How do we Eat?
By Rabbi David Polsky

This Monday night and Tuesday we celebrate the holiday of Tu BeShvat, the new year for trees. We celebrate it by eating fruits, and especially those from the land of Israel. Some observe the kabbalistic custom to participate in a TuBeShvat seder, which organizes the eating of such fruits around four cups of wine. The Jerusalem Talmud states that Tu Beshvat marks the time of the year when winter is more than half finished, and we can look forward to the spring. Nature’s renewal gives us hope for own spiritual renewal.

But Tu’Beshvat also contains an additional message. The great kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria teaches that when eating the various fruits on TuBeshvat one should meditate on repairing and rectifying Adam and Eve’s sins of eating the forbidden fruit. On the surface the instruction is merely an association of fruit eating. The Hasidic master R. Tsadok Hakohen of Lublin argues that the connection is really more profound. He explains that Adam and Eve’s sin was not only their violation of God’s command to avoid the forbidden fruit. Their primary sin was their gluttonous attitude towards food, expressed by the manner in which they ate the fruit. A harmful relationship with food does not necessarily mean gluttony. It can also involve obsessive or anxious attitudes as well. Many commentators point out that despite Americans being more health obsessed than other nations, they have higher obesity rates than most countries. They argue that both stem from unhealthy relationships with food.

Eating the fruits on TuBeshvat offers us the ability to repair our relationship with food by turning eating into a sacred act. Instead of throwing food down our mouths unconsciously, we allow food the ability to elevate us. TuBeshvat forces us to re-think how we approach food. What are we thinking when we eat? How do we relate to what we are eating for dinner tonight? Tu beshvat allows us the opportunity for such reflection.

R. Tsadok notes that the theme of sacred eating extends over the next few months as well. On the fifteenth of Adar we celebrate Purim while on the fifteenth of the following month, Nissan, we celebrate Passover. All three holidays fall on the fifteenth of the month and are built around eating. They ask us to treat food not with gluttony, anxiety or obsession, but as the means to approach the sacred.