A Carob for Tu b’Shevat

ESSAY

On the 15th of Shevat, when the calendar says early winter, and Eastern Europe lies covered in snow, in Israel the first signs of spring appear as the almond tree begins to flower. So the Mishnah declares the 15th of the month of Shevat as the new year for trees, the start of the fiscal year for arborists (Rosh Hashanah 1:1). You have to pay your agricultural taxes on each year’s harvest separately. The year starts on a specific day well after the olive harvest of the old year and well before any fruits are ever ready — so you have no trouble telling whether your fruit comes from this year’s crop or last year’s.

Our forebears, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the warm lands of the south, could celebrate Tu b’Shevat and their connection to the land of Israel by developing an elaborate meal around the fruits of Israel, “a land … of vine and fig and pomegranate, a land of oil olive and (date) honey” (Deut. 8:8). They ate courses of olives, pomegranates, and dates, in between drinking white wine and red wine.

Our forebears, Ashkenazic Jews in the colder northern lands of Europe, made a strong effort to keep their connection to the land of Israel, too. Ashkenazi Jews, like Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, recite a blessing in gratitude for the land in every grace after meals.

Our synagogues, ideally, face toward the land of Israel. But in the colder parts of Europe, it was difficult, years ago, to obtain foods from the Holy Land.

If you wanted to celebrate Tu b’Shevat, you had to make do with whatever fruits you could get. That meant eating dried carob, the fruit of a kind of locust bean tree (Ceratonia siliqua) — in Yiddish, bokser.

Which explains why, when I went to Hebrew school, the teacher gave us each a stubby piece of dried carob. I also got a few other pieces because the other children did not particularly want any. It takes an effort to enjoy the taste of dried carob — chew on the woody pod long enough, and you can get some flavor — but you can enjoy the idea that the fruit came from Israel. Think of what that meant to our ancestors in Europe.

Fresh carob makes a better snack: chewy, sweet, umami, with a unique complex flavor. Last time I visited Israel, my family had a picnic in a grove of carob trees, and I enjoyed several of the pods for dessert. I thought they were delicious. On the other hand, no one else wanted any.

Like it or not, the fruit is a pretty complete food. It has plenty of sugars and other carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants. Carob has several culinary uses, including as a chocolate substitute, as if anything could replace chocolate. The locust bean gum that thickens commercial food products comes from the seeds of the carob. Etymologists say bokser comes from a word meaning “ram’s horn tree,” perhaps inspired by the appearance of the twisty dark pods. The English, carob, derives from the

Louis Hebrew haruv. From the same Finkelman three-letter root, het-resh-bet, Contributing Writer come words for “destruction,” for “sword” and for “dryness.” What’s the connection? Maybe because the tree survives in dry parts of the world, or the fruit dries completely; or the pod looks like a scimitar; or, in a famine or drought, you can at least eat carob.

The carob appears in rabbinic literature. When Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai offended the Roman