Tu B'Shvat - The Inner Meaning of the Day in Light of Chassidus

00:00 What have trees done to deserve a special holiday of their own? Creation is full of so many good things that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created. There is the inanimate, the plant, the animal, and the human. Yet of all the creations that Hakadosh Boruch Hu made in His world, we celebrate the trees in particular. What is special about trees? That is what we will discuss today: the deeper meaning of the New Year for Trees. If it simply means that we should thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for the sweet fruits He has given us, then we should equally have a special new year for livestock, wild animals, the earth, and all the other wonderful, beautiful things Hashem created in His world that we enjoy. There is something special about trees in particular. And the question is stronger still: even among plants, there are many things besides trees. There are also field crops—wheat and barley. We do not specially celebrate a new year for crops, even though the Mishnah that is the source for the New Year for Trees—the first Mishnah in tractate Rosh Hashanah—does mention a new year for livestock, as well as a new year for crops and vegetables. Nevertheless, we do not find a Jewish custom of celebrating a special holiday, a new year, for vegetables, livestock, or the produce of the land. Trees in particular have been given a special new year. And the Jewish custom is that on this day, 15 Shvat, we do not say Tachanun in davening, and there are various customs of eating fruit. Some also recite verses, teachings of our Sages, passages from the holy Zohar, and other things according to Jewish custom. So the question, as we said, is: what is special about trees that we celebrate them? There is a famous verse that is usually offered as the explanation. It appears at the end of Parshas Shoftim: “For man is a tree of the field.” This verse tells us something that connects a person with a tree of the field.

02:27 Yet when we look at the verse, it is actually speaking about something quite different. It is speaking about war. When conducting a war, the Torah says there, at the end of Parshas Shoftim—where it discusses various kinds of warfare—that among the laws of war, one must be careful not to cut down fruit trees. Then it says, “For man is a tree of the field.” There are several interpretations of this. In general, it means that we must preserve the tree of the field because a person lives from it. Its fruits sustain a person, and therefore one should not be quick to cut it down. This is where the whole subject of bal tashchis comes in: one may not destroy things fit for food. That is learned from these verses. Nevertheless, according to the Midrash, this verse also contains an allusion. The Gemara in tractate Taanis learns from “For man is a tree of the field” an allusion to a Torah scholar: someone who studies Torah must have students, like a tree of the field, and must have good, proper character traits. That is learned from this verse. But this still does not explain what is unique about trees and their fruits that we make a special new year for trees. As we said, among plants in general—and among growing things themselves—it is trees in particular, which usually means fruit trees. And when we speak of fruit, we mean especially the seven species for which the Land of Israel is praised. They are central to this subject of fruit. So we celebrate, and Jewish custom is to try to find fruit from the seven species—and of those seven species, specifically the five that are fruits. The first two species, wheat and barley, are crops; they are bread. That is not the focus of the celebration of 15 Shvat. On Tu

04:49 BiShvat, we celebrate the other five species in particular: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates—the “honey” mentioned in the verse. These are the main focus of the celebration. So today we will study and explain in depth how Chassidus illuminates this, as it does everything, giving us a deeper, inner perspective. Every holiday is also—and primarily—a message for a Jew, a message for a person, a message for our lives that is relevant right now. We want to learn what the message of the New Year for Trees is for our daily lives. One of the main things we see specifically with trees becomes clear if we look at how they grow. There is a seed that we put in the ground. It is hard and dry, with no taste or fragrance. We put that seed into the ground, where it remains for a while. After plowing and all the work we do, we leave it in the ground for a time. Then, of all things, the seed goes through a process of decay: it rots beneath the ground, and only then does the process of growth begin. Now, that process occurs with all plants. But what is special about tree fruit is that, as we see, it is unlike vegetables and other crops—wheat, barley, and the various grains. With those, we put kernels into the ground and kernels grow. In other words, what grows is essentially of the same kind as what was planted. We sowed kernels, and kernels grew. Of course, they grow in greater quantity: one small kernel produces wheat with many kernels. But the difference is only in quantity, not in kind. It is not an essential difference. That is also why it takes less time. We see that when we put wheat kernels into the ground, it takes only a few weeks—not very long—for them to grow. And the two things are connected

