The Kabbalists defined the world of Atzilut as the world of pure spirit, so its symbolic food is no food at all, only what sustains us spiritually. We all have relationships with both the physical and the intangible. The fourth world is about our highest selves, when we are not eating, when we are not thinking of our bodies, when we have all the tools to bring in pure holiness in each moment. To be sure, we can be holy while eating and while grounded in our bodies. However, the fourth world, according to the Kabbalists, is the world that is floating above our earthly desires; a world in which we nourish our hearts and our souls. In an attempt to gain an understanding of the divine implications of this realm, we do as our ancestors did and look to the tree as a symbol of life – a life of ecological symbiosis, a life of replenishment, and a life of balance and equilibrium. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to cultivate a sense of balance and calm, a sense of resilience, and a sense of higher purpose.
How did an arcane tax day for agrarian tithing become a festive birthday of the trees? The history of Tu B’Shvat reveals how
this malleable holiday has been adapted by Jewish tradition in different eras for different purposes.
Tu B’Shvat first appears in Jewish literature in the Mishnah, where it is mentioned (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1) in a list of four separate new year’s festivals as the new year for the trees, to take place on the fifteenth day of the month of Shvat. Its significance stemmed from clarifying, for an agrarian society, when the tax year began and ended so that tithes to the Temple for the annual harvest could be contributed appropriately. Jewish tradition, of course, is not only practical but also steeped in meaning-making. So when the Second Temple—the locus of tithing—was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the Jewish people lost sovereignty over the land of Israel, one of many questions that arose was: what now is Tu B’Shvat?
The answer to that question remained dormant, as did Tu B’Shvat as a holiday, until the mystic Kabbalists of Tzvat revivified the holiday some 1500 years later. Under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the kabbalists created a new Tu B’Shvat tradition with the multi-sensory seder we will experience today. (We will elaborate more on this seder and its mystical meaning later, in the section entitled “How to Use This Haggadah”.)
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Tu B’Shvat was adopted by early Zionists as a day to celebrate Jewish connection to our ancestral homeland. JNF (Jewish National Fund) pushkes encouraged Jews across the globe to donate money for planting trees in Israel, and to this day, American and Israeli school kids celebrate Tu B’Shvat by planting trees. The environmental movement of the 1960s-70s provided yet another context for understanding Tu B’Shvat, emphasizing the natural connections between “the birthday of the trees,” conservation, and environmental stewardship.
These multiple interpretations of the meaning of Tu B’Shvat give us, today, encouragement to continue shaping its connection with our contemporary context.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
The Kabbalists defined the world of Yetzirah as a world of inwardness, emotion, and a sense of feeling. The need for protection and reinforcement is an inner matter of the core, of the heart. It is represented by fruits with edible outer flesh and pithy, inedible cores: apricots, avocados, cherries, dates, mangos, olives, peaches, and plums.
While we endured so much communal fragmentation and hatred this past year, we also experienced new moments of profound connection and solidarity, from spontaneous rooftop celebrations of first responders to the multi-racial peaceful demonstrations across the country in the summer of 2020.
May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, with the opportunity and the courage to expand our capacity for openness and empathy and thereby rebuild the communities we need.
We each find a fruit from the second category, remove the pit or core, say the blessing together, and then eat.
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri haetz.
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, creator of fruit of the tree.
On this next stop in our journey, we expand our focus from our own individual communities to the natural world as a whole. Our physical planet is made up of finite resources, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we don’t destroy it. Interestingly, there was not always a word for this concept of sustainability in Hebrew.
Recently, the term kayamut was adopted, which literally means “foreverness” or “in perpetuity.” The human-caused climate crisis, however, shows that we have forsaken our duty to act as stewards of the environment. Scientific consensus has made clear that fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and food shortages will ravage our lands, our seas, and our lives if we don’t take urgent action to stop our wanton destruction of our environment. Ecosystems, species, habitats, and natural resources will wither away, never to be restored.
In this section we will think about our relationship with the natural world. We are guided by the questions:
What more can I do, as an individual, to ensure that our planet remains a healthy place for generations and generations to come?
What sacrifices am I willing to make to my individual consumption of resources, and what sacrifices should we as a society make, to stop the climate crisis and restore the natural world?
