The Many Layers of Tu BiShvat
Rabbi Ari Kahn
Learning a subject in depth requires attending not only to what is written, but also to what is left unsaid. The silences between the lines often prove more intriguing than the explicit formulations, hinting at forgotten assumptions and lost worlds of practice and belief. With that in mind, let us turn to Tu BiShvat.
In contemporary Israeli culture the day is heralded by the familiar children’s song “Hashkediya Porachat,” the almond tree in bloom. The song is not merely sentimental; it is programmatic. It announces Tu BiShvat as “chag la‑ilanot,” a festival of the trees, and it has quietly shaped or at least reflects an entire popular theology of the day.
Yet the song itself already invites questions. It speaks of a tree, of blossoming, of the holiday of the trees. To what extent is this depiction accurate? Is Tu BiShvat in fact the “chag ha‑ilanot,” a festival devoted to the trees themselves? In the modern State of Israel one of the most familiar customs is to plant trees on Tu BiShvat. The symbolism is powerful and intuitively fitting, but historically one must ask: How old is this custom? From where did it arise? Planting trees would certainly be appropriate if the day were established as a festival for trees; as we shall see, however, the earlier sources may point in a rather different direction.
To explore this, I will not begin with the Talmud, because the very problem is what the Talmud says and what it does not say. Instead, I turn first to a modern halakhic work, HaMoadim BaHalacha by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, a Chabad chasid, polymath, and editor of the Encyclopedia Talmudit, who lived from 1886 to 1978. In his discussion of the month of Shevat, he notes a “minhag meyuchad le‑Tu BiShvat” – a particular custom for Tu BiShvat – and records that “the Ashkenazim are accustomed to increase the varieties of fruits of the trees” eaten on that day.
המועדים בהלכה חמישה עשר בשבט - הרב שלמה יוסף זבין 1886-1978
ומנהג מיוחד לט"ו בשבט: "ונוהגין האשכנזים להרבות במיני פירות של אילנות". ואיני יודע למה תלה המנהג באשכנזים. דומה, שהספרדים מדקדקים במנהג זה יותר. "בט"ו בו (בשבט) ילמדו הספרדים בישיבותיהם כמעט כל הלילה ויהדרו לאכול מכל מיני פירות הנמצאים בעיר ולפני אכילת כל פרי ואחריה ילמדו לימודים מיוחדים מלוקטים מתנ"ך וזוהר וגם יתפללו וישוררו תפילות ופזמונים מיוחדים". וספר מיוחד יש על כך: "ספר פרי עץ הדר והוא סדר ט"ו בשבט, שנהגו בו רבים יראי ד' וחושבי שמו". ליקוט מכל המקומות במקרא ומשנה ותלמוד וזוהר שמדובר בהם על פירות ותבואה ואילנות. וממנהגי החסידים: "וקבלנו מרבותינו להתפלל בט"ו בשבט על אתרוג כשר יפה ומהודר שיזמין השי"ת בעת המצטרך למצוה"; "המנהג שהאתרוג אשר יצאנו בו ידי מצוה מטגנים אותו אחר סוכות ואוכלין אותו בט"ו בשבט". ושוב: "היו צדיקים שלובשים בגדי יום טוב בט"ו בשבט, כי הוא ראש השנה לאילנות והאדם עץ השדה".
“There is a particular custom for Tu BiShvat: ‘The Ashkenazim are accustomed to increase the varieties of fruits of the trees.’ I do not know why he ascribed the custom specifically to Ashkenazim. It would seem that the Sephardim are even more meticulous in this practice. ‘On the fifteenth of it (Shevat) the Sephardim in their yeshivot study almost the entire night, and they are careful to eat from all the varieties of fruit available in the city; before eating each fruit and after it they study special passages collected from Tanakh and Zohar, and they also pray and sing special prayers and hymns.’[1]
And there is a special book about this: Sefer Pri Etz Hadar, which is the Tu BiShvat Seder, observed by many who fear God and revere His name. It is a compilation of all the places in Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar in which fruits, grain, and trees are mentioned.
Among the customs of the chassidim: ‘We have received from our rabbis to pray on Tu BiShvat for a beautiful, choice, and mehudar etrog, that the Holy One, blessed be He, should prepare for us at the time needed for the mitzvah’; ‘The custom is that the etrog with which we fulfilled the mitzvah is fried after Sukkot and eaten on Tu BiShvat.’ And again: ‘There were righteous individuals who wore yom‑tov garments on Tu BiShvat, for it is the New Year of the trees, and “a human being is a tree of the field.”’ Ha‑Moadim ba‑Halakha, Tu BiShvat – Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin (1886–1978)
Rabbi Zevin’s formulation raises several questions. He attributes this practice specifically to “Ashkenazim,” yet it is not obvious what that geographical label signifies here, nor why the custom should be limited in that way. He hints at his own uncertainty by placing the phrase in quotation marks and by citing the Magen Avraham as his source. The Magen Avraham, in turn, is not the originator of the practice; he is quoting an earlier, now somewhat elusive, source. To understand the custom fully we would need to trace that earlier stage of the tradition.
