Celebrating the New Year of the Trees
Rabbi Mendel Jacobs and guests celebrated Tu B’Shevat – the New Year of the Trees – by eating 15 types of fruit, reflecting the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar.
The celebration marks the beginning of a new season or springtime for trees. This is said to be the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.
Jewish people mark the day of Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit, particularly from the kinds that are singled out by the Torah in its praise of the bounty of the Holy Land: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.