[10] In the Middle Ages, Tu BiShvat was celebrated with a feast of fruits in keeping with the Mishnaic description of the holiday as a "New Year."

In the 16th century, the kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria of Safed and his disciples instituted a Tu BiShvat seder in which the fruits and trees of the Land of Israel, especially of the Seven Species, were given symbolic meaning.

[citation needed] In the Hasidic community, some Jews pickle or candy the etrog (citron) from Sukkot and eat it on Tu BiShvat.

[12] Sephardic Jews prepare a dessert made of grains, dried fruits, and nuts, known as Ashure or trigo koço, to celebrate the holiday.

[21] On Tu BiShvat 1890, Rabbi Ze'ev Yavetz, one of the founders of the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement,[22] took his students to plant trees in the agricultural town of Zikhron Ya'akov.

[24] In keeping with the idea of Tu BiShvat marking the revival of nature, many of Israel's major institutions have chosen this day for their inauguration.

[25] In the diaspora, starting especially in North America in the 1980s, Tu BiShvat became treated as the Jewish "Earth Day" – with contemporary communities emphasizing all kinds of actions and activism related to the environment and the natural world.