Kabbalistic Tu B'Shvat

Hey All, this is my first time posting, so any sweet and kind constructive criticism would be appreciated :)

Well Happy Tu B'Shvat!!!! ( Better late then never)

So when I heard it was the new year for the trees, I was a little curious what exactly that meant. I mean, our new year, Rosh Hashana consisted of many different prayers, the prohibitions nearly as stringent as Shabbat ( no use of any electronic items...), and the like. However, the new year for the trees didn't seem as "hard core," I mean we don't even add the "yale veyavo" blessing in our daily prayers. So I wanted to know what is so special about having a new year for the trees. Soooo, I went to the Shlomo Carlebach Shul, in the upper west side (NYC) and boy did I get what I asked for!!!

Apparently Tu B'Shvat is quite a cool holiday, even though it doesn't have all the hype of our new year or other holidays. It is steeped in mystical innuendos and the combination or our material world to the higher realms above. The meal (or as you will soon find out Seder, yeh like Pesach) lasted quite a while, but I will try to give you a little taste of the Kabbalistic Tu B'Shvat.

Ready....Nice... Aight here we go.

So the Kabbalistic Tu B'Shvat Seder was created in the 1500's by the Kabbalists of Sefad, Israel which were followers of the Ari Hakadosh ( Rabbi Issac Luria). The Seder is modeled like the Pesach Seder. We drink 4 cups of wine, but they start off as white wine, and a drop of red wine is added to each cup thereafter, until the last cup is totally red. You eat a total of 21 fruits, in 3 orders, corresponding to the 3 of the 4 Kabbalistic worlds; Olam Hab'riya ( world of creation), Olam Yetzira ( world of formation), and Olam Asi'ah ( world of action). There are set phrases and blessings that are recited during each world phase, and before going from one world to the next, a slight mediation is done, to allow the participants to fully internalize the spirituality of the fruits before they internalize the physical aspect (taste) of them.

So you can ask, what can be spiritual about fruit? Well one part of the Seder discusses that each person, while participating in the Seder, should have the intention that the fruit they are eating is a way to fix the sin of Adam and Eve with the Tree of Knowledge. The fact that a little orange can have the spiritual ability to fix the first sin of this creation, was quite cool.

Anyhow, I will end with one last interesting idea. One main part of the Seder was all the various blessings over the different fruits. One reason for this is because each thing G-d created, including fruit, has a specific angel that looks over it. When you make a blessing over the fruit, you enable that angel to produce more fruit, and help the spirituality of the fruit to spread over the world. ( side note: I love angels, so I particularly liked this one).

So that's the gist of if. Hope you enjoyed, comments are encouraged :)
TTFN, DFTSS. ~ Shulamit

Question: What fruit can be eaten whole, without throwing anything away?