Tu BiShvat 2027: Date, Meaning, and a Simple Seder for Beginners

Tu BiShvat 2027 begins at sundown on Friday, January 22, and ends at nightfall on Saturday, January 23. It is the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shevat, the "New Year for Trees," and this year it falls on Shabbat. There are no required prayers and no work restrictions beyond Shabbat itself. Most people mark it by eating fruit, especially the fruits the Torah praises in the Land of Israel, and some hold a short seder.

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When is Tu BiShvat?

Like every Jewish date, Tu BiShvat starts in the evening. Here are the next few years:

For the rest of the year's dates, see our Jewish holidays 2026-2027 calendar.

What is Tu BiShvat?

The name is just the date. "Tu" is the Hebrew number 15, written with the letters tet and vav (ט״ו), and "BiShvat" means "in Shevat." The Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 1:1) lists four new years in the Jewish calendar. One of them is the new year for trees: Beit Shammai put it on the first of Shevat, and Beit Hillel on the fifteenth. The law follows Beit Hillel.

Originally this was a practical date. A tree's age and its fruit's "year" are counted from Tu BiShvat, which matters for mitzvottied to agriculture: separating tithes from produce grown in Israel, and orlah, the Torah's rule not to eat a tree's fruit in its first three years. Over time it became a day of its own. Tachanun, the daily confessional prayer, is skipped, and the custom spread to eat fruit and think about the Land of Israel, where the earliest trees are just starting to bloom.

There is also a lesson people love to quote from the Torah: "Is the tree of the field a man?" (Deuteronomy 20:19), often read as "a person is like a tree of the field." Roots, growth, and fruit make an easy frame for a short conversation at the table.

What to eat: the seven species

Deuteronomy 8:8 praises the Land of Israel as "a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey." These are the seven species. On Tu BiShvat many people try to eat as many as they can, plus one fruit they haven't had yet this season.

Dried fruit became traditional because Jews outside Israel could rarely get fresh fruit from there in winter. Figs, dates, raisins, almonds, and carob (bokser) are the classics. Fresh fruit is just as good.

The blessings, in plain terms

• Fruit from a tree:Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha'olam, borei pri ha'etz. One blessing covers all the tree fruit in front of you.
• Wine or grape juice: ...borei pri hagafen. Said before the fruit, and it covers any wine you drink after.
• Cake, crackers, or other grain foods: ...borei minei mezonot. At a seder this usually comes first.
• A new fruit of the season:add Shehecheyanu (...shehecheyanu v'kiyemanu v'higiyanu lazman hazeh), thanking God for bringing us to this moment. Say it right after the fruit's blessing and before the first bite.

When several tree fruits are on the table, a common custom is to make the blessing on one of the seven species, in the order the verse lists them by closeness to the word "land": olive, date, grape, fig, pomegranate. If that feels like a lot, just make the blessing on whichever you like best. You are not doing it wrong.

A simple Tu BiShvat seder in about 20 minutes

The Tu BiShvat seder comes from the kabbalists of Safed in the 1500s and 1600s, and a booklet of readings for it, Pri Etz Hadar, was printed in the 1700s. Today it ranges from a long evening of readings to a plate of fruit and four small cups. Here is a version a beginner can run at home:

1. Set out the plate. Something with wheat (cake or crackers), the five fruit species you can find, a few other fruits and nuts, and one fruit nobody has tasted yet this season.
2. Start with grain. Say borei minei mezonot and take a bite.
3. First cup: white. White wine or white grape juice stands for winter. Say borei pri hagafen.
4. Eat the species.Say borei pri ha'etz on an olive or date, then work through the rest. Say Shehecheyanu on the new fruit.
5. Second and third cups.White with a little red, then red with a little white, for the season turning toward spring. Read Deuteronomy 8:7-10 aloud between them, or let each person say one thing they want to "grow" this year.
6. Fourth cup: all red. Summer and full fruit. Close with the after-blessing: Al Hamichya covers grain, wine, and the five fruit species together, and Borei Nefashos covers anything else.

Tu BiShvat on Shabbat in 2027

Because Tu BiShvat 2027 starts on Friday night, the easiest plan is to put the fruit plate out at the Shabbat table, either after Friday night dinner or at the third meal on Saturday afternoon. A few things to know:

• Tree planting, a popular Tu BiShvat custom, isn't done on Shabbat. Plant something the week before or after.
• Cut or prepare fruit on Friday, before Shabbat, so the plate is ready to go.
• That Shabbat is also Shabbat Shira, when the weekly parsha, Beshalach, includes the Song at the Sea. Some families have a custom of leaving food out for birds that week. Since feeding wild birds on Shabbat itself is a halachic question, many put it out on Friday.

Make it more than one night

Tu BiShvat is about roots and slow growth, which is a nice reason to start something small that lasts. If you want a daily anchor, read this week's parsha a little each day, or pick a tiny morning habit like Modeh Ani. Our guide to starting daily Torah learning walks through the first steps.

Bayit gives you this week's parsha one aliyah a day, the whole Tanakh in Hebrew and English, and a place to ask what a verse means, with the sources quoted. Want a short Daily Plan to start? Try Bayit on the App Store.