Tu B'shevat Birthday

This year my birthday feel on the Jewish holiday of Tu B'shevat, the new year of trees. The Jewish calendar actually has four new year celebrations, one for the calendar, one for Kings and festivals, one for tithing, and one for trees. This is actually the birthday of trees, and all trees planted in the past year are now considered to be one year old. A tree must be three years old before we can eat the fruit. Imagine having three years to grow and bloom and stretch before someone prunes, picks, judges, or restrains you. Maybe birds will sing and nest in the branches, drawn by the unpicked fruit. Maybe bees will add the sweetness of the fruit to honey. 

Because the fruit is the focus of the holiday, the Jewish mystics created a "seder" or ordered meal around this holiday. We are told to eat three types of fruits:
     1. Fruits or nuts with an inedible outer shell and an edible inner core, such as an   
         orange or starfruit or almond.
     2.  Fruits with edible outer flesh and pithy, inedible cores, such as olives, dates,    
          apricots, avocados or plums
     3.  Fruits that are edible throughout with no protective shells, such are figs, 

          raspberries, strawberries or grapes. 
The seder uses seven "fruits" from Israel: figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes and wheat. Each type of fruit refers to a kabbalist notion of our relationship with G-d. Some of us have a spiritually hard shell, but are soft and sweet inside. Some of us seem to be open accepting in the outside, but have a hard tough core. Some of us are open inside and out, and still strong enough to live a spiritual life in a harsh world. 

The kabbalists viewed this holiday as a way to heal the mistake made by Adam and Eve, who sought pleasure solely from the gifts on the earth, and not pleasure in relationship with G-d. Here is a great discussion of this.
When we eat the fruits we were commanded to eat we join with G-d in our joy, we have physical, sensual and spiritual joy.

What does this have to do with a wedding dress? Perhaps it is a great lesson for the first few years of a wedding. What if we spent our first few years without "picking any fruit" and finding pleasure in our relationship rather than outside it? What if we appreciated the way each of us as soft and hard elements, and yet can come together leaving our hardness behind? 

What is this time under the Chuppa reminded us that we could nest and sing like birds in the life we have just planted? That we can turn the sweetness of our relationship into honey that will feed us? That to do this we need to let each other grow without pruning or picking or restraining. We need to enjoy growing strong, as the roots of our relationship dig deep and feed the branches of our spiritual life. 

Perhaps a dress is a symbol of that fruit that is soft inside and out, that embraces the sweetness of life without restraint. Perhaps the wedding dress represents a type of love we all wish to share, strong but yielding inside and out, and sewn together with love.