This cup of wine is partly white and mostly red. In the heat of summer our tree has rooted herself firmly in the earth, grown into its full being and is blooming. The shade, wood, herbs and flowers that are her simple and modest gifts to the earth and humankind allow us to now see her and embrace her as a provider.
We each add more red wine to the mixture of wine that is already in our cup, so that the cup is again full. We say the blessing together, and then drink all of the wine in the cup except for a small drop.
In so doing, we can ask:
What does abundance mean to us?
What is the symbolism of refraining from finishing our cups?
The Blessing Over the Third Cup We each fill our cup with mostly red wine and some white, and bless together:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri hagafen.
For the Kabbalists Briyah is closest to the pure spirit of the three lower worlds. It is represented by any fruits that are edible throughout. Here no protective shells, neither internal nor external, are needed. These symbolic fruits may be eaten entirely and include: blackberries, blueberries, figs, grapes, kiwis, kumquats, raspberries, star fruit, and strawberries. Like these fruits, the climate crisis can be addressed directly and without hesitation. While climate change can be cause for despair, it also can galvanize us to take the actions we long have kept dormant. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to become inspired by young climate activists like Greta Thunberg or Isha Clarke, to listen to the sound advice of scientists and policy experts, and to take audacious actions-—individually and communally—to restore the world God has entrusted to us.
We each choose a fruit from the third category, say the blessing together, and then eat it:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri ha etz.
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, creator of fruit of the tree.
Now we arrive at the fourth and final level on our journey, the world of spirit. For the Kabbalists, this level of pure spirituality
is the highest rung on the ladder of creation. Just like with spirituality in general, this concept might be beautiful to some but far too esoteric to others. Our spiritual selves, too, have been through a roller-coaster of ups and downs over this past year. Some of us have been racked with theological angst about how a loving God could bring about such a catastrophic plague or enable so much hatred and misery. How can we channel the hope and resilience we need to move forward when our reserves feel so depleted?
In this section we will think about our relationship with spirituality. We are guided by the questions:
Why do we make blessings? What do they do for us? What do they do for God? What does it mean to me to live a spiritual life? What additional tools or resources do I need to access a deeper level of spirituality?
The Kabbalists defined the world of Atzilut as the world of pure spirit, so its symbolic food is no food at all, only what sustains us spiritually. We all have relationships with both the physical and the intangible. The fourth world is about our highest selves, when we are not eating, when we are not thinking of our bodies, when we have all the tools to bring in pure holiness in each moment. To be sure, we can be holy while eating and while grounded in our bodies. However, the fourth world, according to the Kabbalists, is the world that is floating above our earthly desires; a world in which we nourish our hearts and our souls. In an attempt to gain an understanding of the divine implications of this realm, we do as our ancestors did and look to the tree as a symbol of life – a life of ecological symbiosis, a life of replenishment, and a life of balance and equilibrium. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to cultivate a sense of balance and calm, a sense of resilience, and a sense of higher purpose.
How did an arcane tax day for agrarian tithing become a festive birthday of the trees? The history of Tu B’Shvat reveals how
this malleable holiday has been adapted by Jewish tradition in different eras for different purposes.
Tu B’Shvat first appears in Jewish literature in the Mishnah, where it is mentioned (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1) in a list of four separate new year’s festivals as the new year for the trees, to take place on the fifteenth day of the month of Shvat. Its significance stemmed from clarifying, for an agrarian society, when the tax year began and ended so that tithes to the Temple for the annual harvest could be contributed appropriately. Jewish tradition, of course, is not only practical but also steeped in meaning-making. So when the Second Temple—the locus of tithing—was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the Jewish people lost sovereignty over the land of Israel, one of many questions that arose was: what now is Tu B’Shvat?
The answer to that question remained dormant, as did Tu B’Shvat as a holiday, until the mystic Kabbalists of Tzvat revivified the holiday some 1500 years later. Under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the kabbalists created a new Tu B’Shvat tradition with the multi-sensory seder we will experience today. (We will elaborate more on this seder and its mystical meaning later, in the section entitled “How to Use This Haggadah”.)
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Tu B’Shvat was adopted by early Zionists as a day to celebrate Jewish connection to our ancestral homeland. JNF (Jewish National Fund) pushkes encouraged Jews across the globe to donate money for planting trees in Israel, and to this day, American and Israeli school kids celebrate Tu B’Shvat by planting trees. The environmental movement of the 1960s-70s provided yet another context for understanding Tu B’Shvat, emphasizing the natural connections between “the birthday of the trees,” conservation, and environmental stewardship.