07:18 to each other. The transition from seed to growth in field crops, grains, and vegetables is not such a great or fundamental transition. That is why they grow more quickly, and why we always have to start again from the beginning. We put in the seeds; once we have harvested the crop, we will need to plant seeds again for it to grow again, and so on. With fruit trees, by contrast, the process we see is much longer and more drawn out. It takes a great deal of time and much more effort, but the resulting growth is on an entirely different scale. Once I put the seed of a fruit into the ground—take a grape seed, or the seed of a fig or a pomegranate—a process begins that will take several years. Aside from the laws we know—that there are at least three years of orlah, followed by a fourth and a fifth year, as the Torah discusses, before the fruit becomes fully available for eating—even in the natural course of things, it takes a very long time and a great deal of effort. We have to work, make every effort, check and pay attention to the water and the soil, and guard against various things that could cause damage along the way, until at last a wonderful tree grows: a fruit tree bearing fruit of its kind. But once the tree has grown, it is not merely that I planted a seed and more seeds grew, or that I planted a fruit and several fruits grew. Once it begins to grow, the growth of the fruit is tremendous. A tree grows that will last for many years. That same tree will continue to be a fruit tree bearing fruit of its kind. We will only need to care for it, and it will go on producing fruit, and more fruit, for many long, good years. That is the wonderful thing we see in fruit trees. And one more thing before we learn the lesson, the teaching for us, is the matter of—the purpose that there is

09:41 Fruit is different from the other things. Fruit from a tree is not really something a person eats because they have to eat. It is not food you eat to fill yourself up; it is mainly food you eat for pleasure. In general, grain is filling food: bread, mezonos, all kinds of foods and cakes that a person eats to feel full. That is why the blessings are different, as we know from the laws of blessings over food. But almost all tree fruits, if not all of them, are things a person does not usually eat because they are hungry. We eat them for their sweet taste. They have sweet-and-sour flavors, distinctive flavors, and we eat them for enjoyment and pleasure. That is the essential quality of tree fruits, more than anything else we discussed earlier. So if we take all this and try to understand the message—what it represents for our daily lives, for our own lives—we can begin with a teaching of the holy Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov speaks about the verse, “For you shall be to Me a treasured land, says Hashem Tzevaos.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says through the prophet, “For you shall be to Me a treasured land.” The Jewish people are like the earth, a treasured land. Every Jew is like the earth to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, says the Baal Shem Tov. What does that mean? The earth, as we said earlier, seems to be the lowest, plainest, most material and coarse thing, the very bottom, seemingly without any special vitality. But Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed within the earth this wondrous power: the power to grow. You put a seed in the earth, and it grows. The most precious things are found specifically in the earth; Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed them there. We know that treasures and minerals, the greatest and most important treasures, are hidden in the earth. And no matter how much

12:04 we search and search, we still will not reach the depths of what is found and hidden within the earth. The Baal Shem Tov says: This is the meaning of “For you shall be to Me a treasured land.” The Jewish people are, so to speak, like Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s treasured land, like His earth, with the power of growth inside it. Now, what do we see in the earth’s power to grow? As we said earlier, you take a seed and put it in the earth. There, the process begins: first it decays, and then, little by little, wonderfully sweet fruit grows. What does this represent in our lives? It represents the purpose of a Jew, the reason he is here in this physical world. Our soul—the soul of every Jew—is hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory. Our soul is literally a part of G-d above, as the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya. The soul’s source is in the highest place, far above, hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory. Before the soul descended here into this physical world, it was in Gan Eden. It was connected to, and enjoyed, the radiance of the Shechinah, as the Gemara says. That is the reality of our soul as it exists in the higher worlds. Then that soul descends here into this world. We say it every day in the morning blessings: “My G-d, the soul You have given me is pure.” Every Jew says this blessing at the start of the day: “My G-d, the soul You have given me is pure.” My soul is inherently pure. It is not that it used to be pure; it is pure now. The essence of our soul, which is literally a part of G-d above, is pure even now. But “You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me, and You preserve it within me.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought the soul down from world to world, from level to level, until He breathed it into us, into our physical, material body, which is, so to speak,

