Tu BiShvat

When it falls

The fifteenth of Shevat, in late January or February. The Mishnah lists it as the new year of the trees, the date from which a tree's age was counted for the tithe.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

It began as a date in the tax code: fruit that set before this day belonged to the old year's tithe, fruit after it to the new. In the land of Israel the almond flowers in this week, the first tree to bloom, and the sap is held to rise in the trees from now.

The kabbalists of Safed in the sixteenth century made it a festival, with a seder of fruit and four cups of wine from white to red for the seasons. Modern Israel made it the day of planting: schoolchildren plant saplings, and the Jewish National Fund's forests were planted by the day's collection boxes in every diaspora school.

How the day is kept

• The fruits of the land of Israel eaten, the seven species first, with a new fruit of the year for the blessing.
• A Tu BiShvat seder in synagogues and homes, fruits in courses with readings on the trees and the land.
• Tree planting in Israel, and increasingly an environmental day for Jewish communities elsewhere.

At the table

Dried figs, dates, almonds, carob (bokser), raisins and pomegranates, and the etrog jam kept from Sukkot.

More spring and the seasons