Judaism celebrates the whole human being: sensual and spiritual, physical and soulful. In Jewish experience, sensuous enjoyment becomes a holy service. Physical and spiritual metaphors are intertwined. Eating is to the body what knowledge is to the soul. Inclinations of the soul animate the body. Desires of the body inspire the soul. Taste is a is a gift and flavor is a miracle. So are the sensations of swallowing and the ability of our bodies to digest. When we eat, we internalise what we've eaten and through that we grow and develop. Similarly, when we genuinely learn a new piece of information, we chew it over, digest it, and integrate it into our very being.
Taking those ideas in, but not talking about them yet, would the person who read text #1 please invite someone else to read texts 2-6 and facilitate the questions after them.
2. God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְ‑יָ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָעֵץ.
3. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who creates the fruit of the tree.
Each life form, even fruit, is entrusted to a specific angel. By saying a blessing over a fruit, we empower that angel to reproduce more of that fruit. One who refrains from partaking of a fruit deprives the world of the spiritual influence that the blessing would have provided.
Chemdat Yamim is a book dealing with Jewish customs and laws (particularly of Jewish holidays), including many muser teachings. It is based on kabbalah, the kabbalah of the Rabbi Isaac Luria - the Ari - in particular. The book was first published by Israel Yaakov Algazi in Izmir in about 1731.
Questions to discuss:
a) Whatever you think of this idea of angels and whatever you believe about God, what resonates with you in these ideas and texts?
b) How might our intentional awareness of the experience of our body eating a fruit (or nut - which our sages call a fruit) inform our awareness of the experiences of our soul?
c) What do you find intellectually interesting, curious, or provocative about our body and soul relationship with the fruits (and nuts) that come from trees?
The Tu B’shevat Seder was created in the 16th century by Isaac Luria and other Kabbalists. These mystics spit the seder into four “spheres" or worlds, each of which represents a different Kabbalistic relationship between humans and Creation.
Asiyah - Action and the Body
Yetzirah - Formation and Emotion
Beriah - Creation and Mind
Atzilut - Spirit and Essence
Asiyah is the world of action and physicality - the world of the body. Its season is winter. In the Tu BiShvat seder the first wine or juice we drink is white and the first fruits we eat have an inedible shell or peel. We must break the shell to enjoy what is inside. Eating this fruit symbolizes times when goodness is accessible only through external effort and change.
There are times when we need a shell of protection, periods when it is comforting and even necessary to be surrounded by barriers. There are moments when our inner fruit needs its sturdy walls.
Although seemingly inedible from the outside, each of the foods at the Asiyah level holds gifts that transcend their appearance. Like winter, these fruits and nuts contain inside them potential to reveal what is hidden within. These foods can also represent our tendency to judge others by their outer appearance, or the ways we separate ourselves from other people.
We will have time when we are back together as a whole group for individual personal, emotional reflection. With this group, we will consider these questions:
a) Why might Rabbi Luria and others have decided that Asiyah is the right place to begin and that the inedible outer shell or peel was the right fruit to pair with the ideas of action and physicality?
b) The blessing we are taught to say before eating a tree fruit is the same whether it has an inedible shell or not. The rabbis of the Talmud who, long before Isaac Luria, composed our blessings for different foods did not differentiate between kinds of fruit from trees and only between fruit from trees and fruit that grows close to the ground - like strawberries. Why might Isaac Luria and those who created the Tu BiShvat seder have chosen to differentiate further? What might that get us?
c) Please thank your group for this time learning together. If you have remaining time, you are welcome to return to previous texts and ideas and to continue to talk about them.