Rabbi Zevin himself expresses doubt regarding the ethnic limitation: he writes that he does not understand why the custom was associated with Ashkenazim and suggests that, in practice, Sephardim are even more meticulous in its observance. He then cites a description from an Eretz Yisrael calendar (luach), which portrays Sephardic communities remaining awake in their study halls for much of the night of Tu BiShvat, taking care to eat from every type of fruit available in the city, studying selected passages from Tanach and Zohar before and after each fruit, and reciting special prayers and piyyutim. Here Tu BiShvat appears not as a children’s nature‑day, but as a quasi‑liturgical vigil, a ritual night centered on fruits.
This testimony is revealing on several levels. First, it underscores the authority of the calendar makers, who did not merely record dates but also curated and standardized communal practice. When a luach states, “On this day one does such‑and‑such,” it is not only descriptive but prescriptive; it shapes the minhag as much as it reflects it. Second, the ritual as described focuses on fruits rather than on trees. Fruits and trees are obviously related, but they do not point in precisely the same symbolic direction. A tree evokes rootedness, growth, and endurance; fruit suggests sweetness, yield, and the culmination of a process. When the ritual turns its attention to the fruit, rather than to the act of planting or tending trees, it subtly redefines the spiritual center of the day.
This tension leads to a basic question: Is Tu BiShvat a festival of trees or a festival of fruits? Contemporary Israeli imagery, nourished by “Hashkediya Porachat” and by modern tree‑planting ceremonies, would answer unhesitatingly that it is the holiday of the trees. Yet the older liturgical and halakhic sources that Rabbi Zevin gathers appear to speak more about perot ha‑ilan – the fruits of the tree – than about the tree itself. The distinction is not pedantic. To celebrate the tree is to emphasize potential, process, long‑term rootedness in land and history. To celebrate fruit is to emphasize realization, enjoyment, blessing already ripened and accessible. Tu BiShvat, as it emerges from these sources, hovers between these two poles.
Rabbi Zevin notes as well a special work devoted to this fruit‑centered ritual: Sefer Pri Etz Hadar, which he describes as a “seder Tu BiShvat,” consciously echoing the structure of the Passover Seder. This text collects passages from Tanach, Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar that speak of fruits, grain, and trees, and weaves them into a kabbalistic order accompanied by blessings and meditations. Many God‑fearing individuals, he reports, adopted this seder as their practice. He further cites chasidic customs to pray on Tu BiShvat for a beautiful and mehudar etrog for the coming Sukkot, and he records that some tzadikim would wear yom‑tov clothing on Tu BiShvat, viewing it as “Rosh Hashanah la‑ilanot,” the New Year of the trees, with the human being understood through the verse “ha‑adam etz ha‑sadeh,” “a person is like a tree of the field.”
Taken together, these materials present a richly textured, but historically layered, portrait of the day. We encounter halakhic codifiers, mystical manuals, chasidic practices, Sephardic nocturnal study rituals, and modern Israeli songs, all converging on Tu BiShvat and pulling it in various symbolic directions. If Tu BiShvat truly encompassed all these dimensions from its inception – a Rosh Hashanah for trees, a mystical fruit‑seder, a night of Zoharic study, and a day for praying for etrogim – we would expect to find clear evidence of such a complex festival already in the earliest strata of rabbinic literature. The fact that we do not find such evidence suggests instead that we are observing the gradual romanticization and spiritualization of what began as a technical halakhic date.
To trace that beginning we must return to the Mishnah in tractate Rosh Hashanah, which speaks of “arba’ah roshei shanim,” four different New Years, each marking a distinct legal cycle.
משנה מסכת ראש השנה פרק א
(א) אַרְבָּעָה רָאשֵׁי שָׁנִים הֵם. בְּאֶחָד בְּנִיסָן רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה לַמְּלָכִים וְלָרְגָלִים. בְּאֶחָד בֶּאֱלוּל רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה לְמַעְשַׂר בְּהֵמָה. רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר וְרַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמְרִים, בְּאֶחָד בְּתִשְׁרֵי. בְּאֶחָד בְּתִשְׁרֵי רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה לַשָּׁנִים וְלַשְּׁמִטִּין וְלַיּוֹבְלוֹת, לַנְּטִיּעָה וְלַיְרָקוֹת. בְּאֶחָד בִּשְׁבָט, רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה לָאִילָן, כְּדִבְרֵי בֵית שַׁמַּאי. בֵּית הִלֵּל אוֹמְרִים, בַּחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר בּוֹ:
There are four New Years. On the first of Nisan is the New Year for kings and for festivals. On the first of Elul is the New Year for the tithing of animals; Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shimon say: on the first of Tishrei. On the first of Tishrei is the New Year for years, for sabbatical years and for jubilee years, for planting, and for vegetables. On the first of Shevat is the New Year for the tree, according to the words of Beit Shammai. Beit Hillel say: on the fifteenth of that month. Mishnah, Tractate Rosh HaShanah, Chapter 1
Among the fourdays assigned the term “Rosh Hashanah” is the “Rosh Hashanah la‑neti’ah,” the New Year for planting, which falls on the first of Tishrei, and “Rosh Hashanah la‑ilan,” the New Year for the tree, which, according to Beit Hillel, is on the fifteenth of Shevat. The Rosh Hashanah for neti’ah – for planting – is Tishrei, not Shevat. Halakhically this is significant for the laws of orlah, the prohibition against eating the fruit of a tree during its first three years. The counting of those years is not from the precise calendar day of planting, but from the New Year. Once a newly planted tree has taken root for the halakhically required period, its years are reckoned by Rosh Hashanah rather than by the date it entered the ground; thus, in many cases a sapling planted toward the end of Elul can already be treated as having completed its first year when Tishrei arrives.
