The Environmentalist Hijacking of Tu b’Shvat

This Wednesday is Tu b’Shvat (i.e., the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat), a minor Jewish holiday often referred to as the “new year of trees.” Originally, the date simply marked the beginning of a new cycle for the tithing of fruit. In the 16th century, kabbalists invested the day with mystical significance and, in the 19th, Zionists made it into a celebration of the land of Israel. Its most recent reinvention, as Tevi Troy explains, is its most radical yet: