Tu B'Shvat Rosh Hashanah for trees, this year will take place tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow, and throughout Israel many Israelis will mark the most exciting day, especially with holiday meals, since this year it is forbidden to plant trees. The holiday meal is expected to include Of Tu B'Shvat: Eating Dried Fruit.
Many Israelis make a table with a variety of dried fruits such as dates, figs, apricots, raisins and other fruits.
If you ask the average Israeli what the custom is to observe on Tu B'Shvat, he will probably answer that one of the important emphases is eating dried fruit. But this is a mistake.
During the years when the people of Israel were in the Diaspora, and the fact that Tu B'Shvat is the Feast of the Trees and Fruits in the Land of Israel, a custom developed to eat dried fruit, for the simple reason that no fresh fruit from the Land of Israel was available.
In light of this today that we live in the country surely there should be glory on fresh fruits grown in the country and not on imported dried fruits.
"Certainly the fruits of the Land of Israel stand on a higher level than a fig that comes from Turkey," notes Rabbi Shlomo Aviner.
The rabbi adds that although it is proper to eat from the seven species in which the land was praised but, "there is a great fondness for fruits that grew in the Land of Israel," over fruits that were praised in the Land of Israel but imported from Turkey or other countries.
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The exact same approach is noted by the head of the Torah and Land Institute, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi Amichai, who writes "abroad they used to eat dried fruit because there was no fresh fruit at this time of year (figs), but today in Eretz Israel we are rich in fresh fruit, and it is better to eat fresh fruit."
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