This is a photograph of four children, three boys and a girl, planting trees. There is a crowd of people watching in the background. The children are wearing typical Israeli clothes of the time: sandals, shorts, white T-shirts, and the cloth hats known as a kovah tembel. We can presume that they are planting trees in Israel to celebrate Tu B’Shvat.
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Tu B'Shvat - TuB’Shvat, the 15th day of the month of Shvat, is first mentioned in the Mishnah as one of the Jewish New Years, the date that marked the beginning of the tax year for fruits and trees. At the time of the Temple, this meant taking a portion of one’s crops and giving it to the Levites. This special day evolved into the New Year for trees, fruit, and nature that we know today. The tradition of planting trees slowly developed, not as a halachic ritual, but as a Zionist, nationalistic one. In 1884 the pioneers of the village of Yesud Hama’alah planted 1,500 fruit trees on TuB’Shvat, and in 1890 Rabbi Ze’ev Yaavitz planted seeds with his students in Zichron Yaakov. By doing this, Yaavitz and the Yesud Hama’alah farmers gave a Zionist interpretation to this mishnaic date by planting trees to make the Land of Israel flourish. In 1908, the teachers’ union in Jerusalem adopted this new tradition and made TuB’Shvat the “Festival of Planting” that was later adopted by the JNF-KKL and has since been celebrated by planting trees and promoting environmental concerns. Another traditional way of celebrating TuB’Shvat is conducting a TuB’Shvat Seder, a ritual first conducted in Tzfat (Safed) in the seventeenth century. This includes eating fruit of the Land of Israel and reading special passages that relate to fruit and the Land of Israel.
