Shalom All,
The Jewish Calendar is a funny thing.
We cram five holidays into a span of three weeks: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Sh’mini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah. Then it takes six weeks to get to Chanukah, another four weeks for Tu B’sh’vat, another four to eight weeks (depending on the leap year) till Purim, this year it’ll take the full 8, and another month after that to get to Passover. It would have been easier for all of us, had the holidays been spaced out at regular intervals, but, it seems, life isn’t meant to be easy.
Another odd feature of the Jewish calendar is that we start counting our months in the Spring, with the month of Nisan and the holiday of Passover, yet we celebrate our New Year in the seventh month, Tishrei. Then we count another new year, the New Year for Trees in the Winter, during the eleventh month of Sh’vat, at Tu B’sh’vat. This is the holiday we just celebrated with a Zoom Seder a couple of weeks back.
There are actually four New Years in the Jewish Calendar, the three listed above, and then one at the beginning of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah. This was the New Year for tithes at the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s probably most similar to the concept of the fiscal year, when dues were due to the Temple.
But the other three new years have interesting explanations too. The Spring new year, represents the cyclical year, the seasonal year. From one year to the next there is a recurring pattern in our lives. We celebrate the same holidays, with mostly the same people, the same prayers, the same foods. There is a comfort in this pattern.
The New Year of Rosh Hashanah celebrates the linear years. We add years to our calendar at Rosh Hashanah. This year is the year 5782, next year will be 5783. Life moves ever forward at Rosh Hashanah. We grow ever older and mark the changes in our lives, the errors of our past year, and our hope to do better in the future at this time.
The New Year for Trees, which we celebrate at Tu B’sh’vat, harkens back to our agricultural heritage. Whenever a new fruit tree was planted, Torah demanded we wait three years till picking from it, and give every seventh year, as a sabbatical for the trees, where they went unpicked. Tu B’sh’vat, therefore, was a way for counting the ages of our trees, without having to keep track of actual planting dates. Every tree planted in any year, ages one year at Tu B’sh’vat.
Though we are now deep in the middle of winter, and it’s so cold we are adding an entire month of Adar to our calendar to push Passover into April, the Spring New Year is coming. Soon enough the snow with melt, the flowers and trees will bloom, and hopefully, Baruch HaShem, we will be celebrating the Exodus together, in person at our Community Seder.
Be well and stay warm everyone.
B’shalom,
Rabbi Todd