TU B'Shvat Fruit

I remember the TU B'Shvat Fruit they gave us every year in the Oakland Jewish Center Hebrew School.

We were told that it came from Israel.

In a small, brown paper bag we found some very dry raisins, a fig or two and "buksuh." Buksuh, dried carob, was was tough to eat as it sounds, very onomatopoeia. That was our kinesthetic lesson on the Land of Israel in the late 1950's.

Half a century later, I'm a long-time resident of Israel, twenty-five years of it in Shiloh.

In Israel our TU B'Shvat fruits are mostly fresh and frequently home-grown. We don't have to risk our teeth trying to bit into the hard, tough buksuh. Life here is easier and more pleasant than Hebrew School led us to believe.