It follows that Tu BiShvat cannot be the Rosh Hashanah for planting trees in the halakhic sense. The legal “birthday” of the tree for purposes of orlah is in Tishrei. If one were to plant a fruit tree on Tu BiShvat and then to count its years to the next Tu BiShvat, one would be halakhically mistaken; its first year would already be complete with the coming of Tishrei. The popular practice of tree‑planting ceremonies on Tu BiShvat, moving as it is as a Zionist and ecological statement, does not arise from the Talmudic or halakhic structure of the day. It is a late, creative re‑reading, a deliberate act of symbolic reappropriation of a date whose original function was far more prosaic.
Thus, when we step back from the song and from modern ceremony and listen carefully to the Mishnah, a different picture emerges. Tu BiShvat began life as a quiet demarcation line within the agricultural calendar, a boundary that determined to which fiscal and ritual year a given fruit belonged. Only later did mystics, chasidim, and modern nation‑builders endow this boundary‑day with romance, turning a technical hinge in halakha into an occasion for poetry, song, and planting.
The Mishnah’s distinction between ilan and neti’ah is subtle but decisive. Ilan denotes the established tree; neti’ah refers to the act of planting, to the sapling that has not yet borne fruit. The difference between a tree and a planted tree is not botanical but temporal and halakhic: the mature tree has already reached the stage of fruit, whereas the neti’ah stands only at the threshold of that possibility.
Rashi, in his gloss to the Mishnah, makes this explicit. When the Mishnah speaks of neti’ah, it addresses the counting of years for orlah – the initial three years during which the fruit is forbidden – whose reckoning begins with the New Year in Tishrei. A sapling planted before the end of Elul, once it has taken root, has completed its first orlah year with the arrival of Tishrei, regardless of the specific day of planting. For neti’ah, therefore, the Rosh Hashanah is in Tishrei.[2]
The term ilan, by contrast, in the phrase “Rosh Hashanah la‑ilan,” is interpreted by Rashi and the later commentators as shorthand for perot ha‑ilan, the fruits of the tree. Legally, the question is not when the tree was planted, but to which year a given crop of fruit belongs for the purposes of terumot and ma’asrot. Here the demarcation line is not Tishrei but Shevat, and the critical moment is not the time of picking but the stage called chanatah, when the fruit first forms on the tree. Fruits that reached chanatah before the fifteenth of Shevat belong to the previous agricultural year; those that formed afterward belong to the new year and may not be tithed together with the earlier crop.
This understanding is articulated clearly by Rashi later in the same tractate[3] and by Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura in his commentary to the Mishnah: Tu BiShvat is Rosh Hashanah “for the fruits of the tree” with respect to tithes, because in the case of trees we follow chanatah. The phrase “Rosh Hashanah la‑ilan” thus turns out to be a compressed, almost poetic, legal shorthand. The true Rosh Hashanah “for trees” in terms of planting, orlah, shemitah, and yovel is in Tishrei; Tu BiShvat is the Rosh Hashanah for fruit.[4]
A later passage in Rosh Hashanah broadens the frame. The baraita taught that “all are judged on Rosh Hashanah, and their decree is sealed on Yom Kippur,” but Rabbi Yehudah nuances this: grain is judged on Pesach, fruits of the tree on Atzeret (Shavuot), water on Sukkot, and the human being on Rosh Hashanah, with all decrees sealed on Yom Kippur. The association of fruits with Shavuot is not accidental. Shavuot is the festival of bikkurim, the first fruits brought to Jerusalem with the declaration that begins “Arami oved avi,” a text we later wove into the Passover Haggadah. If there is a day on which the fate of perot ha‑ilan is sealed, Rabbi Yehudah suggests, it is Shavuot, not Tu BiShvat; one might even argue that Shavuot is the more fitting time to pray for a beautiful etrog.[5]
Within this Talmudic framework, Tu BiShvat remains a technical boundary: by this point, “rov gishmei shanah,” most of the year’s rains, have already fallen; the sap is rising, and the fruit begins to form. The date marks the turning of the agricultural year from one cycle of fruit to the next. It is a hinge, not yet a festival. The romance that later generations will drape over the day – trees in bloom, songs of spring, kabbalistic sedarim – is not yet visible. The Talmud speaks in the sparse, economical language of halakha; the poetry will come later.
When we move beyond the Talmud into the medieval Ashkenazic world, we first encounter Tu BiShvat not as a day of rituals to perform, but as a day on which one debates what may not be done. The Mordechai records a query from a community that had decreed a series of fasts on Monday–Thursday–Monday due to communal troubles, only to discover that the final fast would fall on Tu BiShvat. May one fast on that day? Should Tu BiShvat be treated like a Rosh Hashanah, on which communal fasts are inappropriate?