These multiple interpretations of the meaning of Tu B’Shvat give us, today, encouragement to continue shaping its connection with our contemporary context.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
The Kabbalists defined the world of Yetzirah as a world of inwardness, emotion, and a sense of feeling. The need for protection and reinforcement is an inner matter of the core, of the heart. It is represented by fruits with edible outer flesh and pithy, inedible cores: apricots, avocados, cherries, dates, mangos, olives, peaches, and plums.
While we endured so much communal fragmentation and hatred this past year, we also experienced new moments of profound connection and solidarity, from spontaneous rooftop celebrations of first responders to the multi-racial peaceful demonstrations across the country in the summer of 2020.
May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, with the opportunity and the courage to expand our capacity for openness and empathy and thereby rebuild the communities we need.
We each find a fruit from the second category, remove the pit or core, say the blessing together, and then eat.
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri haetz.
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, creator of fruit of the tree.
On this next stop in our journey, we expand our focus from our own individual communities to the natural world as a whole. Our physical planet is made up of finite resources, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we don’t destroy it. Interestingly, there was not always a word for this concept of sustainability in Hebrew.
Recently, the term kayamut was adopted, which literally means “foreverness” or “in perpetuity.” The human-caused climate crisis, however, shows that we have forsaken our duty to act as stewards of the environment. Scientific consensus has made clear that fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and food shortages will ravage our lands, our seas, and our lives if we don’t take urgent action to stop our wanton destruction of our environment. Ecosystems, species, habitats, and natural resources will wither away, never to be restored.
In this section we will think about our relationship with the natural world. We are guided by the questions:
What more can I do, as an individual, to ensure that our planet remains a healthy place for generations and generations to come?
What sacrifices am I willing to make to my individual consumption of resources, and what sacrifices should we as a society make, to stop the climate crisis and restore the natural world?
This cup of wine is partly white and mostly red. In the heat of summer our tree has rooted herself firmly in the earth, grown into its full being and is blooming. The shade, wood, herbs and flowers that are her simple and modest gifts to the earth and humankind allow us to now see her and embrace her as a provider.
We each add more red wine to the mixture of wine that is already in our cup, so that the cup is again full. We say the blessing together, and then drink all of the wine in the cup except for a small drop.
In so doing, we can ask:
What does abundance mean to us?
What is the symbolism of refraining from finishing our cups?
The Blessing Over the Third Cup We each fill our cup with mostly red wine and some white, and bless together:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri hagafen.
For the Kabbalists Briyah is closest to the pure spirit of the three lower worlds. It is represented by any fruits that are edible throughout. Here no protective shells, neither internal nor external, are needed. These symbolic fruits may be eaten entirely and include: blackberries, blueberries, figs, grapes, kiwis, kumquats, raspberries, star fruit, and strawberries. Like these fruits, the climate crisis can be addressed directly and without hesitation. While climate change can be cause for despair, it also can galvanize us to take the actions we long have kept dormant. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to become inspired by young climate activists like Greta Thunberg or Isha Clarke, to listen to the sound advice of scientists and policy experts, and to take audacious actions-—individually and communally—to restore the world God has entrusted to us.
We each choose a fruit from the third category, say the blessing together, and then eat it:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri ha etz.
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, creator of fruit of the tree.
Now we arrive at the fourth and final level on our journey, the world of spirit. For the Kabbalists, this level of pure spirituality
is the highest rung on the ladder of creation. Just like with spirituality in general, this concept might be beautiful to some but far too esoteric to others. Our spiritual selves, too, have been through a roller-coaster of ups and downs over this past year. Some of us have been racked with theological angst about how a loving God could bring about such a catastrophic plague or enable so much hatred and misery. How can we channel the hope and resilience we need to move forward when our reserves feel so depleted?
In this section we will think about our relationship with spirituality. We are guided by the questions:
Why do we make blessings? What do they do for us? What do they do for God? What does it mean to me to live a spiritual life? What additional tools or resources do I need to access a deeper level of spirituality?
showing
1-6
of
30
Page
1
of
5
