Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash
By Caleb Brommer, Jewish Life Specialist
Rosh Chodesh Sh’vat
Only fun facts – guaranteed, or your money back!
Okay here’s fun fact #1: Sh’vat is literally in the middle of the winter, but Tu Bi’Sh’vat, the New Year of the Trees is during this month. Weird, right? Actually, not that weird! Because in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), this is the beginning of the rainy season (they don’t get a ton of snow in Israel) and so the trees are really vibing during Sh’vat.
Fun Fact #2: The name Sh’vat is a Hebraicized version of the Akkadian “Sabatu” which, according to the internet means ‘striking’ and refers to the rains striking the earth. Pretty cool.
Fun Fact #3: This one is particularly weird and cool. There is a tradition that shochatim/shochatot (kosher slaughterers) in Ashkenaz (central and eastern Europe) would not slaughter geese in the months of Tevet and Sh’vat. Why no geese!? Apparently, people were using geese to perform certain types of divination, and so those months were particularly dangerous ones to be around geese. So kosher slaughterers refrained from ending goose lives during the months of Tevet and Sh’vat.