The Mordechai has no clear precedent, no Talmudic sugya that settles the question. He writes, tentatively but firmly, “kach da’ati noteh” – this is where my judgment inclines – that the fast should be postponed to the following week, since we do not institute fasts on Rosh Hashanah, and Tu BiShvat is counted among the “four New Years” listed in the Mishnah. His reasoning is analogical, almost homiletic: if Tu BiShvat shares the category name “Rosh Hashanah,” it should share, to some degree, the festive immunity from fasting.[6]
Two centuries later, Rabbi Yaakov Moellin, the Maharil of Mainz, the great codifier of Ashkenazic custom, addresses a related but distinct question: should tachanun – the penitential supplications – be recited on Tu BiShvat? He notes that Tu BiShvat, unlike the other “Rosh Hashanah” dates that fall on Rosh Chodesh, does not automatically inherit the minor‑festival status of the new month. He therefore rules that in some communities tachanun is omitted, in others recited. Here again, there is no clear, universal practice; the day hovers in a liminal space between ordinary weekday and minor festival.[7]
The Shulchan Aruch (Oruch Chaim 131:6) later incorporates the Mordechai’s hesitation into binding law. Rabbi Yosef Karo rules that if a community decrees a Monday–Thursday–Monday series of fasts and the final fast would fall on Tu BiShvat, the fast is deferred to the following week so that a public fast not be held on Tu BiShvat. In the laws of tachanun, he adds Tu BiShvat (together with Tu BeAv) to the list of days on which one does not fall on one’s face in supplication. Beyond this – the absence of fasting and the omission of tachanun – the Shulchan Aruch is silent. The entire weight of codified halakha regarding what one does on Tu BiShvat is a kind of structured silence.
From this silence emerges an important insight. In its earliest halakhic layers, Tu BiShvat is a date of demarcation, a fiscal and agricultural cut–off point for the tithing of fruits. It is not yet an inherently joyous day, and its “festive” character is only slowly inferred by analogy: if it is called a Rosh Hashanah, perhaps we should hesitate before turning it into a day of lamentation and fasting. The joy of Tu BiShvat, to the extent that it exists in these sources, is muted and almost abstract.
Only in the early modern period do we encounter works that attempt to invest Tu BiShvat with positive religious content and elaborate ritual. Chief among these is Chemdat Yamim, an anonymous kabbalistic–mussar work first printed in Izmir in the 1730s, whose Tu BiShvat chapter urges “those who walk in innocence” to increase their consumption of fruit on that very day and to accompany the eating with songs and praises; the author boldly calls this practice a “tikkun nifla,” a wondrous spiritual repair, even while conceding that such a custom is not found in the writings of the Arizal.[8]
Yet precisely this work becomes the focus of ferocious criticism by Rabbi Yaakov Emdin (Ya’avetz), the fiery eighteenth‑century Halachist and sometimes polemicist. In the midst of a responsum on an apparently unrelated issue – the proper time to recite Sefirat HaOmer on the second night of Pesach – he digresses to attack those who propose a new custom based on what he derides as a “kabbalah mechudeshet meshubeshet,” a novel and distorted tradition, “a net cast to ensnare precious souls.” When told that the source of this custom lies in Chemdat Yamim, he dismisses the book as “one of the books of the heretics, may their name be blotted out,” alleging that it contains prayers composed by Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of Shabtai Tzvi, whose initials he detects encoded in one of the text’s acrostics.[9]
Elsewhere he categorizes Chemdat Yamim as a sefer merim – a book that incites rebellion against the Torah – belonging to the class of texts that, in the Yerushalmi’s phrase, ought to be eradicated from the world.[10] Fascinatingly, he concedes that he does not own a copy of the book; his judgment is based on a cursory inspection of a copy that once passed through his home in the hands of a traveler. Nevertheless, in his eyes the taint of Sabbateanism is enough to disqualify any custom that can be traced back to it.[11]
The story of Tu BiShvat thus crosses paths with the great trauma of early modern Judaism: the rise and fall of Shabtai Tzvi and the Sabbatean movement. A mystically inflected fruit‑eating ritual on Tu BiShvat, appearing in a book suspected of Sabbatean sympathies, becomes a flashpoint in the struggle over the boundaries of legitimate kabbalah. Rabbi Emdin’s vehemence also reveals something about the religious mood of his time: new “kabbalistic” customs were not assumed to be innocent acts of piety. They might conceal heretical theologies or messianic fantasies.[12]
To say that Rabbi Emdin had a penchant for witch‑hunts is not to deny that some of the witches were real. Sabbateanism did, in fact, infiltrate liturgy, amulets, and devotional practices. His attacks on Chemdat Yamim are a reminder that the seemingly gentle romance of a fruit‑seder on a winter night carries a complex history: between the Mishnah’s dry demarcation of tithing years and the contemporary Tu BiShvat Seder lies a contested field of kabbalistic creativity, communal experimentation, and occasionally dangerous messianic dreams.
The modern Tu BiShvat “seder” leads us back to a small, dense text called Pri Etz Hadar. Rabbi Zevin had mentioned it almost in passing, but it stands at the center of the later mystical transformation of the day. The question is: Who authored this work, and through which channels did it enter the Jewish library?
A crucial piece of the puzzle lies in Chemdat Yamim, an anonymous kabbalistic compendium printed in the early eighteenth century, whose Tu BiShvat chapter incorporates Pri Etz Hadar. In that work, the discussion of Tu BiShvat appears within a broader section devoted to Shovavim – the weeks of Shemot, Va’era, Bo, Beshalach, Yitro, and Mishpatim – weeks that, in later kabbalistic tradition, were invested with special penitential practices, particularly for sexual sins. Within this penitential context, the author recommends that “those who walk in innocence” should, on Tu BiShvat, increase their eating of fruits and accompany that eating with shirot BiShvat ve‑tishbachot, songs and praises.
