Thu January 24, 2013 Jewish holiday Tu B'shvat, 'New Year for
the Trees' Holidays change. Halloween wasn’t always about
getting candy and the first Thanksgiving probably didn’t involve
watching football. Saturday is Tu B’shvat, or ‘New Year for the
Trees,’a minor Jewish holiday that’s changed at least three
times. Rabbi Harvey Spivak of the Congregation of Moses in
Kalamazoo says at first, Tu B’shvat was just a date in the month
of Shevat. “It was an accounting deadline concerning tithing,"
he says. "Almost everybody was a farmer in those days and they
would support the temple through their tithes. And for trees,
and for fruit that came from trees, that would be part of the
tithe. And fruit harvested before the 15th day of Shevat would
be part of the tithe for the past year and any fruit harvested
after that date would be part of the tithe for the following
year. And that’s all there was to it.” But hundreds of years
later, Spivak says Tu B’shvat evolved into something bigger.
“Especially after the destructio