Tu BiShvat: The New Year of the Trees

Good evening, everyone. First of all, this study is dedicated to Leah bat Nahum ve-Yocheved and to David Raphael Ben Dayan. There is a single reference in the Mishnah, which states that the Jewish calendar has four “heads of years,” four new years. The first of Nissan is the starting point for counting the reign of each king. The first of Elul is the new year for the tithe of animals. The first of Tishrei is the one we all know, since it is Rosh Hashanah: the anniversary of the creation of the world and the point from which the years are counted, the years since creation, as well as for the laws of shemitah (the seventh year), of the jubilee, of planting and of vegetables. And finally, the first of Shevat, according to Beit Shammai, is Rosh Hashanah la-ilan, the new year of the tree.

What we follow, however, is the view of Beit Hillel, which places it rather on the fifteenth of Shevat, at the moment when the sap, dormant all winter, begins to rise back into the branches of the tree and the first buds appear: the return to life of a sleeping nature. Now, if we kept only to the source in the Mishnah, this new year, this anniversary of the tree, would carry none of the joy we associate with it: the abundance of fruit we eat, the wine, the four cups of wine that accompany the fruit. All of this came much later. As history unfolded, and according to the character of each era, this festival, or rather this anniversary, took on another dimension. Of course, the planting of trees is attached to it today, but nowhere is there any mention of a day for planting trees. The ecological problem as well: we know very well the dangers that threaten our world today, and the Torah already gave certain indications so that we should not damage nature.

When G-d created man, says the aggadah, He took him and led him around His entire universe, saying: See how beautiful My work is; take care not to spoil it, for if you spoil it, in the end no one will be able to repair it. These ecological concerns are thus bound up with bal tashchit, the prohibition against destroying anything whatsoever in nature, so much so that, as it is said, whoever takes the life of a tree causes a cry of distress to be heard from one end of the globe to the other, because he deprives nature of this good and humanity of its resources. What gave this anniversary the air of a festival, however, is that we saw in the tree a symbol that runs through the entire fabric of the Bible and the Talmud, namely that “man is the tree of the field”: he has a vertical axis, he is rooted in the earth.

And how attached we are to that rootedness! Baruch Hashem, today we have tasted the joy of rediscovering our roots in the land; and then there are those branches spread to the four corners of the earth, and the desire to bring all those branches back to a single trunk. In short, this tree that nourishes man came into being on the third day of creation. It is the only one that did not obey G-d’s command, which asked it to produce a “fruit tree,” that is, one entirely edible; instead it produced a “tree making fruit,” that is, one with some measure of waste. And in the parallel structure of creation, this tree corresponds to the creation of man on the sixth day.

For, as I have told you before, the first day is light, and we receive the bearers of that light on the fourth day, Wednesday, in the sun, the moon and all the stars; the second day is the separation of the waters, and on the fifth day come the creatures that emerge from the water; and finally, the sixth day is man. And man, when he is created, also carries within him the whole of the tree. He is made of four components: afar, earth, the mineral; the vegetable, of course; fire, energy; and finally the medaber, the speaking being, the human. And as for the tree: around it, the mineral is sunk deep in the ground, the animal prowls around its trunk, the birds fly over it, and the friction of its wood produces fire.

It provides food, does it not? And what is missing? Air, and it needs air. So the four components of life that make up man’s constitution are found in the tree as well. And the sin: man’s confrontation with the tree lies at the origin of the first sin. The free will shown by the tree itself is found again in man. Yet the one mitzvah G-d gave man was: “Of every tree you shall eat, eat and eat again.” That is why I say that eating is a mitzvah. Contrary to the saying that one must eat to live and not live to eat, we say that one must live to eat, because we consider that food is what allows us to integrate the elements that make up creation and raise them to the level of the human; through the portion we take, we consecrate the whole work of the Torah.

Moreover, the only blessing whose origin is in the Torah itself is birkat ha-mazon, the Grace after Meals. “Ve-achalta ve-savata u-verachta,” “you shall eat and be satisfied, and you shall bless,” refers to the bounty that the Holy One, blessed be He, placed at man’s disposal: the land, described here as flowing with milk and honey, a good land, the good land: for the text first says eretz tovah, “a good land,” and then al ha-aretz ha-tovah, “for the good land,” the land that holds these fruits within it. Its characteristics ought to be developed a little in a future lecture, but they form the fabric of the people living on that land. And there it is said, “ve-achalta ve-savata,” “you shall eat and be satisfied”; and eating to satisfaction is what justifies the blessing, because “tzaddik ochel le-sova nafsho,” “the righteous man eats to satisfy his soul”: he satisfies his being by integrating within himself all the components of creation.

