Tu BiShvat: Hope from Underground
BY RABBI ZVI ELON
Tu BiShvat is a day whose meaning is not easy to grasp.
In the Mishnah, in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, Beit Hillel rules that Tu BiShvat is the Rosh Hashanah for trees. Halachically, this day marks the transition of the year with regard to ma’asrot and shemitta. In other words, a tree in Eretz Yisrael undergoes a kind of “maturation” on Tu BiShvat, a change in halachic status that affects how its years are counted – and this has very real practical implications in halacha.
That point is actually quite surprising. Tu BiShvat falls at the height of winter. It is literally the midpoint of the three winter months in Eretz Yisrael (without getting into the halachic distinction between calendar dates and the seasonal tekufot). In winter, trees don’t bloom. Quite the opposite – they are bare. Leaves have fallen, branches sway in harsh winds. In plain language: this is not when trees look their best. Visually, this is the ugliest season of the tree.
And yet, it is precisely this day that halacha designates as the central moment in the tree’s fruit-growing process – Rosh Hashanah, no less.
If you had asked me, I would have chosen the days of Nissan, the season of spring and blossoming, to mark the Rosh Hashanah for trees.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains this with a profound idea that is strikingly relevant today. He writes:
“What does conventional thinking say? When the time of blossoming arrives, when spring reveals itself before our eyes in thousands of buds and flowers, then we will joyfully celebrate nature’s spring festival, blessed by G-d, which is also our own spring festival.
“But ancient Jewish tradition points us to the leafless trees in the very heart of snowy winter. It shares a secret with us and whispers a moral lesson: behold, these trees are already celebrating today the renewal of the coming spring. Beneath the frozen, cracked, gray, and cold bark that wraps the naked trees, beneath that outer shell, new and vibrant life is already pulsing at full strength…
“Go out and see the trees at the height of their growth. Are they not adorned – with their fruits, their crowns of leaves, their branches? And then the fruits are plundered and picked, the leaves wither and fall, autumn winds come, bold winter storms arrive and tear away even the final leaf… and yet the trees are not broken. Their stature is not diminished. Despite all this devastation, they celebrate this day deep within themselves, in the inner chambers of their being – facing winter and its terrors – celebrating the festival of their revival, the festival of spring.”
Superficial eyes are unimpressed by a tree in winter. A child might point and say, “What a pathetic tree – poor thing, it has nothing.” But precisely at those moments, when everything looks gray on the outside, if we penetrate inward – beneath the surface of the ground – at the very time when rainwater saturates, nourishes, and multiplies the roots, we discover that everything inside is intensifying and growing. This is the moment of internal growth. What we see two months later is simply the result of that inner work.
Recently, I read a book by Eliya Cohen, who was held hostage in Gaza for over 500 days. It is impossible to describe what he went through there. He was held 50 meters underground, and he describes how every Friday night he and three fellow hostages – Or Levi, Eli Sharabi, and Alon Ohel – made kiddush over a cup of water. He tells how, whenever Hamas terrorists tried to give food to one hostage but not the others in order to create conflict, they refused to accept it unless everyone received food. These are shattering stories of spiritual strength that are almost impossible to fathom.
But one idea comes up again and again: it was precisely those four hostages underground who managed to preserve their humanity, their faith, their bond with one another, and above all – their hope, in stark contrast to their despondent, morally bankrupt captors. He writes that it was precisely there, in the depths of captivity, that he felt himself growing and becoming stronger.
As I read Eliya’s words, I thought of the tree that, above ground, appears completely withered and lifeless, while beneath the surface something is growing and developing with tremendous force. Like Eliya and his remarkable friends, who from deep underground revealed to all of us the power of faith, the power of hope, and the ability to keep dreaming of good – and believing in it – even in the darkest places.
Perhaps this is the great message of Tu BiShvat: even when everything on the surface looks barren and lifeless, that is precisely when profound growth is taking place. Seeing it requires a lens of faith – a Jewish lens, a lens of hope.
Tu BiShvat sameach.
Rabbi Zvi Elon is Senior Educator at World Mizrachi.