Tu BiShvatט״וּ בִּשְׁבָט

Tu BiShvat or Tu B’Shevat or Tu B’Shvat (Hebrew: ט״ו בשבט‎) is a minor Jewish holiday, occurring on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. It is also called Rosh HaShanah La’Ilanot (Hebrew: ראש השנה לאילנות), the New Year of the Trees. Tu BiShvat is one of four “New Years” mentioned in the Mishnah. As the "New Year of the Trees," Tu BiShvat began as a halakhic and agricultural boundary: a fiscal cutoff that separates one year's fruit crop from the next for the purposes of tithing (ma'aser) and other tree-related mitzvot such as orlah (the prohibition on fruit during a tree's first years). The mid-Shevat date works because by that point most of the rainy season has passed in the Land of Israel and the new growth cycle of the trees begins. As one of the four "New Years" listed in the Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 1:1), alongside 1 Nisan, 1 Elul, and 1 Tishrei, it functions as a calendar marker rather than a festival of its own. Over time it gained two further layers of meaning: a 16th-century Kabbalistic dimension from the mystics of Safed, expressed through a symbolic fruit "seder," and a modern Zionist and environmental dimension expressed through tree planting in the Land of Israel. A recurring theme connects the day to the verse "for man is the tree of the field" (Deuteronomy 20:19).

Tu BiShvat falls on the 15th day (Tu, the letters tet-vav = 15) of the Hebrew month of Shevat, a single day that lands in late January or February on the civil calendar. It is a minor holiday and an ordinary working day, with no melachah (work) restrictions. Because it is not a Torah-mandated festival, it is observed identically in Israel and the Diaspora, with no extra "second day" in the Diaspora. Owing to its festive character, Tachanun (penitential prayers) is omitted on the day itself and at the preceding afternoon Mincha service, and fasting is avoided. Some authorities also discourage eulogies on the day, though practice on that point varies.

In normative (traditional halakhic) practice, Tu BiShvat has no special Torah, Haftarah, or Megillah reading, and therefore no special cantillation (trope) melody of its own, unlike Tisha B'Av (Eicha trope), Purim (Esther trope), or the High Holidays. As a weekday it has no public Torah reading at all unless it happens to coincide with a regular Monday, Thursday, or Shabbat, in which case the ordinary weekly portion is chanted in the standard weekday/Shabbat trope. Tu BiShvat often falls in the week of Parashat Beshalach (Shabbat Shirah, the "Sabbath of Song," containing the Song of the Sea), but that belongs to the weekly cycle, not to the holiday itself. A few modern, non-normative Tu BiShvat seder liturgies draw thematic selections from Genesis and Ezekiel, but these are optional customs rather than a fixed reading.

The central custom is eating fruit, especially the Seven Species praised in Deuteronomy 8:8 (wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates), with olives, dates, grapes, figs, and pomegranates frequently highlighted. Many eat a new-season fruit for the first time that year and recite the Shehecheyanu blessing (followed by borei pri ha'etz over the fruit). The Tu BiShvat seder, instituted by Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (the Arizal) and his circle in 16th-century Safed and recorded in the work Pri Etz Hadar, is modeled on the Passover seder: it features ten symbolic fruits and four cups of wine graded from white to red (evoking the progression from winter toward spring and summer), often mapped onto the Kabbalistic Four Worlds. In modern times, especially in Israel, the day is marked by planting trees, frequently through the Jewish National Fund (KKL), with large numbers of participants each year, and by a broader focus on environmental awareness.