14:16 like inanimate matter, dust from the earth. That is the reality of the body. “Hashem formed man from dust of the earth.” From that dust man was formed, and that is our body. And here begins the wondrous process of what we call the Jew’s growth in this physical world. As we said, that process includes a stage of decay. When the soul descends here below, it joins with the body, with the physical world, with physical reality. That takes time. Each of us sees it in our own life. There are moments, days, and periods in life when we are searching, and we do not quite know what we are doing here in the world or what our purpose in life is. Then a person begins the work of asking: What am I actually supposed to do? What am I here in the world for? Eventually he comes to realize that his purpose is growth. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave me this great, holy soul, hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory, but it is, so to speak, like a seed. My task is to join that seed with the physical body in this physical world. The soul’s self-nullification within the body is the stage of decay. Decay represents a kind of self-nullification: I have to go through a process of setting aside my sense of self. To “decay,” in the sense we mean here, is to find out what the Divine will is and put myself aside. As long as I am focused only on myself, on my ego, on what I like and what I want, I remain, so to speak, an intact seed that does not allow itself to grow. Part of our process of growth must be reaching a certain self-nullification before the Divine will—what the Torah calls kabbolas ol malchus Shamayim, accepting the yoke of Heaven. A person has to put himself

16:28 and his own wishes aside and ask, “What does Hakadosh Boruch Hu want from me at this moment?” Once we have that self-nullification, that decay, that setting aside of the ego—and sometimes it is not a coarse ego, a matter of wanting material things. There is also a spiritual kind of ego. I like and want certain things in Judaism, in Torah and mitzvos, that speak to me. I seek to fulfill those mitzvos because they are pleasant and sweet to me; I love them because they fit my personality. But if you ask me to fulfill mitzvos or do things that do not fit my personality so well, that is hard for me. Some people naturally love to sit and study. Ask them to sit and learn, and they can do it all day. But ask them to go do a favor for another Jew, and that is hard for them. To go out, take action, speak to people—“I’m shy. It isn’t easy for me; I’m uncomfortable.” So that part is hard for me. And the reverse is also true. Some people love helping others endlessly. Ask them to help, to give, to do someone a favor, and they are right there. But ask them to sit and learn: “I don’t have the energy; I don’t feel like it.” It does not fit their personality. So here we come to that decay: setting aside the “I,” not only the material “I” but the spiritual “I” as well. Putting myself aside and finding out what the Divine will is. In that decay, the fruit begins to grow. And here, as we said, there are different kinds. There is grain. As we said, grain represents the food a person eats to feel full, the food a person eats to sustain himself. What does that mean in daily life? The things a Jew does in Torah and mitzvos because they must be done. There are things we are obligated to do, things

18:34 Positive things, essential things. The everyday mitzvos that the Shulchan Aruch says a Jew must do each day. A Jew must put on tefillin every day. A Jew must give tzedakah every day. A Jew must wash his hands in the morning every day. There are the essential mitzvos I have to do each day. To study one chapter in the morning and one chapter in the evening, as it says. But then there is the service of Hashem that is like the fruit of a tree—things that bring pleasure, things that have sweetness. This is no longer about necessity; it is about doing things with pleasure. When my service of Hashem is only because I have the yoke of Heaven upon me, only because I am obligated as a Jew, I do the minimum. I look up what halachah requires of me, and that is what I do. I do only what is essential, the bare minimum. But once a person feels pleasure, joy, and happiness in keeping Torah and mitzvos, when his service of Hashem comes from a place of pleasure, he does not stop at what is required. He acts without making calculations, without all those limits. He wants to go beyond the letter of the law, to perform a mitzvah in the most beautiful way. I don’t want to do it in the most minimal way. Take putting on tefillin, for example. I can put them on quickly—one, two, done. I’ve fulfilled the mitzvah. But if I feel pleasure, joy, delight, and sweetness in fulfilling Hashem’s command, I’ll do it from an entirely different place. There will be joy in putting on tefillin. I won’t hurry to take them off my head. I’ll want to put on not only Rashi tefillin, but Rabbeinu Tam tefillin as well—to perform the mitzvah with greater care, greater pleasure, and greater joy. And the same is true of studying Torah. Once

