January 16: Tu B’Shevat

Happy New Year, various trees!

Today we celebrated Tu B'Shevat, which is known as the New Year for the Trees in Judaism.  We had SO MANY good intentions for this day and basically only a couple of them succeeded.  So, in that sense, it was exactly like any other New Year's celebration.  So new, so full of promise, so many resolutions to give up on within a couple weeks.

Go home, tree.  You're drunk!

As our holidays go, this was actually one of the more serious ones - with a long and storied set of traditions. You know what that means!  History lesson time!

In Leviticus, it states that the fruit of a tree cannot be eaten until it is at least three years old.  The fourth year, the fruit is for God and after that you get to eat it.  Okay?  Does that mean we have to have freaking tree birthdays?  Oh, this fig tree is a Taurus, so it is totally stubborn.  At least it isn't flaky like the damn Leo lemon tree!  Oops, forgot astrology was verboten - now what?  Enter Tu B'Shevat - a single standard day marking the new year for the trees.  Like a super solemn group birthday party at God's metaphorical bowling alley. 

I know you wanted a skating party, Weeping Willow, but you need to stop pouting about it.

If a tree is planted before Tu B'Shevat, it begins its second tree year the very next day and gets teased by all of the older trees for being the smallest tree in class.  The traditional celebration around Tu B'Shevat is not mentioned in the Torah, but is referenced in the Mishnah, which is a book that compiles many of the oral traditions of Judaism not captured anywhere else.

Several traditions have sprung up around the observance over the course of the centuries.  People generally eat fruit, eat from the Seven Spices of Israel, plant trees, meditate on what it means to be "a tree of the field" and (in Kabbalah) have a Seder.  We intended to do all of those things.  In the days before the holiday, Justin called a tree service and had them come out and remove a diseased tree from our back yard to make room for the lovely citrus tree we intended to plant.

The shovel is SO MUCH creepier than I thought when I first loaded these.

...and then we realized it takes longer than 48 hours to secure and plant a tree.  Before anyone says 'I told you so'... don't.  Justin told me so.  I've been told so.  I was so very and completely... told so.  He was sweet enough to call several nurseries in the area just to see if it was a possibility and to go buy a shovel for the entirely NOT creepy purpose of digging the hole for the new tree.  But we weren't able to make it happen.

That's okay though - there are lots of other things we can do to observe the holiday - let's talk about the food stuff.  First and foremost, it being a Jewish holiday, one of the least things we could do was take a serious college try at keeping kosher for the day.  The point of this yearlong adventure (besides having an excuse to wear amazing hats at work) is to experience different cultural traditions firsthand.  So we really should try this whole kosher thing the kids are raving about.

Oh boy...

That picture, by the way, is the ENTIRE contents of our meat drawer.  WE LITERALLY ONLY OWN PORK.  WHAT THE SHIT, MAN.  Luckily, we have canned peas and kosher salt.  YUM, GUISE!  So I managed to cobble together something resembling a lunch.  We dug to the very back of the fridge and found some leftover chicken that is almost undoubtedly lacking the necessary blessings, but which we decided would count in the spirit of the exercise.  

Fun fact: Starburst are NOT kosher because of gelatin used as a binding agent in the candy.  That wasn't welcome news at 3pm when I was willing to throw my cashews out the window as soon as look at them.

Justin made a solid college try at being kosher, but found that old habits die hard.  While in line at Subway, he did not hesitate to get cheese on his cold cut sandwich before doing a quick double take and realizing what he'd done.  That said, and this is unrelated to the holiday, Justin gets a full and total pass on keeping kosher because he cleaned our bathroom within an inch of its life, for several hours.  The man scrubbed grout on his hands and knees.  He gets some freaking bacon if he wants it.

When I got home, we worked on cooking a kosher dinner (spaghetti, tomato sauce and the five of the Seven Spices for the Seder).  We ran into several problems.  For one, parmesan cheese, by its nature, is not kosher - one of the curdling agents used has animal byproducts.  For two, we don't know most of the kosher symbols.  We spent all day looking for a K inside a shape and being confused and frustrated by the U with a circle around it that we didn't understand.

HULK NEED TO CHECK LABEL AGAIN

We did manage, as I mentioned, to serve five of the Seven Spices.  The are: wheat, barley, figs, dates, pomegranates, olives and grapes.  We missed barley and figs.  Dates are gross.  I've grown to have a begrudging respect for olives.  We focused our energy on the pomegranates, wheat and grapes and that was a good decision.  While Justin cooked the pasta (for our wheat), I read from the Seder text that I'd found.

I will say that I think we did a good job meditating on being trees of the field.  The Seder text had a lot of really wonderful symbolism about growth, trees and what it means to honor God's gifts on the earth.  It was a new line of thought for both of us and we had a long and meaningful spiritual discussion over the course of dinner.  I've mentioned our religious beliefs here before - the fact is - though we differ in our conclusions, our logic and general faiths are very much the same.  That is a lot of what we were reminded of in our Tu B'Shevat meditations and that was lovely.

We did not perform the entire Seder.  We read into it and, in a similar vein to our Fete du Vodoun celebration, we decided that performing the full Seder would not necessarily be the act of respect that we intend it to be.  We decided that upon reading some of the early paragraphs that talk about eating the fruit as an honor to God, rather than for personal or earthly reasons.... and since we are kind of exactly doing the latter by celebrating these holidays... yeah.  See what I mean?  While for me, all things are for God's glory, I have to say that these holidays are for our personal joy and pleasure.  It didn't seem appropriate to perform the Seder given that understanding.

So there were a lot of things we intended to do, but didn't manage.  We don't consider it a failed holiday though.  For one, we both learned A LOT about this holiday and its traditions.  For two, we both gained some empathy for people who adopt a restricted diet for religious reasons.  We knew it was difficult, but it was a lot harder than we even realized.  And finally, the meditation was beautiful and inspiring.  I know I've said it a lot and I'm kind of counting down the days until it loses all meaning - but today was a great, great day!