A new inspiration

      

 After a long hiatus, there is no better day than the new year for the trees to begin anew. Tu B’Shvat (the 15^th of Shvat) is a well-known holiday with nowhere to go.   There are no real obligations on this day, except it is customary to eat some tasty Israeli fruit that one has not eaten yet that year. On this day, we recognize that most of the rain has fallen for that winter in Israel, the sap has started to move up the tree, and the first stage of the ripening fruit is about to begin.  More than that, it is a day of deep rejoicing where we don’t fast, make eulogies for the deceased, or place our heads down in submission during prayer.  Usually, we reserve joy for a tangible event, but here all that is happening is hidden and internal. What is the depth of the day and what does it mean for us? 

        A tree[2] is connected to the ground and it takes tasteless and formless dirt and produces a tasty and complex fruit.  Aside from the verse in Deuteronomy 20:19 that explicitly states it, ‘…for a man is a tree in the field’, the comparison is obvious. A human being is called ‘adam’ from the language of dirt, ‘adama’. A person is born with selfish tendencies and few things to be proud of- he is like tasteless dirt. It is his job to take his dirt, potential, and transform it to mitzvahs that have taste (reason) and purpose.  The Talmud in Sota 46a says explicitly that the main fruit of a person is his mitzvahs.

 This doesn’t happen automatically; it takes a lot of hard work.  Hopefully, the seeds were planted during the high holidays and tended up to this point. A third of the year has passed from Rosh Hashanah and this has supreme significance. Symbolically, if the body were divided into thirds, we’d now reach the midsection, we've now completed our hearts.  After much toil, we should start to feel inspired from our work, our hearts should come alive. That inspiration should lead to new directions and new actions.  

        This is the joy of Tu B’shvat. It is the process of moving from foundational work to transformational work. We should now have enough inspiration inside to actualize the plans we had for the year and create fruit that has never been tastier. 

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[1] Adapted from Shem mi Shmuel parsha B’shalach.

[2] A tree, אילן in Hebrew is gematria 91- which is the combination of the high name of G-d, יהוה and the lower name of G-d, אדוני. A tree connects both the upper and lower worlds.