Strikingly, the author concedes that this custom is not found in the writings of “the Rav,” his reverential term for the Arizal: “ve’im ki be‑divrei kitvei ha‑Rav… lo nimtza minhag zeh – although this practice is not found in the writings of the Rav – nevertheless, in my view it is a wondrous tikkun, in both the revealed and the hidden dimensions.” In other words, he explicitly acknowledges that he is introducing a new custom, grounded not in the Arizal’s authority but in his own kabbalistic intuition. Pri Etz Hadar, as embedded in Chemdat Yamim, is thus not a Lurianic relic but an early‑modern mystical innovation.
The problem is that Chemdat Yamim itself became highly suspect. Rabbi Yaakov Emden, ever alert to Sabbatean influence, denounced it as a sefer merim, a book that undermines the Torah, containing prayers he attributed to Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of Shabtai Tzvi. He recommended that the work be discarded and warned that customs whose only explicit source is Chemdat Yamim should not be trusted. Later scholarship has complicated his sweeping verdict – it is likely that Chemdat Yamim is a composite, blending authentic earlier material with Sabbatean strata – but the shadow he cast over the book has never entirely lifted.
Against this background, any minhag whose earliest explicit formulation appears onlyin Chemdat Yamim inevitably invites scrutiny. Eating fruits on Tu BiShvat, however, turns out not to be such a custom. Already in the opening of our discussion we saw Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin citing the Magen Avraham’s remark that “Ashkenazim increase the varieties of fruits of the tree” on this day; the Magen Avraham, in his gloss to the laws of tachanun, notes that practice and cites as his source a calendrical work, Tikkun Yissachar.
This book was authored in the sixteenth century by Rabbi Yissachar ben Mordechai ibn Susan, a Moroccan‑born scholar who moved to Jerusalem and then settled in Safed, a disciple of Rabbi Levi ibn Ḥabib (Ralbaḥ) and a contemporary – though not a student – of the Arizal. Tikkun Yissachar is, in essence, a sacred almanac. It records, for each Shabbat and festival of the year, the relevant parashah, haftarah, and notable customs of the diverse communities of Eretz Yisrael, especially Safed. In the entry for a year in which Tu BiShvat falls on Shabbat Beshalach, ibn Susan notes succinctly that the day is “Rosh Hashanah la‑ilanot” and that “the Ashkenazim increase their varieties of fruits of the tree.” Here we have, decades before Chemdat Yamim, a concrete testimony to a local Safed custom of fruit‑eating on Tu BiShvat, practiced by the Ashkenazic community there. [13]
The detail matters. The “Ashkenazim” of whom ibn Susan speaks are not all Jews of northern European descent; they are, specifically, the Ashkenazic enclave in sixteenth‑century Safed, a community that perhaps included figures like the Arizal himself. The custom he records is geographically and culturally specific: Safed Ashkenazim eat extra fruits on Tu BiShvat. Only later, when the Magen Avraham quotes Tikkun Yissachar in the margins of the Shulchan Aruch, does this local practice begin to sound like a general Ashkenazic minhag.
Ibn Susan’s book has its own tangled publication history. The first edition of Tikkun Yissachar was printed in Salonika in 1564, apparently without the author’s full control, and contained numerous errors; a corrected second edition appeared posthumously in Venice in 1578. The reference to Ashkenazim eating fruits on Tu BiShvat appears only in this second edition. The dating is significant. When the first edition went to press, the Arizal had not yet arrived in Safed; he came in 1570 and died in 1572. It is therefore possible – though not provable – that the second edition reflects a slightly later stage of Safed practice, perhaps even influenced by circles associated with the Arizal. Yet even if that is so, the custom described is modest: eating fruits, not conducting a full seder with structured texts and four cups of wine. Given ibn Susan’s connection to the IbnḤabib line in Jerusalem, it is not hard to imagine similar traditions flowing between Jerusalem and Safed, where the Ari’s own family had lived before his sojourn in Egypt.
The seder itself seems to crystallize almost simultaneously, and independently, in two places. In Jerusalem, Moshe Ḥagiz, grandson and disciple of the mekubal R. Moshe Galante, describes a Tu BiShvat seder of fifteen fruits, each accompanied by blessings and the study of specific mishnayot; he attributes this practice to his grandfather and other Jerusalem rabbis and then adds that he found it “in the name of the Arizal,” despite the absence of any such rite in the canonical Lurianic corpus. A few years later, in Izmir, the anonymous author of Chemdat Yamim publishes a far more elaborate seder under the title Pri Etz Hadar, frankly admitting that it is not from the Ari and presenting it as his own tikkun. Thus, within one generation, we find two different Tu BiShvat sedarim – one issuing from a documented Jerusalem beit midrash whose alumni include both Nathan of Gaza, the prophetic voice who anointed Shabtai Tzvi as messiah, who studied under Rabbi Yaakov Chagiz; Chagiz’s son, Rabbi Moshe Chagiz, would later become one of Rabbi Yaakov Emdin’s principal allies in the campaign against Sabbateanism. The other from an anonymous, possibly Sabbatean compiler in Izmir – both building on the earlier, quieter Safed custom recorded by ibn Susan.
