Roots, Midrash and Tu B’Shvat | Gershon Hepner | The Blogs – The Times of Israel

Although regardingboksersI dont give two hoots,

about thecarob trees on which they growmyminds not shut,

appreciating what helps themgrow like me, their roots.

My roots:not just midrashic explanations of me, butpeshat,

a process which midrashic explanations hardly moots,

both tastier thanboksersI dont eat onTu BShvat,

enjoying both midrashic explanations andpeshatas fruits

that arent dependent on a kashrut label such asglatt.

InWhy Jews Used to Eat Dried Carob on Tu bShvat: Bokser smells like Limburger cheese. Its also an embodiment of Jewish vitality and endurance,Mosaic.com, 2/4/15, Meir Soloveichik writes:

In the Talmud, the holiday of Tu bShvat commemorates nothing more than one in a series of halakhic deadlines related to the obligation to offer tithed portions of the years crops to the Levites in the Temple. For fruits in particular, the end of one fiscal year and the beginning of the next was marked by Tu bShvat, the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat. Because these laws of tithing applied only to produce grown in the Holy Land, celebrating Tu bShvat became throughout the centuries a way of connecting to the land itself. For Ashkenazi Jews, that meant eating one fruit: carob, whose name derives from the Hebrewharuv and whose Yiddish name,bokser, is short for the Germanbokshornbaum, the tree with rams-horn-shaped fruit..

In its discussion of laws dependent on the land, the Mishnah presents us with the following conundrum. Suppose a tree is planted on one of the lands borders, with its roots in sacred soil but its fruit hanging over into non-native territoryinto, in effect, the Diaspora. Is the fruit subject to tithing in accordance with the laws relating to Tu bShvat? The answer is unequivocally yes: everything depends on the roots, not the foliage.

Another talmudic ruling is also relevant here. The tractate ofBava Batraincludes a lengthy discussion of the obligations we owe our neighbors. According to one ruling, we may not plant a tree near our neighbors well because the roots, though on our own property, will extend underground and possibly contaminate his water supply. Any tree, therefore, must be planted at a distance of 25 cubits from neighboring property. But certain trees, with exceptionally long roots, must be placed twice as far away. One such tree, the Talmud stresses, is theharuv, the carob.

So, according to Jewish law, identity is defined by roots: surely, an arresting idea. After all, we moderns often assume the oppositethat identity is not predetermined but malleable, that it can be shed and replaced like a suit of clothes, that we can be whoever we wish to be. And to a certain extent that is true enough; taken to an extreme, however, such an attitude, Judaism insists, denies human nature. For man is akin to a tree in the field, Deuteronomy informs us. In the view of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, this strange comparison suggests precisely that man, much like a tree, is in fact integrally connected with his roots, and indeed largely defined by them.

The carob, says the Talmud, has longer roots than most other Israelite trees; to eat its fruit was thus, for Jews in the Diaspora, to link themselves with a land and a heritage far away, and with an identity impervious to the often inimical forces of their surrounding environment. Unquestionably, sweeter and more exotic species of fruit exist abundantly in the Holy Land today, and can be almost instantly transported anywhere in the world. But even today, to connect with ones long-ago ancestors in the land by savoring the humble carob is truly to comprehend the Psalmists confident exclamation: Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored "Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel." He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.

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Roots, Midrash and Tu B'Shvat | Gershon Hepner | The Blogs - The Times of Israel