The Seven Species and Tu b'Shevat

(7) For your God Adonai is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; (8) a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; (9) a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.

Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba said: One who sees wheat in a dream has seen peace, as it is stated: “He makes your borders peace; He gives you in plenty the fat of wheat” (Psalms 147:14).

Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said: Where there is no Torah, there is no right conduct; where there is no right conduct, there is no Torah. Where there is no wisdom, there is no fear of God; where there is no fear of God, there is no wisdom. Where there is no understanding, there is no knowledge; where there is no knowledge, there is no understanding. Where there is no bread, there is no Torah; where there is no Torah, there is no bread.

The Eternal told Moses: Gather the Children of Israel and tell them: When you come to the land I give you to reap its harvest, you will bring the measure of an Omer' of your first-harvested barley to the kohen. He will wave the Omer measurement before the Eternal so that it will be acceptable for you; on the second day of Passover will the kohen wave it.

(16) But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. (17) Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”... (22) Thus Naomi returned from the country of Moab; she returned with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabite. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Blessed are You, Adonai, Our God, King of the Universe, Who creates fruit of the vine.

Blessed are You, Adonai, Our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with His Commandments & has favored us & His Holy Shabbat, with Love & favor did He bequeath to us, a remembrance of the act of Creation, the beginning of all holy callings, a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, & Your Holy Shabbat with love & favor, You bequeathed to us. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who sanctifies the Shabbat.

(23) They reached the wadi Eshcol, and there they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes—it had to be borne on a carrying frame by two of them—and some pomegranates and figs. (24) That place was named the wadi Eshcol (cluster) because of the cluster that the Israelites cut down there. (25) At the end of forty days they returned from scouting the land. (26) They went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran, and they made their report to them and to the whole community, as they showed them the fruit of the land. (27) This is what they told him: “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.

(1) Adonai showed me two baskets of figs... (2) One basket contained very good figs, like first-ripened figs, and the other basket contained very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. (3) And Adonai said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I answered, “Figs—the good ones are very good, and the bad ones very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.” (4) Then the word of Adonai came to me: (5) Thus said Adonai, the God of Israel: As with these good figs, so will I single out for good the Judean exiles whom I have driven out from this place to the land of the Chaldeans... (8) And like the bad figs, which are so bad that they cannot be eaten—thus said Adonai —so will I treat King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials and the remnant of Jerusalem that is left in this land...

(2) Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment...

(31) You shall make the robe of the ephod of pure blue... (33) On its hem make pomegranates of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, all around the hem, with bells of gold between them all around: (34) a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, all around the hem of the robe. (35) Aaron shall wear it while officiating, so that the sound of it is heard when he comes into the sanctuary before Adonai and when he goes out—that he may not die.

(12) A garden locked is my own, my bride, a fountain locked, a sealed-up spring. (13) Your limbs are an orchard of pomegranates and of all luscious fruits, of henna and of nard, (14) Nard and saffron, fragrant reed and cinnamon, with all aromatic woods, myrrh and aloes, all the choice perfumes.

REMA: Some have a custom of eating a sweet apple in honey, and saying: May a sweet year be renewed on us! This is what we do. Some eat pomegranates, and say: may our merits be as many as pomegranate seeds! And we are accustomed to eat fatty meat and all sorts of sweets.

(1) Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Command the Israelite people to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly. (3) Aaron shall set them up in the Tent of Meeting outside the curtain of the Pact [to burn] from evening to morning before Adonai regularly; it is a law for all time throughout the ages.

(8) I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey...

(1) I have come to my garden,

My own, my bride;

I have plucked my myrrh and spice,

Eaten my honey and honeycomb,

Drunk my wine and my milk.

Eat, lovers, and drink:

Drink deep of love!

"And [Devorah] was sitting under a date-palm" (Judges 4:5). Why did she study under a date-palm?... In the case of the date-palm, it has but one heart. Then the Israel that came in that generation had but one heart for Hashem.