The Joy of Tu b'Shvat by R' Tzvi Abraham

The Joy of Tu b'Shvat by R' Tzvi Abraham

Tu b’Shvat is the new year of the trees for ma’asros. Why should we celebrate the new year of the trees?  What’s the joy in it? What makes it a new year for us?

Fruit was Adam’s first food because it was the only food commensurate with his spiritual stature.  Fruits bear a certain similarity to man, for though they grow from the ground,  they are raised above the ground, much like man, who has a body formed from the dust of the earth, but a soul that lifts him above it.  And although fruits grow from the ground, they hang down from  their branches:  we look up to the heavens to pick them, sometimes we even have to ascend a ladder to get them down. Eating fruits allowed Adam to nourish his body without turning his focus to the earth. Consider this, in contrast to the serpent, who was punished with the curse of eating the dust:

יד  וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶל-הַנָּחָשׁ, כִּי עָשִׂיתָ זֹּאת, אָרוּר אַתָּה מִכָּל-הַבְּהֵמָה, וּמִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה;

 עַל-גְּחֹנְךָ תֵלֵךְ, וְעָפָר תֹּאכַל כָּל-יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent: 'Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou from among all cattle, and from among all beasts of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

Tu b’Shvat begins the new year for taking ma’aser, which makes it  important, because we can’t ma’aser last year’s fruits by taking ma’aser from this  year’s fruits.   So, although our celebration of the day is centered in fruits, it is not fruits, but taking ma’aser from fruits in obedience to G-d’s Command that is the central theme of the day.

All the material pleasures of this world are symbolized in fruits.  The prohibition we recite in the Shma of following after the temptations of the eye reminds us of the visual appeal of the fruit that kicked off the history of sin.

ו  וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל וְכִי תַאֲוָה-הוּא לָעֵינַיִם, וְנֶחְמָד הָעֵץ לְהַשְׂכִּיל, וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ, וַתֹּאכַל;

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat;

If it was just good eating, Chava would have restrained herself, but the fruit awakened a lust in her eye, which induced her to prefer the wisdom that would satisfy that lust (the wisdom of the world)  to the Wisdom of G-d.

It was fitting that Adam lived entirely on fruits, the  world’s greatest delight, for he drew his pleasure into his unwavering devotion to G-d and, in doing that, united Heaven and earth, which was his task in the Garden of G-d.  Eating grains or vegetables, he couldn’t do that. The pleasure of eating them can’t compare to the pleasure of eating fruit, because the taste of a fruit contains all the pleasures of the world. To eat anything but fruits would have been  a betrayal of his spiritual stature and  a repudiation of the task for which he had been created and placed in the Garden.

Bu when he ate a fruit which G-d had forbidden, he betrayed that task and repudiated it, because  forbidden fruit has no part in the delight of devotion to G-d.  Just as he had lifted the earth to Heaven before,  eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he divided Heaven and earth, casting it from the threshold of Heaven, where he had sanctified it by his devotion to G-d, into the abyss of the serpent’s kingdom. Cain, his son would soon commit murder, and within a few generations, his children would be worshiping idols. He would be cast out of the Garden and condemned to till the soil.  So began the tragic history of man as we know him, struggling or succumbing to the evil which rules his heart by his preference of the wisdom of the world to the Wisdom of G-d.

The situation was corrected—momentarily—at Mt. Sinai, where, the midrash tells us, the Children of Israel ascended to the spiritual level of Adam before his sin.  That correction was quickly  undone by the sin of the golden calf, but not completely. For Adam was cast from the Garden into the desolation of tohu, and in our time, the desolation of tohu is relieved by the Light of Torah and the power to unite Heaven and earth restored by the gift of G-d’s Commandments.  Ma’aser is one of those commandments.  When we take ma’aser from fruits, we do teshuvah for Adam’s sin.  The fruit that Adam took for himself, in violation of G-d’s Command, we now give to G-d in obedience to His Command. The celebration of our ability to do that is the joy of Tu b’Shvat.  

Tu b’Shvat does teshuvah for Adam’s sin, the most comprehensive, fundamental and pernicious of all sins, for it put us in the thrall of our wandering eyes. The dignity and joy of the day is the opportunity to renounce that servitude and rededicate ourselves, as the act of taking ma’aser symbolizes, to lifting the earth to Heaven and living our lives with G-d.  May G-d note our efforts and reward them soon with the coming of the Moshiach and the revelation of His Kingdom!  

What then, is the best way to celebrate Tu b’Shvat?  With the fruits of Eretz Yisrael, because they have been ma’asered.  Even better, with fruits from which we take ma’aser on Tu b’Shvat, for the ma’aser we take on the New Year of the trees is a sign  of our determination to spend the entire year, from Tu b’Shvat to Tu b’Shvat  correcting the sin of Adam by shielding our eyes from the  temptation of forbidden fruits that turn the heart away from G-d and betray our task of restoring the world to the Kingdom of Heaven.