The suspicion is sharpened by the wider Sabbatean calendar project. Nathan of Gaza and Shabtai Tzvi did not merely reinterpret existing fasts; they abolished the fasts of the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha BeAv and turned them into days of feasting, and they contemplated similar transformations for other days as well. In other words, the movement’s instinct was to create new festivals and to repurpose old ones as celebrations of the messianic age. Against that backdrop, the sudden appearance of a highly structured Tu BiShvat seder in the orbit of Nathan’s disciples cannot be treated as neutral liturgical creativity. It fits a broader Sabbatean pattern of calendrical innovation, even if we cannot document a direct decree that “Tu BiShvat is now our new festival.”
From a historical‑theological perspective, this complexity is part of the seder’s fascination. Tu BiShvat began as a date inscribed in the margins of tractate Rosh Hashanah, a technical line beyond which one no longer tithes one year’s fruit with another. Over centuries, through Safed’s almanacs, Jerusalem’s beit midrash, Izmir’s anonymous kabbalists, and the shadow of Shabtai Tzvi, it became a night of fruit and song, of wine and whispered tikkunim. To take the custom seriously is not necessarily to accept every mystical claim made on its behalf, nor to ignore the warnings of Rabbi Emden; it is to recognize how a dry legal demarcation can, in the hands of poets and mystics, blossom into a small, fragile festival – a mid‑winter rehearsal of spring.
From the early modern kabbalists and polemicists we leap to the late nineteenth‑century Yishuv. Rabbi Ze’ev Yavetz (1847–1924), a historian, educator, and Hebraist, arrived in Eretz Yisrael and, on a Tu BiShvat in the year 1890, decided to turn the day into an educational act of settlement. As a high‑school teacher, he took his students out to plant trees, crafting a new, proactive ritual that linked the halakhic “New Year of the trees” with the practical work of reclaiming the land. What began as a single teacher’s initiative was soon adopted and amplified: the Jewish National Fund turned Tu BiShvat tree‑planting into one of the great fundraising instruments of the modern Zionist enterprise, inviting Jews worldwide to “buy a tree” and thus root themselves, symbolically, in the soil of Israel.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook viewed the new Tu BiShvat planting ceremonies with deep sympathy. In a letter to the teachers’ union in the early 1920s, he praised the practice of taking students into the fields on Tu BiShvat and understood its power to bind a generation of children to the land of Israel. Yet, writing in a shemita year, he reminded them that even the most evocative national ritual remains subordinate to halakha. Planting trees during the sabbatical year is prohibited; therefore, he urged them, this year let the children go out to the hills to sing and to dream, but leave the saplings unplanted. The gesture is characteristic: affirmation of the spiritual intuition behind the custom, coupled with an insistence that its execution be disciplined by the Torah’s rhythm of work and rest.[14]
At the close of this historical journey, the elements of contemporary Tu BiShvat stand in clearer relief. The custom of eating fruits can be traced back to the Safed calendrist Yissachar ben Mordechai ibn Susan and his Tikkun Yissachar, where the Ashkenazim of Safed are described as increasing their consumption of fruits on Tu BiShvat. The structured Tu BiShvat seder, with its kabbalistic readings and symbolic fruits, appears in Chemdat Yamim through the text of Pri Etz Hadar, whose author openly presents the practice as a new mystical tikkun and may well be drawing on circles associated with Nathan of Gaza. The national ritual of planting trees on Tu BiShvat, finally, arises in 1890 from Ze’ev Yavetz’s educational initiative and is later institutionalized by the JNF, with Rav Kook’s qualified halakhic blessing.
Even the seemingly small detail of dried fruits reflects this layered history. European Jews, reading the Magen Avraham’s recommendation to eat fruits of the tree on Tu BiShvat, often had no access to fresh produce in the depth of winter and therefore turned to whatever fruit was available, typically dried and stored imports. Over time this pragmatic solution hardened into custom. Those dried figs and apricots were imagined – or at least allowed to be imagined – as emissaries from the Land of Israel, sacramental tokens of a distant land and a deferred spring. In our own day, when fresh produce from Eretz Yisrael is widely accessible, it would be far more faithful to the original Mishnah’s concern with perot ha‑ilan under the laws of terumah and ma’aser to prefer fruits that actually grow in the land where those obligations apply.
The return of mystics to the Land of Israel in the sixteenth century almost certainly carried an element of quiet romance. They did not relate to fruit merely as halakhic units in the system of terumot and ma’asrot, but as tangible contact with the land whose praise fills Tanach. Living once again among vineyards and orchards, under a sky in which the agricultural calendar is not theoretical but visible, they found in Tu BiShvat a natural vessel for that attachment. It is therefore unlikely to be accidental that a date which is halakhically defined by the status of fruits grown in Eretz Yisrael becomes, precisely in Safed and Jerusalem, the focus of new customs centered on the fruits of that land. The land itself provided both the energy and the pretext for transforming a technical cutoff into a romantic, land‑based celebration.
The same underground current animates the modern Zionists, even if they spoke a different language. Standing in a land that had lain desolate for centuries, they, too, watched winter loosen its grip and saw the sap rise again in the orchards of Eretz Yisrael. For them, Tu BiShvat offered a ready‑made vessel: a day already marked in the sources as the moment when the trees begin to draw on the new year’s rains, now re‑imagined as the moment when the land itself stirs after a long historical hibernation. To plant a young tree on that day was to witness not only the awakening of nature at the end of a season, but the awakening of a people after a winter that had seemed to last a millennium.
