Tu B'shvat

Judaism has come up with a lot of great ideas that took awhile to catch on in the rest of the world. And the holiday of Tu B'shvat, much like shabbat, divorce, and gefilte fish, is one of those ideas. And like its American counterpart Arbor Day (the last Friday in April), many people know it merely as a holiday mentioned on the calendar.

But we at Ma'aleh Gilboa are not like most people. We take our holidays, major and minor alike, seriously. Well, for the most part.

Whereas Arbor Day varies in most US States and has been around for a relatively short time (President Nixon declared it a national holiday in 1970), Tu B'shvat has been an established holiday for the Jewish people since at least the days of the Mishna. Quoth Tractate Rosh Hashana, Chapter 1 Mishna 1:

ארבעה ראשי שנים הם באחד בניסן ראש השנה למלכים ולרגלים באחד באלול ראש השנה למעשר בהמה רבי אלעזר ורבי שמעון אומרים באחד בתשרי באחד בתשרי ראש השנה לשנים ולשמיטין וליובלות לנטיעה ולירקות באחד בשבט ראש השנה לאילן כדברי בית שמאי בית הלל אומרים בחמשה עשר בו

"The four New Years are the first of Nissan, which is the New Year's for kings and pilgrimages; the first of Elul, which is the New Year's for tithing of animals (Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shimon say it is on the first of Tishrei); the first of Tishrei, which is the New Year's for sabbatical and jubilee years; the [counting of the years of] planted trees and vegetables is the first of Shvat according to the School of Shamai; the School of Hillel says the fifteenth of the month."

And naturally, since Shamai almost always loses to Hillel, the New Year's for the trees is the fifteenth, not first, of the month of Shvat.

So, last night some of the guys, including Ronen, Zev, Jamin, and Yakir, organized a Tu B'shvat seder. Now, I know most of you probably think that a seder is purely a Passover thing. Well, it's not. So there. However, the Tu B'shvat seder (hereafter the TBS) did feature all the good things in a Passover seder, namely, songs, weird food, a sense of comradery, and a few good laughs.

First, the food. As evidenced by the picture (left), we had lots of fruit: dates, grapes, figs, wheat (products), which are among the seven species of Israel; bananas, almonds, prunes, and apricots, because "why not?"; and cola, as a drink.

As to the songs-- well, most of the seder was made up of songs. And I only recognized about three of the fifteen or so songs, so I was in the dark most of the time. I mean, I was in the dark most of the time anyway, as the presentation was a PowerPoint hooked up to an overhead projector, but you know what I mean. And the comradery. There was a lot of that. Everyone singing the familiar songs, each with an arm around his neighbor's shoulder. In Israel, things are different with regard to agriculture. Everyone knows that they're living in an arid environment, and are thus thankful for the fruit that they do produce. So the thankfulness is really felt. And as for the laughs? Ronen, king of the avant-guard humor, tastefully snuck a few well-placed jokes between songs, such as "name Asor's siblings", "where did Yonatan's roommates hide his things at the beginning of the year?" and "a riddle: who doesn't have a back?"

I guess the only negative part of the whole thing was how the ceremony lasted close to two hours. Argh. And that can seem like ten hours if you don't know the songs.

Anyway, in the learning world, today we did more of Sanhedrin. We need to finish the ninth chapter of the tractate by Thursday, since we are switching to tractate Pesachim on Monday. So we're rushing a bit. Since we're dealing with a fun subject, capital punishment, I thought I'd share a few choice bits here. Such as while Jewish law recognizes four forms of execution (stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation) there is also a fifth category for killing when there is a legal technicality. Such methods include placing the person in question into a small box and feeding him barley until his stomach explodes. Fun.

Also, for certain people (stealing from the Temple, cursing with magic, sleeping with an Aramean woman), whose situation is also equally unverifiable, zealots are allowed to kill them "in the heat of the moment." One example is found in Numbers chapter 25, in the, shall we say, "love triangle" of Phineas, Cozbi, and Zimri. The gmara in Sanhedrin brings a lot of details to the situation. Some of the more... unusual things I found are where Phineas' spear punctured Zimri and Cozbi (not proper to write explicitly, but suffice it to say that both were impaled simultaneously in painful places) and how many times Zimri and Cozbi had sex before being killed (424, as derived from some gematria). All I could say as I read this was "Whaaaa...?!" The gmara is so well written for legal analysis, it's no wonder that so many Jews are lawyers; but at the same time, looking at all the crazy stories also here, it's also no wonder that so many Jews end up writing for Hollywood.

In Brief: in the class about the book of Exodus, Chezi presented a breakdown of the Ten Plagues that was almost exactly like mine on Va'eira ... in Meta-Halacha, Rav Elisha discussed premarital sex through the laws of concubines (yes, I too was confused) ... in bkiyut gmara, I learned for the first time with Jason, as well as Micah, tractate Makot, though due to his learning style, I may not continue with Jason ... in night gmara, I learned with Eitan Rubinstein about the masses and volumes of wheat and barley for some reason or another.

That's it for now, folks.

(By the way, the answers to the humorous Tu B'shvat quandries above are "Ne'ot, Misgav, and Mizmor"; "the freezer"; and "Ezra". Though I don't think you were interested.)