Beyond this there is the metaphysical and moral dimension which, among the Kabbalists, gave the day the character we know today: eating, consuming as many fruits as possible. Some had forty fruits, ten corresponding to each level of creation, from Atzilut, the noblest, down to the level of reality. And indeed there are different kinds of fruit: those we eat with their skin, such as the grape or the fig; those we eat while discarding the pit inside; those we eat together with the small seeds inside, whether pips or others; and those whose outer shell must be removed, casting away the kelipah, the husk, to eat only what is inside. Since we are inclined to live from within rather than from without, the Torah asks us to integrate the outer world into ourselves and to rid ourselves of whatever spoils the peirot, the fruits. And what are the fruits? Our Sages say: the mitzvot. The tree, which gives its fruit generously, without distinguishing between people, should have consequences for man’s conduct and behavior toward his fellows and toward nature. Tu BiShvat is therefore a day that calls man to his responsibility toward what G-d has placed at his disposal, and invites him to give his fruit just as the tree gives its own, without falling into the trap of man’s first sin; for man’s first sin concerned the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

One had first to begin by appreciating life, by giving life its moral dimension, and only afterwards to perfect it with knowledge. One was not to give priority to knowledge and make knowledge something merely utilitarian. Tu BiShvat is the repair of this sin of Adam HaRishon, the first man, through the eating of fruit and through the blessing, above all over the fruits connected with the Land. For a characteristic of the tree is that it is rooted in its soil: move it, or tear it from its surroundings, and it can no longer give fruit; it would have to be replanted elsewhere. But some soils are far better suited than others to one tree or another. So it is with peoples, and especially with us in relation to the Land of Israel, which is why we regard exile as a semblance of death,

but a death that is never final. It is possible to come back to life, to regain one’s breath: just as the tree loses its foliage and renews itself cyclically, so too does the Jewish people, which is called to do so. And this symbolism takes shape in the way we celebrate this day, by linking it, as I said, to the order of creation. Some have forty fruits: ten with a pit inside; ten with no pit but with a peel, an outer shell; […] ten with neither seeds nor pips inside, nor any shell; simply to say that this is how man is made, through his various stages of development.

The ideal is to reach the state in which there is indeed no pit at all. The world is made this way: “u-mi-sham yipared ve-hayah le-arba’ah rashim,” “and from there it divided and became four heads,” that is, the river already divides into four streams as it leaves the Garden of Eden. Man must simply know how to make use of everything, because everything is indispensable to the balance of creation, and we have no right to neglect anything in it; for our Sages say that every blade of grass carries some remedy we have not yet discovered, and that in times to come even the bush, even the trees of thorns and brambles, will bear fruit. It is this idea of the tree that accompanies man in his spiritual ascent and his spiritual nourishment that lies behind the date our Sages fixed for Rosh Hashanah la-ilan. La-ilan, and not etz. Incidentally, if you amuse yourself by simply writing the letters ayin and tzadi side by side in the square Assyrian script, you already have a skeleton of the tree, represented by the word etz. But there is a difference between etz and ilan.

Etz gave rise to the word etzah, “counsel”: it asks of you a certain amount of reflection, a certain amount of middot, of self-measurement: constantly reviewing your own measures. Try, rather, to apply all the laws of cultivation that planting a tree requires: the digging, the hoeing, even the manuring around the tree to keep insects from devouring the roots, and so on. Try, in the end, to relate the principles of the nourishing tree to your own growth. That, in sum, is why the tzaddik, the righteous man, is compared: “tzaddik ka-tamar yifrach, ke-erez ba-Levanon yisgeh,” “the righteous shall flourish like the palm, he shall grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon”: like a palm tree rising high in the desert, like a cedar which, even though it bears no fruit, commands respect through the roots it sinks deep into the earth.