20:43 I have—if my Torah study is only about doing what is required, I’ll say, “Fine, I fulfill my obligation with one halachah in the morning and one in the evening. I’ll study the minimum. I’ve done it. I’m all right with Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” But that is still not what Tu B’Shvat is about. The fruit of the tree teaches us that when a person reaches the point we’ve been talking about, after the whole process, he comes to a place of pleasure and great joy in serving Hashem. You’ll study more than you have to. A person will want to learn another page of Gemara, another few words of Torah, another verse, another Mishnah, another halachah, another word of Chassidus—and take pleasure in it. When something fills me with pleasure and joy, I don’t ask what I’m required to do. I’ll do much more than I have to. A person will study and “meditate on it day and night,” or, as people say, sometimes even steal time from things he needs to do, finding a few more minutes to stay and learn a few more words of Torah. And the same is true of the mitzvah of tzedakah. There is a halachic obligation for a Jew to give a tithe of his earnings—ten percent. But when a Jew’s Torah and mitzvos, his service of Hashem, come from a place of pleasure, his service of Hashem is entirely different. The tzedakah he gives won’t be limited to ten percent. He’ll try to reach twenty percent, as our Sages say that the more beautiful way to fulfill the mitzvah of tzedakah is to give up to twenty percent—and even more. Sometimes he won’t even look at the numbers. As the Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, when it comes to physical health, G-d forbid, if a person needs something for his health, he doesn’t calculate the cost. He’ll do

22:40 whatever is needed to regain his physical health. All the more so when it comes to the health of the soul: surely a person won’t make calculations then, and sometimes he’ll give even more than twenty percent to repair his soul, to heal his soul, and so on. So here is the wonderful message of this holiday, the New Year for Trees. What is special about trees in particular? As we said, first of all, they symbolize growth, something absolutely fundamental in a Jew’s life. We are a “desirable land”; we have the power to grow. We see in verses throughout Tanach that the Jewish people are compared to all kinds of fruit. It’s a wonderful thing. If we look at the verses of Tanach, we find that the Jewish people are sometimes called a vine: “You brought a vine out of Egypt,” in chapter 80 of Tehillim, compares the Jewish people to a vine. The Jewish people are called a fig: “Like the first-ripe fig, I saw your forefathers.” The Jewish people are compared to an olive: “A flourishing olive tree, beautiful with well-formed fruit, Hashem called your name.” That refers to an olive. Pomegranates: “Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates,” in Shir Hashirim. “You are like a palm tree.” We find all these fruits to which the Jewish people are compared. And, of course, the Jewish people are also compared to grain, to produce, to wheat and barley. “Israel is holy to Hashem, the first of His produce”—“His produce” refers to grain. But this is precisely the point we’re discussing. When we speak about grain, there is not yet a reason to celebrate. Grain represents the things that are essential, that are obligatory. And if something is an obligation, you don’t celebrate it. It is what a Jew is supposed to do. That is why our souls descended into this world: to fulfill the essentials, represented by grain—the necessary observance of mitzvos. That

