Of Scimitars and Tu B’Shevat

By RABBI JOSEPH H. PROUSER

We customarily celebrate Tu B’Shevat by tasting a wide variety of fruits and nuts. Personally, I have – ever since my earliest, childhood observances of the “New Year for Trees” – avoided carob… though that leguminous fruit often plays a starring role on the minor festival to be marked this Monday.

There is no accounting for taste!

The word “carob” (in Hebrew, “Charuv”) derives from the Hebrew “Cherev” – meaning “sword” – owing to the long, hard, curved pods in which the carob fruit is encased. These pods resemble a scimitar – a curved saber, widening toward the tip and familiar throughout the Middle East.

Carob is known by some as “Saint John’s Bread” …in Yiddish as “Bokser.”

I was delighted, while preparing for a recent year’s Tu B’Shevat repast, to discover both sweet carob chips and carob syrup in the baking aisle of my local supermarket.  Ground up, repurposed carob is an almost literal application of Isaiah’s vision: “You shall beat your swords into plowshares, your spears into pruning hooks” (2:4). Carob –named for the sword – is “beaten” into far more palatable products (carob chip cookies, brownies, cocoa substitutes…) – apt and welcome additions to even the most discriminating holiday menu.

May this New Year of the Trees inaugurate a period in which peace takes root, grows, and bears fruit.

Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser is the editor of “Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism.” The latest edition of Masorti was published online for the winter of 2025-26. A subscription is $18 per annum.