Thursday, May 22, 2025

The Boksor

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!

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