In honor of Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year of the Trees,” (Jewish Arbor Day), pre-school students at Temple B'nai Abraham’s Early School celebrated with a Seder. In modern Israel, Tu B’Shevat has become a national holiday, a tree-planting festival for Israelis and Jews throughout the world. It is customary to eat a great amount of fruit on Tu’ B’Shevat particularly fruits that are grown in Israel including bokser(carob pods), oranges, avocados, banana, kiwi, dried plums , melons, and dried apricots. In the style of a Passover Seder, this celebration features various symbolic fruits and nuts along with grape juice. In traditional terms, the fruits that one eats, dried or fresh, can be divided up from lower or more manifest to higher or more spiritual, as follows: fruits and nuts with hard, inedible exteriors and soft edible insides, such as oranges, bananas, walnuts, and pistachios, (some count oranges and other citrus as wholly edible);fruits and nuts with soft exteriors, but with a hard pit inside, such as dates, apricots, olives and persimmons and fruit that is eaten whole, such as figs and berries. In keeping with the tradition of the holiday the students ate from three separate platters, inedible shell, inedible pit or seed and edible in and out. In this cold winter season, Tu B’Shevat gives us a chance to think about the arrival of spring and often in observance, plant a tree in honor or in memory of a loved one or a friend.