What emerges is a day woven from halakhic demarcations, mystical creativity, polemical struggles, Zionist pedagogy, and the quiet longing for fruit in the heart of winter. Tu BiShvat began as a legal boundary in the Mishnah and grew, branch by branch, into a festival where law, myth, and national hope intertwine.
Personally, I will open a bottle of wine and drink a le‑chaim to the fruits and vines of Israel that have returned to welcome her children home.
[1] Rabbi Zevin here cites Luach Eretz Yisrael, Luntz Chodesh Shvat.
[2] Rashi, Rosh Hashanah 2a
רש"י מסכת ראש השנה דף ב עמוד א
ולַנְּטִיּעָה - למנין שני ערלה, ואפילו נטעה באב - כלתה שנתה הראשונה לסוף אלול, ובכולהו מפרש טעמא בגמרא.
לירקות - למעשר ירק, שאין תורמין ומעשרין מן הנלקט לפני ראש השנה על של אחר ראש השנה.
לָאִילָן - לענין מעשר, שאין מעשרין פירות האילן שחנטו קודם שבט על שחנטו לאחר שבט, שבאילן הולך אחר חנטה, ובגמרא מפרש מאי שנא שבט
[3] Rashi, Rosh Hashanah 13b
רש"י מסכת ראש השנה דף יג עמוד ב ד"ה בתר חנטה
בתר חנטה - לקמן /ראש השנה/ (טו, ב) תנא לה בפירקין: אילן שחנטו פירותיו קודם חמשה עשר בשבט שהוא ראש השנה לאילנות מתעשר לשנה שעברה.
[4] Comenntary of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura Rosh Hashanah 1:1.
ר' עובדיה מברטנורא מסכת ראש השנה פרק א משנה א
ראש השנה לאילן. לענין מעשר פירות שאין מעשרין פירות אילן שחנטו קודם שבט על שחנטו לאחר שבט, דבאילן אזלינן בתר חנטה. אי נמי נפקא מיניה לענין שנה שלישית של שמיטה שנוהג בה מעשר עני, שאותן פירות שחנטו מר"ה של שנה שלישית עד שבט דנין אותן כפירות של שנה שניה שעברה ונוהג בהן מעשר ראשון ומעשר שני, ומשבט ואילך נוהג בהן מעשר ראשון ומעשר עני:
[5] Rosh Hashanah 16a
תלמוד בבלי מסכת ראש השנה דף טז עמוד א
דְּתַנְיָא: הַכֹּל נִידּוֹנִים בָּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, וּגְזַר דִּין שֶׁלָּהֶם נֶחְתָּם בְּיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים, דִּבְרֵי רַבִּי מֵאִיר. רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר: הַכֹּל נִידּוֹנִין בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, וּגְזַר דִּין שֶׁלָּהֶם נֶחְתָּם כׇּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד בִּזְמַנּוֹ: בַּפֶּסַח — עַל הַתְּבוּאָה, בַּעֲצֶרֶת — עַל פֵּירוֹת הָאִילָן, בֶּחָג נִידּוֹנִין עַל הַמַּיִם. וְאָדָם נִידּוֹן בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, וּגְזַר דִּין שֶׁלּוֹ נֶחְתָּם בְּיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים..... אָמַר רָבָא: הַאי תָּנָא דְּבֵי רַבִּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל הִיא, דְּתָנָא דְּבֵי רַבִּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל, בְּאַרְבָּעָה פְּרָקִים הָעוֹלָם נִידּוֹן: בַּפֶּסַח — עַל הַתְּבוּאָה, בַּעֲצֶרֶת — עַל פֵּירוֹת הָאִילָן, בְּחָג נִידּוֹנִין עַל הַמַּיִם. וְאָדָם נִידּוֹן בָּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, וּגְזַר דִּין שֶׁלּוֹ נֶחְתָּם בְּיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים.
[6] Sefer Mordechai – by R. Mordechai b. Hillel Rosh Hashanah siman 701, It is worthwhile noting that some did have a custom of fasting on Rosh Hashanah – a custom which the Mordechai doesn’t cite.
ספר המרדכי, ראש השנה סימן תש"א 1240-1298
וששאלת הציבור שבקשו לגזור תענית בשני וחמישי ושני ופגע בתענית ט"ו בשבט יש לחוש לר"ה ולדחות התענית או לא. כך דעתי נוטה שהתענית נדחה עד השבת האחר ואין קובעין תענית בו ביום שלא מצאנו תענית בר"ה ותנן ד' ראשי שנים הן ותו דקתני בהדי הדדי וכי היכי דשאר ליתא בתענית הארבע נמי ליתנהו בתענית ואע"ג דאינהו עדיפי מיניה כיון דקתני בהדי הדדי בהא דמיא אהדדי ע"כ.
[7] Maharil (Rabbi Jacob ben Moses Moellin) was born in Mainz, Germany 1360-1427.
ספר מהרי"ל (מנהגים) הלכות טבת, שבט, אדר
[ב] שבט הוא מלך, משום דבחמשה עשר בו הוא ראש השנה לאילנות. והוא חל בכל יום מאחד ימי השבוע, מלבד א' ו'. ובחמשה עשר בו אין אומרים תחינה. במגנצא ובורמיישא אומר תחינה. ולפעמים בו התקופה כדפי' לעיל.
