Page 43 - HaMizrachi #26 Tu Bishvat USA 2021

TU BISHVAT READING

Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl

MITZVOT HAT’LUYOT BA’ARETZ NETA REVAI AND ORLAH

Patience...

You’ll Get There

hen you shall come to to be eaten, or redeemed, with Some have a custom of not cutting
the Land and you shall the money received to be taken to a child’s hair until he is three years
“Wplant any food tree, you Yerushalayim. old (and often on Lag BaOmer). The
shall treat its fruit as forbidden; for three custom is derived from the mitzvah
years they shall be forbidden to you, they The Torah is teaching us the quality of orlah, waiting for three years to
shall not be eaten” (Vayikra 19:23). of patience. The Torah promises us a eat the fruits of the tree, as described
The Gemara explains that this reward for being patient and observing above. When the child reaches the
mitzvah, the mitzvah of orlah, refutes this mitzvah: “And in the fifth year you age of three, we begin to teach him
those who require instant gratification may eat its fruit, so that it will increase the letters of the alef-bet. He slowly
in their seeking of worldly pleasures. its crop for you” (ibid. 25) – there will learns how to read with vowels, and
Here, the Torah is commanding man be a surplus. begins to read the siddur and the
to wait three years before eating the The Gemara tells a story of an old chumash. At this point of course, we
fruits, and if one wishes to eat them man who was planting a carob tree. do not yet anticipate he will become
in the fourth year, they must either be Choni HaMe’agel asked him how long the Gadol HaDor, the Torah giant of
redeemed or brought to Yerushalayim it would take for the tree to produce his generation. Seeing the fruits of our
to be eaten (neta revai). toil – and his – takes time.
fruits. “70 years,” the man answered.
Through this mitzvah, the Torah is When Choni asked him whether Similarly, the Land of Israel. G-d’s
teaching us to restrain our desires. he would live for 70 years, the man gift to us can only continue to exist
Even through natural means, when answered that when he came into this through the merit of learning Torah.
one desires fruits, they are not world there were carob trees. In other We received the Land of Israel so there
available for immediate consumption. words, just as his ancestors planted should be a Land for worshipping
The tree must first take root, which at carob trees so that he may benefit G-d, learning Torah, and performing
times takes as much as 14 days. The from them, so too he is now planting mitzvot. And with G-d’s help, may the
early development is performed under them for his descendants. Later, the entire Jewish nation be able to live in
the ground, invisible to us. When the Gemara relates how Choni saw a man its Land and eat the delicious fruits
plant begins to appear it is new and picking carobs off the tree. The man that grow here, both physical and
still weak until finally there is a tree told him he was the grandson of the spiritual.
that is capable of producing fruits. man who had planted the tree. We see
After all the time that has elapsed from here that one does not see the
from when the seeds were planted fruits of one’s labor immediately; one
until the fruits are ripe, the Torah tells is required to wait.
us to wait an additional three years Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl is the former
before partaking of the fruits of the We can compare the development of Chief Rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem
and Rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in
tree. There are even limitations on the a tree to the development of a person. the Old City. He is considered by many
way the fruits may be consumed in the A person is born a small baby. It takes to be the leading student of Rav Shlomo
fourth year. In the fourth year, the fruit years of time and effort though for him Zalman Auerbach as well as his chavruta
must either be taken to Yerushalayim to grow into a talmid chacham. for over forty years.

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