כִּי הֵיכִי דִּשְׁתַלוּ לִי אֲבָהָתִי — שְׁתַלִי נָמֵי לִבְרָאִי.
Just as my ancestors planted for me, I too am planting for my descendants.
Happy month of Shevat! In just a couple weeks we'll welcome Tu Bishvat, the Jewish new year of the trees.
To celebrate, we're branching out with some exciting new texts, resources, and connectivity on Sefaria. Let's get started.
Curated by Sefaria's Learning Team:
Use our Tu Bishvat 101 sheet to format a conversation on the basics of the holiday with your students. Then, explore the rest of our Tu Bishvat on Sefaria collection — from art activities to seder templates.
Recommended Texts for Tu Bishvat Study:
1. Dig into the roots of the Tu Bishvat seder with Pri Etz Hadar, written in 17th-century Safed by a student of the great kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria. This text offers an explanation of and instructions for the seder, weaving in teachings from the Bible, early rabbinic writings, and the Zohar.
2. All four Jewish new year dates, including Tu Bishvat, are explained in Mishnah Rosh Hashanah. Go deeper into the Mishnah's conversation with Mishnat Eretz Yisrael, a 21st-century commentary that focuses on the Land of Israel as the backdrop for the Mishnah's development. While this text is available on Sefaria in Hebrew, we've translated the relevant Tu Bishvat section into English for you — and created this sheet for guided study.
Tech Teaching Tip:
Get to the core of a text by accessing the many interconnections found in the Sefaria library. Where is the text quoted? What other works does it reference? With your students, practice opening the resource panel to discover the threaded conversations within the Jewish canon.
P.S. We wanted to make sure you heard about one of our newest text releases: a bilingual edition of the Tanya, the foundational text of Chabad Chasidut. Not only is it a beautiful guide to living a spiritual Jewish life, but our engineers have made studying it on Sefaria a one-of-a-kind experience with advanced linking to biblical references and expandable English footnotes. We hope you enjoy!