[8] Chemdat Yamim, Shovivim chapter 3.
ספר חמדת ימים - שובבים - פרק ג 1731 (הרב ישראל יעקב אלגאזי 1680-1757)
ומנהג טוב להולכים בתמים להרבות בפירות בעצם היום הזה, ולומר דברי שירות ותשבחות עליהן כאשר הנהגתי לכל החברים אשר עמדי. ועם כי בדברי כתבי הרב זל"הה לא נמצא מנהג זה, מ"מ לדעתי תקון נפלא הוא בנגלה ובנסתר. כי הנה הובא בירושלמי פרק י' יוחסין ז"ל ישמעו ענוים וישמחו א"ר איבון עתיד אדם לתת דין וחשבון על שראה מיני מגדים ולא אכל.
[9] Responsa Yaavetz 2 :83
שו"ת שאילת יעבץ חלק ב סימן פג 1697-1776
ה אשר השבתי לתלמידי אשר הודיעני מאחד המתחסדים שמצא השמט' בספרי העיר האלהית.
אודות אשר תמה עלי אדם כשר הולך לתומו שלא זכרתי מהנהגת ספירת עומר בליל שני דפסח אחר קריאת הגדת כלך מדרך זו חליל' אל יהא חלקך עם הסומכים ע"ד קבלה מחודשת משובשת שהיא רשת לצודד נפש יקרה ח"ו אל ירד בני עמהם ועם שונים אל תתערב. ודאי אם הי' דבר שראוי לחוש לו. הייתי מזכירו אף אם שגיאות והשמטות מי יבין. אבל זאת וכיוצא בה. אסור להעלות על הדעת וכבר מפורש גם בסדר תפלה שלי באר היטב שסופרין בכניסת הליל' כמ"ש בטור /או"ח/ סי' תפ"ט ובש"ע. והטעם מוכרח דבעינן תמימות ומסתייה דבדיעבד מונין כל הליל' בתחל' מי זה אמר ויהי. ומלבד טעם אחר לכל המצות ומצוה הבאה לידך את"ח =אל תחמיצנה= וחביבא מצוה בשעת'…. וירא להגיד לי שראה כן בספר חמדת הימים אף כי איננו אתו כי הוא יודע באותו ספר שהוא אחד מספרי הפוקרים ימ"ש. ויתענג על שלום ורב טוב כ"ע נפש אהובו תלמידו הנכנע הק' יעקב הכהן.
[10] Talmud Yerushalmi, Tractate Sanhedrin, Chapter 10, Halakha 1
“Rabbi Akiva says: also one who reads in the external books. Such as the books of Ben Sira and the books of Ben La’ana. But the sefrei ha‑merim and all books that have been written from then onward – one who reads them is like one who reads a letter. What is the reason? ‘And further, from these, my son, be warned…’ (Kohelet 12:12). They were given for contemplation, but they were not given for toil.”
Rambam, Commentary to the Mishnah, Tractate Yadayim 4:6
“And sefrei merim are books that contain responses against the Torah and contradictions to it. They are called sefrei merim in the sense that they are books which God should uproot and remove from the world, as a kind of curse.”
תלמוד ירושלמי מסכת סנהדרין פרק י הלכה א
רבי עקיבה אומר אף הקורא בספרים החיצונים. כגון ספרי בן סירא וסיפרי בן לענה אבל סיפרי המירם וכל ספרים שנכתבו מיכן והילך הקורא בהן כקורא באיגרת מאי טעמא [קהלת יב יב] ויותר מהמה בני היזהר וגו' להגיון ניתנו ליגיעה לא ניתנו.
פירוש המשנה לרמב"ם מסכת ידים פרק ד משנה ו
וספרי מירם הם ספרים שיש בהם תשובות נגד התורה וסתירה לה, ונקראו ספרי מירם ענינו ספרים יעקרם ה' ויסלקם מן העולם, כעין קללה,
[11] Responsa Yaavetz 2 :124
שו"ת שאילת יעבץ חלק ב סימן קכד
אכן זכורני שבס' מירם חמדת הימים נמצאת תחנה שיסד נביא השקר העזתי לאמרה ביש"ק שמברכין החודש (זולתה לא ידעתי) ואותה מלאה לה גלוליה. רמ"ז וה"ן מספר תתי"ד לרמוז על שקוץ ש"ץ שר"י צפן בתוכה. כמו שכבר העידותי בעם והעירותי על זאת מאז בחתימת ספר תה"ק. אך בעת הזאת לא נמצא ספר קוסמין הלז תחת ידי אשר ראיתיו לפני כמה שנים ביד אורח עובר עלינו. בהבטה בעלמא. ולא בא עוד לידי.
[12] For a particularly damning and convincing study linking Shabtai Tzvi and his followers with Tu BiShvat, see Boaz Huss, “The Pleasant Tree Ben Yishai Lives on the Earth: On the Sabbatean Origins of the Tu BiShvat Seder,” in Meir Benayahu Memorial Volume, vol. 2, Jerusalem: Carmel, 2019.
[13] Tikkun Yissachar
[14] Rav Kook Iggrot Harayah volume 4