That is the tzaddik: he is at once tamar, palm, and erez, cedar. And King David celebrates what that man resembles, the man “whose delight is in the Torah of G-d, and who meditates on His Torah,” the one who devotes himself to the study of Torah. Devoting oneself to Torah does not, in the end, mean renouncing everything that makes up this world; it means making the Torah embrace this world below, the reality of this world. Such a man “shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that gives its fruit in its season.” Fruits do not all grow at the same time. […]

Every fruit has its season, and so it is with human nature, and with all education of the self: it takes place over a certain span of time. You know that for the tree (and the date of Tu BiShvat is a moment of awakening) we are not permitted to eat its first fruits during the first three years. In the fourth year we must eat them in a state of purity, in Jerusalem, or else their monetary equivalent: eat them in purity, in a spiritual immersion, in an atmosphere of renewal of one’s being. Only in the fifth year do we actually begin to enjoy the tree. So it is with the education of a child, which we begin from the age of five, without counting those first years in which he is a receiver rather than a consumer. We may sometimes find ourselves in this state of asking, but the goal, the hashpa’ah, is to give one’s fruit, to share one’s fruit. Reaching this stage is what gives Tu BiShvat the character of a festive day, on which it is forbidden to recite vidui, the confession of sins, forbidden to deliver a hesped, a eulogy, forbidden even to fast. For inasmuch as man invests himself in his own education through the model of the tree, which itself did not respect the divine command: if we were here only to avoid sinning, we would have been angels, deprived of our freedom of action. And that freedom of action, precisely through the opening it gives us to error, allows us in a sense to restore ourselves and to give ourselves far more strength, far more ardor, far more life.

Let us remember that G-d exiled Adam HaRishon from the Garden of Eden after the sin in which he put his free will to the test. But note: He forbade him to eat from the Tree of Life. Was it lest he live forever? No. Why forbid him the tree that would give him eternity? Because he must not eat of life having soiled his garments, having soiled his soul, without the possibility of recovering himself, of restoring himself, of rediscovering his original nature, of returning to the source. That is why He tells him: now that you have preferred the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life (and G-d knows that the Tree of Knowledge will rather cause you problems if you do not know how to appreciate life), from now on you will first have to use knowledge to find your way back to the Tree of Life.

G-d told man, “mi-kol etz ha-gan achol tochel,” “of every tree of the garden you shall eat, eat and eat again.” So he could also eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, since that tree was included in “mi-kol etz ha-gan achol tochel.” Only, he had to find the way to eat of it while savoring it, and not by neglecting the other aspect and wanting at all costs to put the divine command, G-d’s knowledge, to the test. […] When the commandment G-d gave to man was interpreted, “of every tree” was understood as a positive commandment,

something one must do. “U-me-etz ha-da’at tov va-ra lo tochal mimenu,” “but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat”: that is a mitzvat lo ta’aseh, a negative commandment, something one must not do. So there were only two mitzvot, and both relate to akhilah, to eating. And our Sages say that these two mitzvot concerning eating included the taryag mitzvot, the six hundred and thirteen commandments: all 613 were contained solely in the command about eating from the trees, not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and to eat from all the trees. Our Sages even went so far as to say that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could not be distinguished from the other trees.

It was the same, except that it was marked by this negative divine command: that one must not touch it, must not eat from it. The woman indeed wanted to make it, I would say, more practicable by adding the prohibition of touching it. We all know this. And that was precisely the channel of the first man’s sin: to have added, to have considered the divine command imperfect and in need of something more. It means that man was not yet confident in himself, that he did not believe himself capable. And when man transgressed the essential command that he himself had added, namely not to touch, it led him to violate the command concerning eating. All this is to say that man’s enjoyment of this world is the only way to consecrate this work of G-d.

For then one associates and integrates the elements of creation and gives them a moral and spiritual dimension. That is also why every messianic vision begins here, with the place given to the tree and to the fruit it bears. The prophet said: “And you, mountains of Israel, you shall put forth your branches and bear your fruit, for My people is preparing to return to you.” The new budding of creation is a way, so to speak, of breathing new life into a people that has passed through long trials, but also into man, who along the whole journey of his life imposes on himself stages of growth like those of the tree, though with a lifespan that does not reach as far, since the tree can live even hundreds of years. And from the fruits of the tree we should learn to see the fruits of man, which likewise mark milestones not limited in time.

For there are tze’etza’im, offspring. [In French] “descendants” suggests the verb “to descend,” but [in Hebrew] it is “to go out,” from yatza: an uninterrupted going-out, an unceasing going-out of oneself through one’s children and grandchildren. I will stop here to leave room for your questions. There is still much to say, and the messianic dimension I spoke of is so highlighted by our Sages, who said that if you are holding a sapling in your hand and you are told that the Messiah has come, do not abandon it, do not let go of it: first plant your tree, and then go out to welcome the Messiah, because the planting of this tree contributes to, and helps bring about, the messianic advent.

