder. May we merit to see the communities of Israel’s south bloom again in green and to count the years of orla on an abundant crop of new fruit trees.

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According to Mishnah Rosh Hashana 1:1, different annual cycles have different starting points during the Jewish year. The starting point of years themselves is the first of Tishrei, better known to us as Rosh Hashana. That is, we count the years since the creation of the world (Anno Mundi), according to the Rabbinic accounting, based on the first Rosh Hashana (that’s the simple version).¹ There is also a new year for counting the annual cycle of festivals—the first of Nisan—which serves, too, as the marker for determining regnal years of kings. The new year for determining animal tithes is the first of Elul, and finally, the new year of the trees, which we mark in accordance with the position of Beit Hillel on the 15th (ט”ו) of Shevat, demarcates produce tithes. It also determines the cut-off for orla (fruit of newly planted trees, which can only be picked after completion of three years) and the Shmita (Sabbatical year of the land) and Yovel (Jubilee) years.

With the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland, and the end of Jewish sovereignty, much of the significance of the tithing and regnal years was lost. Happily, it became relevant once again as Jews were able to return to the Land of Israel, and in modernity, Tu bi-Shevat in particular has gained a number of renewed meanings and practices, many of them Kabbalistic and later Zionist. The earliest of these prohibit fasting of Tu bi-Shevat, marking it as a day of some kind of joyfulness. From the Geonic period, there are two piyutim (liturgical poems) for the occasion of Tu bi-Shevat written by Yehuda ben Hillel ha-Levi, a paytan (classical liturgical poet) from Eretz Yisrael who worked in the school of Elazar ha-Kalir. It seems that the classical paytan’s love of obscure liturgical occasions gave us these unique compositions.