D'var Torah
Tevet-Shevat 5768
Pri Etz
Hadar:
The Fruit of the Goodly Tree:
A Kabbalistic Journey
For most of us, Tu
b’Shevat, the 15th day of the 11th Hebrew month, the New Year
of the Trees, is tree-planting day, Jewish Arbor Day. The medieval
mystical Kabbalists carried Tu B'Shvat a step further. For them, trees
were a symbol of humans, as it says: "For a human is like a tree
of the field" (Deut. 20:19). In line with their general concern
with Tikkun Olam -spiritually repairing the world - the Kabbalists
regarded eating a variety of fruits on Tu b'Shvat as a way of improving
our spiritual selves. They believed that the ritual consumption of
the fruits and the nuts, if done with the proper intention, would cause
the sparks of holy light hidden in the fruit to be liberated from their
shells and rise up the heavenly ladder to return to their divine source,
thereby contributing to the renewal of life for the coming year. The
Bible is referred to as a "tree of life to them that hold fast
to it." The Kabbalists pictured their philosophical construct
of the Sephirot - the ten mystical emanations of the divinity - in
the form of a heavenly tree or ladder.
For the Kabbalists, trees were symbolic also of the tree - the Tree of Life,
which carries divine goodness and blessing into the world. To encourage this
flow and effect Tikkun Olam, in the sixteenth century, Isaac Luria and the Kabbalists
of Ts'fat (Safed) created a Tu b’Shevat seder loosely modeled after the
Pesach seder. The earliest published version of this seder is called the Pri
Etz Hadar, which means "The Fruit of the Beautiful Tree.” The seder
evokes the Kabbalistic themes of restoring cosmic blessing by strengthening and
repairing the Tree of Life, generally using the framework of the Four Worlds
of emanation that can be roughly mapped onto the physical metaphor of a tree,
that is, roots, trunk, branches and leaves.
The structure of the Seder corresponds to the four “worlds”-- levels,
realms, or spheres through which, the Kabbalists teach, the life-giving flow
of the Divine is channeled and filtered. All fruits are divided into categories
representing the first three worlds. The fourth world, Atzilut, has no representative
fruits because it is pure spirit and cannot be represented physically. The three “lower” worlds
are ordered according to how close they are to the world of pure spirit. The
further away they are, the more protection is needed for the holiness within.
The edible part of each fruit--the flesh or the meat--represents the holiness
while the inedible portion--the shell, skin or pit--represents protection.
Assiyah, the lowest world, is the realm of the concrete, the physical. At this
level, the need is greatest for protection, for shields and defenses. It is risky,
at this level, to let our defenses down, to open up, to peel off protective shells.
Being furthest away from perfection, this world is represented by fruits or nuts
with an inedible outer shell and an edible inner core: pineapple, coconut, orange,
pomello, banana, walnut, pecan, grapefruit, starfruit, pine nut, pomegranate,
papaya, brazil nut, pistachio, or almond.
Yetzira has enough God-energy to surround its protective parts with holiness,
but still needs some protection on the inside, at the heart of the fruit. It
is a realm of physicality, but even more, of inwardness, of a sense of feeling.
The need for protection and reinforcement is an inner matter of the core, of
the heart. Fruits with edible outer flesh and pithy, inedible cores represent
it: olive, date, cherry, loquat, peach, apricot, jujub, persimmon, avocado, plum,
or hackberry.
B’riyah, being closest to pure spirit of the three lower worlds, is represented
by any fruits that are edible throughout. Here no protective shells, neither
internal nor external are needed. The symbolic fruits may be eaten entirely and
include: strawberry, grape, raisin, fig, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry, carob,
apple, pear, kiwi, or quince.
And so we arrive at the realm of Atzilut, that of divine emanation. Olam ha’atzilut
is a realm that embodies all of the qualities of the Divine Presence. Therefore,
we cannot conceive of this sphere with our five senses and we have no food with
which to represent it. In the realm of Atzilut, we have all of the tools with
which to bring the world to come, however we must first make sense of the chaos
around us by opening ourselves to “knowing”. In an attempt to do
this and to gain an understanding of the divine implications of this realm, we
do as our ancestors did and look to the tree as a symbol of life -- a life without
shells, a life of replenishing the earth, and a life of balance in which there
is an inherent understanding of the place of both humans and nature.
Join us January 22, 2008 at 6 pm for our annual Tu b’Shevat Seder
and dinner.
Check out the page in last month’s Hamvaser and on the Events
Page for
details. For more information check out the following website: http://people.umass.edu/abischof/tuB.html
Copyright © 2008, Barry A. Kenter