24:52 is the obligation of every Jew, and we don’t yet celebrate it. The fifteenth of Shvat, Tu B’Shvat, the New Year for Trees—because “man is a tree of the field”—symbolizes this wonderful truth: a Jew has the ability to serve Hashem from a place of pleasure, from a place of joy, doing not only what is required but doing things with a special delight. And as we said, reaching that point takes a longer process. Serving Hashem in the most basic, necessary way does not require such a long process. But serving Hashem so that a person truly feels joy, happiness, and delight, and serves Him from that place, demands more work from us. For that, we need to think more, contemplate more, delve more deeply, and understand what we are doing here in this world. We need to understand the wonderful thing we have received, the great gift Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us: “a part of G-d above, literally,” and Torah and mitzvos, which are His wisdom and His will. For that, we need to study the things taught to us by the inner dimension of Torah, which teaches us about the inner dimension of the soul and the inner dimension of Torah, and explains the garden, the orchard, the wonderful pleasure found in serving Hashem and in Torah and mitzvos. Only then is our service of Hashem much more joyful and pleasurable. That is the holiday of the New Year for Trees. So now that we are at this holiday, the New Year for Trees, we notice something remarkable. Why do we celebrate it specifically on the fifteenth of the month? It’s interesting. When you look at the Mishnah’s four new years, all four are on Rosh Chodesh. There is Rosh Chodesh Nissan, the new year for kings and festivals; Rosh Chodesh Elul,

26:56 There’s a Rosh Hashanah for animals, and there’s Rosh Chodesh Tishrei. We’re all familiar with the Rosh Hashanah for the many things the Mishnah lists there—five or six things for which 1 Tishrei is Rosh Hashanah. Then comes Shvat. Beis Shammai says here, too, that it’s on Rosh Chodesh; Beis Hillel says it’s on the fifteenth, and that’s how the halachah was decided. We celebrate specifically on the fifteenth, and that’s remarkable. Why is the Rosh Hashanah for trees on the fifteenth of the month, unlike all the other Rosh Hashanahs, which fall on Rosh Chodesh? By that logic, Rosh Chodesh would make more sense. It’s the beginning, the starting point. The moon is born anew; it’s the beginning of the whole month. So the Rosh Hashanah for certain matters is also set at the beginning of the month. Rosh Chodesh Nissan is the Rosh Hashanah for kings and festivals. Rosh Chodesh Tishrei is the Rosh Hashanah for years, for human beings, and so on—all the things we know about Rosh Hashanah. Why, when it comes to trees, was the halachah decided specifically for Tu B’Shvat, the fifteenth of the month, and not Rosh Chodesh? This connects to everything we spoke about earlier. On this Rosh Hashanah of Tu B’Shvat, we’re not celebrating what is necessary. We’re celebrating delight. We’re celebrating the joy and the wonderful pleasure a Jew experiences in serving Hashem, so that he does it in a bright, expansive, delightful way. You can see the light, the joy, the smile on his face. You can see how he truly delights in every word of Torah he learns and every mitzvah he fulfills. That is precisely the significance of the fifteenth of the month, when the moon is full. At the start of the month, the moon is just a point. It has only now been born; everything is dark, and you can’t yet see all its light. It’s a point. On the fifteenth, the moon is complete. You look at the moon on the fifteenth of Shvat,

29:02 and you see a full moon, a shining moon that sends light into all of existence amid the great darkness. We know that the Jewish people are symbolized by the moon: they are destined to be renewed like it. The Jewish people, the holy Shechinah—that is the moon. When the moon reaches the fifteenth of the month, it is full. It symbolizes Knesses Yisroel filled with light, and that is what the festival of Tu B’Shvat is about. A Jew serves Hashem with delight and joy, full of light, love, eagerness, and pleasure, and brings all of that into the world. He brings that light into life. And with Hashem’s help, may each of us connect to this festival of the Rosh Hashanah for trees. For “man is a tree of the field.” May we be people of trees, people of a garden, people of delight and joy in serving Hashem. May we spread that light to illuminate the world, and may it bring us to happier lives. May we soon, in our days, see the fulfillment of the verses spoken in the prophecies of the Geulah, where it says, “The tree of the field will yield its fruit,” in Bechukosai, and in other verses, “The plowman will overtake the reaper.” May we merit to see the great flowering of the true and complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu: “A shoot will emerge from the stump of Yishai”—the great tree. “May You speedily cause the shoot of David Your servant to flourish, and exalt his strength through Your salvation, for we hope for Your salvation all day long.”