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The First Cup
Clip Featured in Hazon's
Hazon Tu B'Shvat Haggadah
Make A Haggadah
Contributed by Hazon

We begin our Tu B’Shvat seder by considering our own personal relationships with the physical world. For more than twenty centuries, Jewish tradition has revered land and place; whether we are turning to face Jerusalem when we pray, expressing a desire to return to the Promised Land, or sharing a meal in a sukkah. This past year has brought a new, confusing, and often isolating understanding of place. Covid-19 has brought with it quarantines and social distancing, Zoom religious services and the ersasure of work-life borders. In this section we will consider our individual relationships with land and place.  We are guided by the questions:

What is my relationship to my sense of home? How do I affect it and how does it affect me? What lessons can I take from this past year of isolating in place that I want to apply to my post-Covid life, from the food I eat and the purchasing decisions I make to the way I get from place to place and negotiate my work-life balance?

The first cup we drink at the seder is pure white, like winter. For the kabbalists, it represents the beginning spark of divine creation; the time when creation began with the separation of light from darkness. White can also represent a seed or sapling, waiting patiently beneath the winter snow to fulfill its potential and grow into a beautiful tree. In a contemporary context, we might think of the white coats of physicians who have been on the front lines caring for the sick or scientists in laboratories.

We each fill our cup fully but will only drink half of the wine or juice in the cup. In so doing, we can ask: 

What does white wine represent to you on this day?

In what ways might our symbolic cups, our individual selves, be half full or half empty?

The Blessing Over the First Cup
We each fill our cup with white wine and say the blessing together:

Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam, borei p’ri hagafen.

Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, creator of fruit of the vine.

We conclude with the blessing traditionally recited on special occasions:

Baruch ata Adonai eloheinu melech ha olam, shehechiyanu v'kiy'manu v'higianu laz’man hazeh.

Blessed are you Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe,  who granted us life, sustained us, and brought us to this day.
Service Section: Readings & Activities
Source: Hazon 2021 Tu B'Shvat Haggadah

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