It is just a poor tree
It’s a story seldom told
But that beloved boksor fruit
Is thousands of years old
The boksor tree
Has funny fruit
They’re hard, shiny and black
And when we bit them
In first grade
Our front two teeth would crack
It really was so hard to eat
It hardly had a taste
We’d crack a bit off
Spit it out
The rest would go to waste
Exactly why
They gave it out
I questioned it a lot
And what is its connection
To eat on Tu B’Shevat
I know that boksor is dried out
And lasts a long, long way
And probably does not cost much
For our school’s PTA
But there must be more reasons
That we all ate that fruit
Maybe there’s tradition
And some lomdus to boot
We all know the boksor
Was in such great supply
To tzaddikim in distress
Rav Shimon Bar Yochai
For all the years hid in a cave
From all the Roman rage
“In the clearing stood a boksor”
That fed the holy sage
Perhaps for Rav Chanina
On boksor he could live
But in his merit Hashem said
“The whole world food I’ll give!”
Of course there is some lomdus
The bud it does create
If it is before fifteenth of Shevat
How do you calculate?
The proper measure for a tithe
It’s not like other fruits
And also it’s unique as well
How far extends its roots
Of course, the boksor it once moved
That’s how it testified
Against all the chachomim
For Rav Eliezer’s side
But more than that there is a fact
That some of us may know
A boksor is a process
Takes 70 to grow
Choni Hamaagol went to sleep
A man was planting one
And woke up after 70
Reaped by the man’s grandson
So boksor teaches subtly
And teaches things outright
Remember all those lessons
When you take the painful bite!
