The celebration of Tu B’Shevat --the 15th
of the month of Shevat on the Hebrew calendar-- is not mentioned in the
Bible. The oldest reference is found in the Talmud, where Tu B’Shevat is
called "the new year of the trees." The Talmud ascribes significance to this
date only in terms of the legal implications of taking tithes (10%) from fruits.
However, more than 400 years ago, the Kabbalists of Safed revealed the deeper
meaning of Tu B’Shevat. They taught that Tu B’Shevat is an
opportune time for fixing the transgression of Adam and Eve. Amazingly, through
the simple act of eating fruit during the Tu B’Shevat festive dinner, we
are able to contribute to this cosmic repair.
Through the simple act of eating fruit...we are able to contribute to this cosmic repair.
Let us explore the transgression of Adam and Eve, and
then we can understand the mystical meaning of the Tu B’Shevat holiday,
and why eating fruit is the way we celebrate it.
The Torah says that God put Adam and Eve in the garden
"to work it and to guard it." The Jewish oral tradition teaches us that this
refers to the do’s and don’ts--the positive mitzvahs and the negative mitzvahs--of
the Torah. Adam and Eve were given very little to do: eat from all the trees of
the garden. And their only don’t--their single prohibition--was not to eat fruit
from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What was that about?
The Torah teaches that God created the world so that
we could experience goodness in general and His goodness in particular.
Experiencing His goodness—bonding with God—is the greatest joy imaginable. God
empowers us to bond with Him by serving His purpose for creation. Just as when
we do for others, we feel connected to them, so, too, serving God enables us to
bond with Him. Ironically, serving God is actually self-serving—profoundly
fulfilling and pleasurable.
If we eat and enjoy the fruits of this world for God’s
sake—because this is what He asks of us—then we are actually serving God and
bonding with Him. We serve God by acknowledging that the fruits of this world
are His gifts to us and by willfully accepting and enjoying those gifts.
The root of Jewish life is, in fact, enjoyment—the
pleasure of connecting to God. We connect to God by serving Him, and this means
obeying His command to enjoy the fruits of this world.
Adam and Eve’s entire
obligation was to enjoy all the lush fruits.
While in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s entire
obligation was to enjoy all the lush fruits—with the notable exception of one
forbidden fruit. Sure enough, they went after that one. This misdeed
demonstrated their confused orientation to the real meaning of pleasure. Rather
than seeing the fruits as pleasurable because they are God’s gifts and enjoying
them as part of their service to God, they wanted to partake of them
independently of God—in fact, contrary to His will.
The Art of Receiving
As already explained, real pleasure is experiencing a
connection with God. We enjoy the ultimate spiritual pleasure when we enjoy the
physical pleasures of this world as part of our divine service. Then, the act of
receiving and enjoying God’s gifts to us is amazingly transformed into a
selfless act of serving God.
We can understand now that God’s only desire in giving
Adam and Eve those two mitzvahs was to give them the ultimate pleasure—bonding
with Him. True pleasure was not in the taste of the fruits, but in eating and
enjoying these gifts from God. This was the way to serve and connect with
Him—the Ultimate Pleasure.
But Adam and Eve misunderstood this. They did not see
physical pleasure as a conduit to the spiritual pleasure of bonding with God.
Rather, they sought pleasure independent of God.
This is the root of all wrongdoing. Do we see the
pleasures of this world as a gift from God, enjoying them in the service of God,
and using them as conduits to a connection to God? Or, do we seek pleasure
independent of any connection to God? In other words, is the pleasure about us,
or is the pleasure about our relationship with God?
There is a fundamental difference between having
pleasure and receiving pleasure. If we want to have pleasure, it doesn’t
matter where it comes from. Having pleasure is void of any connection to a
reality greater than ourselves. It is simply a selfish desire to experience a
particular pleasure for its own sake. Receiving pleasure, however, is rooted in
the soul’s desire to serve God’s purpose, which is to receive the ultimate joy
of connecting to Him.