So, if you have questions, with pleasure. — Isn’t it a contradiction to say, on the one hand, that man’s sin was wanting to perfect the divine order, when in some sense the Divine created man to perfect His creation? — Yes: G-d wanted man to be His partner in creation. Had He created a perfect world, a universe to which man would have nothing more to contribute, that world would have been his graveyard, if you will forgive the expression. Very often, when we have inherited everything in life and have not forged our own character, we let ourselves be carried along by a destructive current and make nothing of our lives.

Trials are formative for man, and it was important: man’s sin, once again, is not simply a sin that man committed; it was provided for in the creation of the universe. This sin is the first agenda of man and of the soul. Man cannot reach this me’od, this state of perfection, without passing through that of Adam: they are the same letters, Adam and me’od. The one who makes of this world […], each according to his abilities. We do not all have the same abilities, but each of us has different resources, as do all peoples throughout humanity. Each has within him riches and missions to accomplish, above all without sinking into the arrogance of a chosen people that alone would enjoy divine Providence, withdrawn from the other peoples.

The other peoples, as the Rambam says, also benefit from Providence, but of a dimension suited to their measure, because that is what they are capable of, unless they wish at all costs to take on another challenge. That is possible, and then the door is open. But once again: the variety of food, like the variety of trees, the variety of nature, […]; the world needs this variety for its balance. — May I ask one more small question? Why then do we speak of the chet of Adam HaRishon? Why don’t we speak of […]? […]

Well, listen: there are three words that we translate as “sin”: chet, avon and pesha. Pesha is an act of rebellion. Standing in front of a synagogue on Yom Kippur to smoke your cigarette: that is pesha. If you want to smoke your cigarette, at least withdraw to a corner (I can’t find the word); there you are, defying the others. Avon comes from a root meaning twisted, bent: it means twisting the law to one’s own advantage. And, take note, one can commit avon even while keeping the laws of kashrut, even while keeping Shabbat. From the moment one twists the law to one’s own profit, it is avon.

Then there is chet. Chet is an error. One made a mistake at the start: “That is not what I wanted; I missed my goal. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it turned against me.” So the error of Adam HaRishon was […] not wanting to conform to the divine will without seeking to understand it. One must be very careful, because one can miss the mark, and indeed, it is written: it is a distance […]. — A question: I heard pesha; is pesha one of the sins, like […]? — Pesha, from the verb pasha. There is even a similar sound in French, péché. Pesha is an act of rebellion. — Before you listed all the kinds of fruit, with skins, seeds and so on, you spoke of going from nobility to reality, and I did not follow the thread.

Yes, because there are four worlds. The world of emanation, which is called Atzilut. Then there is the world of Beriah, of creation; beriah comes from bar, meaning projected outward: this emanation was projected outward in order to bring a world into being. It is like a thought that at first broods within us and that we then project outward: that is called Beriah. Then one must give it form. We have an idea and cannot manage to express it; we search for the words, we give it shape: that is olam ha-Yetzirah, the world of formation. And when we have given it form and brought it to completion, that is the final stage, olam ha-Asiyah, the world of action, the world of reality.

These four worlds, then, are found [in man]. Atzilut is barely perceptible; our Sages say it is the chayah, that aura which hovers above man. Beriah is man’s will to create, to seek originality even in what he does, to give it a form. Yetzirah: we make; tzurah: we give form; and then we bring it to completion. Now, between the initial project and what I end up holding in my hands, many things have to be pruned away. For a tree to grow very tall, one must also prune from below every branch that springs up wildly, little by little, and prevents it from gaining momentum. And indeed, in this pruning there is a loss of energy. We may have the chance to speak of that one day, because these four worlds will keep returning in our way of approaching the world, and even of approaching our neighbor: this light by which we recognize ourselves in the other and take the other’s light, the other’s face, into ourselves. But this proceeds not from the reality of being, for in reality we are all made in roughly the same way, but from […], from what makes each person unique; recognizing it in the other and giving it form is truly the first step of love of the other. It is the going-out of oneself toward the other. But that is another chapter.

