Birthday of the Trees

Last night was another Torah meeting, but I was not prepared. Instead, I was sidetracked by the celebration of Tu B'Shvat, "the birthday of the trees." This is a minor Jewish holiday not mentioned in the Bible, the precursor to our Arbor Day. It is a holiday founded by the Kabbalists in the 16th century in the face of terrible trials the Jewish people faced. The celebration, a ritual dinner featuring vegetarian and dairy foods, mirrors that of Passover, a major holiday that comes later in the spring. As for Passover, one uses a special book of prayers in a particular order (that is what the word "seder" means, and this is the word we use for the ritual dinner), based on the ancient 4 elements of earth, water, air, and fire. These are meant to correspond to an ancient psychology and to particular kinds of fruits. So the earth corresponds to the almond, which represents the physical world, people (or aspects of their behavior) that are hard on the outside but soft inside; water corresponds to the date, which is soft outside, hard inside; air represents rationality, and this, ironically in my view given the sexual connotations of the fruit, corresponds to the fig; finally, fire represents the spiritual, and the most spiritual plant of all, for the mystics, was the tree.
In honor of the celebration, I prepared a special vegetarian dish that I had never made before--a mushroom strudel. It was absolutely beautiful, but I was way too rushed to take a picture of it.
I got the recipe from online, so I will find a picture to show you what the finished product looked like. Mine was exactly like the one in the picture!
Meanwhile, here is a beautiful piece from the seder to put you into the mood to celebrate the birthday of the trees:
"I said to the almond tree,
'Sister, speak to me of God.'
And the almond tree blossomed."
Nikos Kazanzakus