« tangled wires Glossary »

One–Sided Haggadah for a Tu Bishvat Seder 2003/5763

judaism | February 09, 2003

This Tu Bishvat, I was asked to be a part of a commitee to plan a seder, sponsored by the JCC, Hazon, Kehillat Hadar, and Alumot. I volunteered to design the haggadah.

Download the PDF (1.8MB)

The Cover

Last year, I received a piece of art from my friend Alberto — You Are Not The Only One — which sprang to mind and fit the bill for an images that represented trees, earth, and love perfectly. The cover just came together.

The Concept

A quote from A Guide To Jewish Prayer by Adin Steinsaltz immediately came to mind, and fit perfectly with the kabbalistic Four Worlds structure:

The order of prayer services relates to four cycles of time: the day—through the specific prayers recited at different times of the day; the week—with the minor and major changes between the weekday prayers and those of Shabbat; the month—with the Rosh Chodesh and Birkat ha-Hodesh, and the benedictions and prayers relating to the lunar month; and the year—with its unique festivals and special dates.

Even though there is a complex system for defining the relative importance of different days of the year, the general rule is that the larger the time cycle to which a given day belongs, the more clearly does it define the order of prayer services. Thus, the daily prayer service is altered every Shabbat, while the Shabbat prayer service in turn assumes the special character of festivals that occur on it.

Tu Bishvat, being the New Year of the Trees, led to the idea of a one-page haggadah. the first unfolding revealed a brief description of the meaning and history of the holiday:

What is Tu Bishvat?

The first Mishnah of the Talmudic Tractate Rosh Hashanah introduces Tu Bishvat or the 15th of Shvat (the tenth month in the Jewish calendar) as the New Year’s Day for trees. This agrarian holiday marks the end and beginning of the annual tithing cycle. After the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews from the Land of Israel, Tu Bishvat became irrelevant to the Jewish lifestyle as tithing laws only applied in the Land of Israel.

Tu Bishvat was revived in the 16th century among the Jewish kabbalists in the Israeli city of Sefad. From the same people who gave us L’cha Dodi — the Friday night song welcoming a personified Shabbat bride — came a Tu Bishvat Seder, a mystical celebration that linked the trees and the land with kabbalah and messianic yearnings. Then in the late nineteenth century, the early Zionists reclaimed Tu Bishvat as a time especially to celebrate reconnection with the land of Israel.

What is the Tu Bishvat Seder?

The Tu Bishvat Seder, or order, was originally designed and published by the Sefad kabbalists. Modeled on the Passover Seder, it is divided into four parts and consists of drinking four cups of wine and eating many different fruits. The four parts symbolize four worlds of creation in kabbalah: atzilut (emanation), beriah (creation), yetzirah (formation), and assiyah (action), alluded to in the verse:

All that is called in My Name, for My Glory, I have created it, I have formed it, and I have made it.
—Isaiah 43:7

Theme of Time

This year, Shabbat and Tu Bishvat converge as we join together in a communal Seder. It is appropriate that the evening’s theme is time. Time, like nature, is a non–renewable resource. It is very precious; once used, it cannot be regained. In addition, Shabbat and Tu Bishvat similarly lay out boundaries of time. Shabbat celebrates the end of the week, the day of rest after the creation of the world. So too with Tu Bishvat when we mark the end (and the beginning) of the annual agricultural cycle.

This Tu Bishvat Haggadah is printed on a double–sided sheet of recycled paper to save trees and energy. According to the Society of American Foresters, the average American uses about 749 pounds of paper each year. Fortunately, paper can be recycled in New York City — please recycle.

The Content

The inside was folded in quadrants, each representing a World, a Cup, and a Speaker:

Back Cover

To reinforce the reduce–reuse–recycle notion, I created the “recycling heksher ” — a magen david with a darkened emphasis on the negative space. (If you’d like to use this image, please contact me for a high–resolution version.) The additional resources on the back included these links:

Aish.com — Copyrighted material used with permission from “A Tu BeShvat Seder: The Feast of Fruits from the Tree of Life” by Yitzhak Buxbaum (Jewish Spirit Publishing Co.), also published as “A Person is Like a Tree: A Sourcebook for Tu BeShvat” (Jason Aronson Inc.)
Declaration of Interdependence — “To raise awareness among people of faith regarding the ongoing stealth assault on the environment by this Administration and Congress, to bear witness to this abuse of God’s creation, and to call upon our public leaders to do what is morally and ethically right.”
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life — “Turn Friday night dinner (or Saturday lunch) into a Tu B’Shvat celebration including a special Tu B’Shvat seder hagaddah just for Shabbat.”
Real Goods — “Recognizing that the world’s dependence upon fossil fuels has invariably led to the degradation of our atmosphere and environment, we have strived to demonstrate the need and practicality for renewable energy technologies that are clean, cost–effective, and non–polluting.”
Shalom Center— Abridged from the original “The Trees are Davening”, by Dr. Barak Gale and Dr. Ami Goodman; with excerpts from P’ri Etz Hadar — Fruit of the Tree, the original 17th century Tu B’Shevat seder
Tremont Street Shul

Posted February 9, 2003 04:49 PM