Jewish Tu BiShvat Date

Tu BiShvat: the Jewish New Year of the Trees

Tu BiShvat falls on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. The word Tu literally means “fifteen,” spelled out with the letters Tet‑Vav (9+6). On the Gregorian calendar that puts the day somewhere between mid‑January and mid‑February. To get the Gregorian date for a given year, use hebrew_to_gregorian(year_HE, Shevat, 15), where year_HE = year_CE + 3760 (or +3761 after Rosh Hashanah).

The date began as a tax cutoff in the Mishnah (tractate Rosh Hashanah 1:1), the line that decided which fruit belonged to which year for tithing. The kabbalists of the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria), working in 16th‑century Safed, gave it a second life as a mystical celebration of nature. They wrote the Seder Tu BiShvat, a ritual meal patterned after Pesach: four cups of wine (white, white‑to‑pink, pink‑to‑red, red) paired with three categories of fruit — the entirely edible (figs, grapes), those with inedible pits (olives, dates) and those with inedible shells (almonds, pomegranates with husks) — with each tier standing for one of the four kabbalistic worlds.

Applications

In modern Israel, the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, founded 1901) runs mass tree‑planting drives on Tu BiShvat. School children plant saplings in forests such as Yatir and B‑nei Shimon, and the running total now tops 240 million trees. Diaspora communities, Brazil included, hold environmental seders that tie Jewish ecology (shomrei adamah, “guardians of the earth”) to sustainability. Schools like Bialik and synagogues in São Paulo build educational programmes around climate, biodiversity and the seven species of Israel (wheat, barley, grape, fig, pomegranate, olive, date).

FAQ

Why does Tu BiShvat shift between January and February? The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar. To keep the festivals lined up with the seasons, an extra month (Adar I) is added in 7 of every 19 years, and that pushes Shevat by as much as ±30 days against the Gregorian calendar.

What do you eat on Tu BiShvat? The seven species of the Land of Israel, along with other dried fruits and nuts, with carob (alfarroba), almonds, raisins and figs leading the list. They stand for the renewal of the agricultural cycle, the moment sap starts rising again in the trees.

Is Tu BiShvat a major holiday? No, it is a minor one, and not commanded in the Bible. Work is allowed, but the Tachanun penitential prayer is dropped for the day, a quiet marker that it counts as festive.