Any other question? — It isn’t really a question, but I wanted to ask: do all these lectures you give exist as a written record that you might share? — No, there is no written record, Nathaniel; I don’t write them. It is true that I have amused myself by writing three books so far, in French, mostly commentaries on the prayers and on the Shabbat ritual. I am now writing another in Hebrew, on the subject of going out of oneself, the going out of Egypt […]. But these lectures I do not write. Of course I take a few notes, but the substance of each lecture, like those I have given in the past, is the fruit of thinking together with you.

So, three points… — I wanted to ask something: at one point you spoke of etz and you said ilan, but you did not develop ilan. — Thank you. The vertical growth of the tree is the relationship between heaven and earth; to use another terminology, between the transcendent and the immanent. Our Sages link ilan numerically to the sum of the Tetragrammaton and Alef-Dalet-Nun-Yud, Adonai, which equals 65; 65 plus 26 makes 91. Alef-Dalet-Nun-Yud is the manifestation of G-d in the Shechinah; [the Tetragrammaton is] the transcendent, Being in its wholly abstract notion […]. So when our Sages said Rosh Hashanah la-ilan, and not la-etz, not the new year of the trees but the new year of the ilan, it means that this is where man must realize that the etz, the tree before him, truly reflects what he himself holds; for in each of us there is a part of transcendence and a part of immanence.

And that is what allows us, so to speak, to recycle ourselves, to renew our resources, to give each day of our life its own coloring, its own way of being; for we are not every day what we were yesterday, and tomorrow we will not be what we are today. The path of being always moves between the past, which cannot be recovered, the future, which is its becoming, and the present, which serves as man’s compass. So the ilan is, in a sense, that part of immanence which is engaged in this world and its trials; the transcendent is the possibility he has of rising above, and of not remaining conditioned by what constantly surrounds him,

by the pettiness of life. And the relationship with the land is a conjugal relationship. I cite Yeshayahu: as a young man weds a maiden, so shall your children wed you; speaking of the people united with the land. In other words, the relationship between man and the land is that of a couple. That is why the land is man’s horizon in G-d’s command to walk before Him, and as we said, it is […] the embrace. — Thank you, Rav Benizri. What an extraordinary movement, what an extraordinary thought in motion you have given us. Thank you for this privilege, thank you very much; it is a wonderful gift. There are three small points to mention. The first: there are questions about where one can find your books, Rav Benizri. Where can we find your books?

Well, listen, my books are no longer on the market, simply because for the first book I entrusted to someone, I never saw a single franc. But I paid all the shipping costs, and I no longer sell them; whoever wants them, I send them to him. In truth I do not make a business of it; one would simply need to support the publication of the next book. — We will organize a fund, with pleasure; it isn’t complicated. The second point is for Nathaniel: all the lectures are recorded, and they can be found and listened to again at the Maison de la culture juive. The third point: today, as I had promised, it has been a year. I greet here the two daughters, Risia and Jeanette, who are here today: we dedicated the lecture to the memory of their mother, who passed away a year ago […]. We dedicated the lecture to her memory, and I wanted to announce it tonight for Jeanette, and for Risia, who has come from the United States; they were here with us tonight. So I thank everyone. — Thank you. Good evening. — Thank you very much. Good evening. Happy holiday. — Happy holiday. — It is truly everything that is said about ecology, about development; everything he said today is exactly that, this relationship to nature that could be so elementary. I am moved to hear what I had taken notes on, and that it is a thought […] that really comes like that, live. It’s extraordinary.

— Does it show? — Yes, it shows; but you might think there is nonetheless a structure of notes behind it, and that he is so steeped in the whole subject… Still, you might think there is a structure, a framework behind it all; but in the end it is the fruit of the Bible that he has eaten, having taken in all these teachings. — And finally, could we have […]? — You would have to get in touch with […]. You would have to ask him; I think you should ask him directly. Write him a message and he will send them to you. — Greetings to you all! — I don’t know, perhaps there is a way to organize something among ourselves to republish them, something like that, because it would be good for there to be a trace, so that nothing is lost.

— To do it privately, and in any case not under the auspices of the Maison de la culture juive. — Yes, agreed. — But it would be wonderful. — Do you have Raphaël [Benizri]’s email? — Yes. — Could you write it down? — I will give it to each of you. You all have my number. — Have a good week. — Hi Muriel, is everything all right? — Until next time. Goodbye. — Until next time. Goodbye.