As our seder comes to a close, take a moment to reflect on the journey we have taken together. Our holidays are specific markers in time that galvanize us to be mindful of who we are and who we aspire to become.
Credits:
Editors and Designers, 2021 Edition: Rabbi Josh Ratner, Rachel Miller, Hannah Henza, Rabbi Nate DeGroot , David Rendsburg, and Hannah Elovitz. Special thanks to Hazon staff, and volunteers, who have guided the creation of this haggadah over the years: Judith Belasco, Arielle Cohen, Anna Hanau,
Daniel Infeld, Leah Koenig, Rachel Loebl, Sabrina Mallach, Elan Margulies, Ben Murane, Deborah Newbrun, Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, Elisheva Urbas, and Jake Wilkenfeld-Mongillo. Hazon gratefully acknowledges the support of our funders, without whom none of our work would be possible.
Copyright © 2021 Hazon This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. You may use the content of this haggadah in your own work, as long as you provide attribution to Hazon and (if necessary) the original author. http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
The Kabbalists defined the world of Atzilut as the world of pure spirit, so its symbolic food is no food at all, only what sustains us spiritually. We all have relationships with both the physical and the intangible. The fourth world is about our highest selves, when we are not eating, when we are not thinking of our bodies, when we have all the tools to bring in pure holiness in each moment. To be sure, we can be holy while eating and while grounded in our bodies. However, the fourth world, according to the Kabbalists, is the world that is floating above our earthly desires; a world in which we nourish our hearts and our souls. In an attempt to gain an understanding of the divine implications of this realm, we do as our ancestors did and look to the tree as a symbol of life – a life of ecological symbiosis, a life of replenishment, and a life of balance and equilibrium. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to cultivate a sense of balance and calm, a sense of resilience, and a sense of higher purpose.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
How did an arcane tax day for agrarian tithing become a festive birthday of the trees? The history of Tu B’Shvat reveals how
this malleable holiday has been adapted by Jewish tradition in different eras for different purposes.
Tu B’Shvat first appears in Jewish literature in the Mishnah, where it is mentioned (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1) in a list of four separate new year’s festivals as the new year for the trees, to take place on the fifteenth day of the month of Shvat. Its significance stemmed from clarifying, for an agrarian society, when the tax year began and ended so that tithes to the Temple for the annual harvest could be contributed appropriately. Jewish tradition, of course, is not only practical but also steeped in meaning-making. So when the Second Temple—the locus of tithing—was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the Jewish people lost sovereignty over the land of Israel, one of many questions that arose was: what now is Tu B’Shvat?
The answer to that question remained dormant, as did Tu B’Shvat as a holiday, until the mystic Kabbalists of Tzvat revivified the holiday some 1500 years later. Under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the kabbalists created a new Tu B’Shvat tradition with the multi-sensory seder we will experience today. (We will elaborate more on this seder and its mystical meaning later, in the section entitled “How to Use This Haggadah”.)
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Tu B’Shvat was adopted by early Zionists as a day to celebrate Jewish connection to our ancestral homeland. JNF (Jewish National Fund) pushkes encouraged Jews across the globe to donate money for planting trees in Israel, and to this day, American and Israeli school kids celebrate Tu B’Shvat by planting trees. The environmental movement of the 1960s-70s provided yet another context for understanding Tu B’Shvat, emphasizing the natural connections between “the birthday of the trees,” conservation, and environmental stewardship.
These multiple interpretations of the meaning of Tu B’Shvat give us, today, encouragement to continue shaping its connection with our contemporary context.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
This cup of wine is partly white and mostly red. In the heat of summer our tree has rooted herself firmly in the earth, grown into its full being and is blooming. The shade, wood, herbs and flowers that are her simple and modest gifts to the earth and humankind allow us to now see her and embrace her as a provider.
We each add more red wine to the mixture of wine that is already in our cup, so that the cup is again full. We say the blessing together, and then drink all of the wine in the cup except for a small drop.
In so doing, we can ask:
What does abundance mean to us?
What is the symbolism of refraining from finishing our cups?
The Blessing Over the Third Cup We each fill our cup with mostly red wine and some white, and bless together:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri hagafen.
As our seder comes to a close, take a moment to reflect on the journey we have taken together. Our holidays are specific markers in time that galvanize us to be mindful of who we are and who we aspire to become.
Credits:
Editors and Designers, 2021 Edition: Rabbi Josh Ratner, Rachel Miller, Hannah Henza, Rabbi Nate DeGroot , David Rendsburg, and Hannah Elovitz. Special thanks to Hazon staff, and volunteers, who have guided the creation of this haggadah over the years: Judith Belasco, Arielle Cohen, Anna Hanau,
Daniel Infeld, Leah Koenig, Rachel Loebl, Sabrina Mallach, Elan Margulies, Ben Murane, Deborah Newbrun, Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, Elisheva Urbas, and Jake Wilkenfeld-Mongillo. Hazon gratefully acknowledges the support of our funders, without whom none of our work would be possible.
Copyright © 2021 Hazon This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. You may use the content of this haggadah in your own work, as long as you provide attribution to Hazon and (if necessary) the original author. http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
The Kabbalists defined the world of Atzilut as the world of pure spirit, so its symbolic food is no food at all, only what sustains us spiritually. We all have relationships with both the physical and the intangible. The fourth world is about our highest selves, when we are not eating, when we are not thinking of our bodies, when we have all the tools to bring in pure holiness in each moment. To be sure, we can be holy while eating and while grounded in our bodies. However, the fourth world, according to the Kabbalists, is the world that is floating above our earthly desires; a world in which we nourish our hearts and our souls. In an attempt to gain an understanding of the divine implications of this realm, we do as our ancestors did and look to the tree as a symbol of life – a life of ecological symbiosis, a life of replenishment, and a life of balance and equilibrium. May we be blessed this Tu B’Shvat, and throughout the coming year, to cultivate a sense of balance and calm, a sense of resilience, and a sense of higher purpose.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
How did an arcane tax day for agrarian tithing become a festive birthday of the trees? The history of Tu B’Shvat reveals how
this malleable holiday has been adapted by Jewish tradition in different eras for different purposes.
Tu B’Shvat first appears in Jewish literature in the Mishnah, where it is mentioned (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1) in a list of four separate new year’s festivals as the new year for the trees, to take place on the fifteenth day of the month of Shvat. Its significance stemmed from clarifying, for an agrarian society, when the tax year began and ended so that tithes to the Temple for the annual harvest could be contributed appropriately. Jewish tradition, of course, is not only practical but also steeped in meaning-making. So when the Second Temple—the locus of tithing—was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the Jewish people lost sovereignty over the land of Israel, one of many questions that arose was: what now is Tu B’Shvat?
The answer to that question remained dormant, as did Tu B’Shvat as a holiday, until the mystic Kabbalists of Tzvat revivified the holiday some 1500 years later. Under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the kabbalists created a new Tu B’Shvat tradition with the multi-sensory seder we will experience today. (We will elaborate more on this seder and its mystical meaning later, in the section entitled “How to Use This Haggadah”.)
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Tu B’Shvat was adopted by early Zionists as a day to celebrate Jewish connection to our ancestral homeland. JNF (Jewish National Fund) pushkes encouraged Jews across the globe to donate money for planting trees in Israel, and to this day, American and Israeli school kids celebrate Tu B’Shvat by planting trees. The environmental movement of the 1960s-70s provided yet another context for understanding Tu B’Shvat, emphasizing the natural connections between “the birthday of the trees,” conservation, and environmental stewardship.
These multiple interpretations of the meaning of Tu B’Shvat give us, today, encouragement to continue shaping its connection with our contemporary context.
When developing the first Tu B’Shvat seder, the kabbalists of Tzfat correlated each of the four sections with one of the four mystical worlds. To you, these concepts might be spiritually meaningful or completely unintelligible. We have chosen to include the kabbalistic four worlds in relation to the four sections of our haggadah both to link this Haggadah to that of our ancestors and to provide an opportunity to delve into four specific themes we hope to explore with you: the pandemic, the struggle for racial justice and the fraying of our civic union, the climate crisis, and the spiritual implications of each of these. The chart on the next page sets forth these four worlds, along with corresponding foods, themes, and other materials.
But this Haggadah is meant for everyone! We invite you to shape this Haggadah, and the festival of Tu B’Shvat as a whole, in a manner that you find meaningful and compelling.
This cup of wine is partly white and mostly red. In the heat of summer our tree has rooted herself firmly in the earth, grown into its full being and is blooming. The shade, wood, herbs and flowers that are her simple and modest gifts to the earth and humankind allow us to now see her and embrace her as a provider.
We each add more red wine to the mixture of wine that is already in our cup, so that the cup is again full. We say the blessing together, and then drink all of the wine in the cup except for a small drop.
In so doing, we can ask:
What does abundance mean to us?
What is the symbolism of refraining from finishing our cups?
The Blessing Over the Third Cup We each fill our cup with mostly red wine and some white, and bless together:
Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri hagafen.
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