Term 2, Week 2: Tu B'Shvat

Session 2 (oh so long ago – good thing I take notes!) was two days before Tu B’Shvat, so the theme for the week was handed to me. As we overlapped slightly with the adult class upstairs in the shul, we started off in the sanctuary, which was quite a novelty. After much discussion, the kids ended up on the steps in front of the ark, with the gates very firmly closed! It was a bit of a squash, so I was glad to be on the outside :-D

I told them that Tu B’Shvat was coming up, and that it was the New Year for Trees. We discussed the following:

• Why this time of year? (since it was definitely not spring in the UK on 20 January!)
• How are trees and plans so important that we should have a whole day just for them?
  - Oxygen
  - Food
  - Paper
  - Shade
  - Building (we looked at all the wooden things in the shul, including some bits which have been painted to look like marble)
  - Fire

I asked them to think abhout how just a few tiny seeds made enough wood for all the things in the synagogue building, and tied in with the previous week when we discussed creation and someone had suggested that “maybe G-d had some seeds”. This really seemed to make a connection with several of the kids, and we thought about how amazing it was that G-d created trees and plants that could germinate.

Going with the plant theme, I asked them why they thought they were called Cheder Nitzanim (Nitzanim means ‘little buds’). The name was chosen years ago, and I was fairly sure most of them hadn’t really thought about it. They got this quite quickly, so I talked a bit about how, just like the seeds that made the shul, they will grow into the community. They are the most important people in the community (the parents loved this bit!) because when the adults now are too old to do anything, they will be the ones responsible for the community carrying on or not. They were a bit overawed by this, so we finished off with just a brief mention of the idea of the Torah as an ‘Ets Chaim’ (Tree of Life) and why it might be called that.

Next it was time to get messy, planting basil seeds and generally getting covered in compost. Tu B’Shvat’s a bit of a no-brainer when it comes to kids; you just have to plant something!

After a bit of Hebrew reading time with the felt board, we finished off with a Tu B’Shvat seder, with all the parents joining in. The kids loved eating all the different things, and said the blessings over each kind really well, especially considering most of them are unfamiliar with them. Here’s how we did a potted Tu B’Shvat seder:

White grape juice (Winter)
Think about how everything seems to die in the winter.
Borei p’ri hagafen.

Almonds (Outer inedible shell)
In Israel, the almond tree is the first to blossom in the spring.
Borei p’ri haetz.

White grape juice with a splash of red in it (Beginning of spring)
Think about winter gradually turns into spring.
Borei p’ri hagafen.

Dates (Inner inedible pit)
The date palm has all kinds of uses – dates for eating, fronds for thatching, fibres for ropes, wood for building. A reminder of all the different things we can do with trees.
Borei p’ri haetz.

Red grape juice with a splash of white in it (Late spring, tulips)
Think about the weather getting warmer, and all the flowers like tulips and daffodils that will start flowering.
Borei p’ri hagafen.

Orange (Outer inedible shell, inner inedible pit)
Focus on all these different kinds of fruit, with different bits which are edible.
Borei p’ri haetz.

Wheat crackers (Wheat and grains)
These are made from wheat, which makes flour, which makes bread, cakes, biscuits, etc.
Borei minei m’zonot.

Red wine (Summer)
We can start thinking about the summer, when the weather is hot and everything grows (string this out a bit – it’s nice to imagine summer when it’s still cold and wintry!)
Borei p’ri hagafen.

Raisins (Completely edible)
We can do lots of things with these – drink them, eat them as grapes, store them through the winter as raisins.
Borei p’ri hagafen.

We finished with the story of an old man who was planting a tree when a king came along and asked him how long it would take before the tree bore fruit. “About 70 years”, the old man said. The king asked him why he was going to all the effort of planting the tree when he would never live to eat its fruit, and the old man replied, “I am planting the tree for the generations to come, just as my ancestors planted trees for me”.