[Avodah] 15 different fruits on Tu B'shvat

[Dov Bloom]

The Seder Tu BiShvat is not a Conservative/Hillel or a modern non-acceptable minhag " The post sounds like  made-up Conservative minhag to me". It is just Kabbalistic, like saying Brich Shmei, Kabbalat Shabbat, Lesheim Yichud Kudsha Brich Hu U'Shchintei when doing mitzvot and many other minhagim which trace to the circle of the Ariz"l in Tzfat. 

Litvaks, Oberlanders and Yekkim and most Americans may not do it or hold by it, but it is ubiquitous in EY especially among Sephardim. 

The Seder is described  in Pri Etz Hadar which is part of Hemdat HaYamim, a book which help introduce many Kabbalistic minhagim to mainstream Jewish practice. It is especially common among Sephardim and later - Chassidim .  There is a story that the Hiddushei HaRim asked RMM of Kotzk to give a DT at a seder TuBiShvat. Chabad also does it, as do many other Chassidim and many Sephardim from Morocco to Iraq. 

The Seder is first mentioned by a talmid of the ARI"zl who went from EY to Morocco, the Tikun Yissachar. The Hemdat HaYamim is later by nearly a hundred years but is more detailed and popular and well known than the Tikkun Y.

See Magan Avraham OH 131 seif katan 16 - on Tu Bishvat the Ashkenazim customarily eat a lot of fruit of the trees ...  The MA refers to the Tikun Yissachar but not the HHY because the MA was niftar in heh-ta-mag 5443 - (you can remember the MG-A died in heh-taf-MemGimel) which was before the HHY was published in Europe).

The Seder includes 
4 cups of wine - changing in shade from white to white with a little red, half white and half red and finally  red; 
lots of psukim be'shvach Eretz Yisrael;
3 sets of 5 fruits (or 3 sets of 10 fruits) with different categories of KLIPOT  (1 - fruits with klipot like almonds), 2 - fruits where the outside is eaten and the inside is a seed like dates, and 3 - fruits with no shell and no inedible part and no klipot (referred to in the previous posts)   . 
The different categories of fruit have Kabbalistic symbolism ( see http://www.geocities.com/ariebenahum/parasha/tubishvat.html  but the article has numerous inaccuracies )



[re: HHY
There is a whole extensive "pulmus" about the Hemdat HaYamim, written by Natan of Azza - is it Shabtai Zvi oriented of not. The Sheelat Yaavetz questions its reliability, but he looked for Sabateans everywhere. ROY quotes HHY but doesn't always pasken like it.  I read an internal pulmus in Chabad - did the Rebbe rely on the HHY or not? Someone had asked the Rebbe if the HHY should be burned, but apparently the Tzemach Tzedek quoted it.... A scholar whose name escapes me wrote a whole book a recently in Israel rediscussing the questions about HHY and SZ. He claimed that the Yaavetz was wrong. 
Anyway, the HHY is another issue and may have been discussed here on Avodah before.]