Trying to reciprocate the fruitful way,
Jews celebrate the trees’ New Year on every Tu B’Shvat,
poetic trees decided in a chorus they
should sing to Jews on their New Year. One brilliant tree, a nut,
said: “I’ll compose a poem like the greatest one
Jews sing on Rosh Hashanah,” and it wrote a knock off
of a prayer Jews make on their New Year, which isn’t fun,
predicting bad things that might happen, U’nettaneh Toqef.
Trees in the forest said that they would sing as they once did
when God gave Jews the Torah. In the Hallel you will find
a reference to these trees. Although none was a kosher yid,
they loved it even though they were less kin to it than kind.
The plan trees made to sing the Hallel on the Jews’ New Years
evoked from one of them a most fantastic psalm, and
God loved it so much he exclaimed, with other trees, “Three cheers!”
and added, “Henceforth you will be the first to blossom, Almond!”
However, you won’t ever hear this psalm since Jews don’t say
on Rosh Hashanah the great psalms of David called Hallel,
despite the fact that it may be the whole wide world’s birthday,
they do not say it. Ask me why! There hangs another tale!
I recalled this poem on 1/29/26, a few days before Tu Bishvat 5786, after reading that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in a discussion of the New Year for trees, approved Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch’s suggestion that when Gen. 1:26 states that God uses the royal plural when creating man, “Let Us make Man,” He is asking all animal and I recalled this poem on 1/29/26, a few days before Tu Bishvat 5786, after reading that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,in a discussion of the New Year for trees, approved Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch’s suggestion that when Gen. 1:26 states that God uses the royal plural when creating man, “Let Us make Man,” He is asking all aanimal and vegetable being a He created before creating the ancestor of mankind to approve of the creation of Adam One. It occurred to me, reading Hirsch’s explanation of the use of the royal plural in Gen. 1:26, that the creation of Adam Two, whom God, in the second chapter of Genesis, commands to perform work on earth and guard it, reflects the fact that mankind is a partner not only of God but of nature, and that Tu Bishevat reflects this partnership just as Rosh Hashanah, New Year, reflects God’s royal Supremacy. The link between Tu Bishvat is also linked to Rosh Hashanah by being a new year festival on which Hallel is not recited.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
