 |
| Source |
Tonight begins the Jewish holiday of Tu B'shevat. Tu B'shevat is the Jewish New Year for Trees, 1 of 4 New Years on the Jewish calendar. On the day of Tu B'shevat, starting at sundown tonight and ending at sundown tomorrow, Jews typically eat fruits associated with the Holy Land. the holiday gets it's name from it's date on the Jewish calendar (15th of Shevat). Due to the nature of the Jewish calendar, this is a holiday that changes dates on the secular calendar.
The holiday is used to count the age of trees for tithing purposes. In the Torah*, Leviticus to be more precise, it states that one shouldn't eat the fruit from trees it's first 3 years and that the fruit of the 4th year should be gifted to God. People are free to eat the fruit from the tree on following years.
 |
| source |
The day naturally comes with a few traditions. One is to eat a new fruit on this day. Another is to eat all 7 of the spices mentioned in the Torah as abundant spices in Israel. Another tradition is to plant trees or collect money to plant trees in Israel. It's also customary to recite a blessing on the fruit eaten on the day.
- the pages on the day at chabad.org
- myJewishLearning has a few pages about how the holiday's types, the month/eating, and the holiday and it's history.
Sources
- BBC's summary of religions and their holidays
- Judaism 101
- chabad.org
* The Torah is roughly equivalent to the Christian Old Testament (OT). For the most part, it has the same books, but in a different order. Some of the book the Christian OT has are lumped together in the Torah also. Resulting in the Torah having 24 books compared to the either 39 or 46 in the OT. (Catholics have some OT books Protestants don't have.)
No comments:
Post a Comment