They were clueless about what would bring
them meaning and joy in life.
Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, because
they were totally confused about their purpose on earth and, consequently, what
is truly pleasurable in this world. They were clueless about what would bring
them meaning and joy in life.
Following Adam and Eve’s fatal mistake, God told them,
"Because you ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, the earth
has become cursed." God was not punishing the earth because of Adam and Eve’s
transgression, rather He was informing them that their distorted orientation
towards physical pleasures has turned the earth into a source of curse rather
than blessing for them and for their descendants.
Depending on how we view the physical world, it is
cursed or blessed. If we look at the physical world as a conduit to a connection
with God, and if, as a service to God, we gratefully receive His gift of
delicious fruits, we thereby experience His presence and the physical world
becomes blessed. The physical world then becomes a bridge between the human and
the divine. But if we fixate on the physical, independent of any relationship
with God, and mistakenly perceive this world as the source of our pleasure
rather than as a bridge to God, then this world becomes a barrier to God and a
curse for us.
Now that we understand the transgression of Adam and
Eve, we can begin to appreciate how we can contribute to its fixing on Tu
B’Shevat.
On Tu B’Shevat, the new sap begins to rise up
into the trees. And we bring abundance to this process when we celebrate Tu
B’Shevat.
The Talmud says that more than the baby wants to suck,
a mother wants to nurse. The mother not only gets tremendous pleasure from
nursing her baby, but the flow of her milk is actually generated by its sucking.
The more the baby wants to suck, the more milk the mother has to give. This
principle also applies to our relationship to God.
God wants to give us the greatest of all pleasures
which is a connection with Him. But if we don’t recognize that to be the
greatest pleasure, and we don’t want it, then He can’t give it to us. Of course,
God could give it to us, but it would just be a waste, because we wouldn’t
recognize it for what it is.
The Power of a Blessing
On Tu B’Shevat, we attempt to fix the
transgression of Adam and Eve when we enjoy the fruits of the earth preceded by
the recitation of an appreciative blessing to God—"Blessed are you, God….." in
other words, "God, You are the source of this blessing."
An apple is not just an apple, an apple is a blessing.
An apple is not just an apple, an apple is a blessing.
Maybe I could believe that apples come from trees, but a blessing could only
come from God. If I really contemplate the mystery and miracle of the taste,
fragrance, beauty and nutrition wrapped up in this apple, I see that it’s more
than just a fruit—it is a wondrous loving gift from God. When I taste an apple
with that kind of consciousness, I cannot but experience the presence of God
within the physical. When I recite a blessing before I eat and acknowledge it as
a gift from God, I reveal the divinity within it, and the transient sensual
pleasure of the food is transformed, because it is filled with eternal spiritual
pleasure. The food then feeds not only my body but also my soul. However, when I
eat without a blessing, it’s as if I stole the food. Perhaps it will nourish and
bring pleasure to my body, but it will do nothing for my soul. The soul is only
nourished when it experiences its eternal connection to God.
Tu B’Shevat is an opportune time to celebrate how
eating and enjoying the fruits of trees can be a bridge to God, and how it can
bring back the blessing to the earth.
When we enjoy the fruits of the previous year as
wonderful gifts from God and affirm our yearning for God’s presence manifest in
the fruit, we are like a baby sucking his mother’s milk with great appetite. We
draw forth with great abundance the "milk of the earth"—the sap in the trees
rises up with great abundance, so that they will bear much fruit in the coming
year.
Unlike Adam and Eve who sought pleasure separate from
God and who turned physical pleasure into a barrier to God, we—on Tu
B’Shevat—enjoy the fruits as God’s gift and experience their pleasure as a
connection to God. In this way we fix the transgression of Adam and Eve. We free
the earth from being a curse for us—a barrier to God. We transform it into a
bridge, so that it becomes a wellspring of blessing and God-given pleasure.
[Adapted from Inviting God In: The True Meaning of
the Jewish Holy Days (Trumpeter/Random House).]
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