Tu b’Shevat 2026: Who Are We Now?

The Full Moon of Tu b’Shevat 2026 activates the deepest psychological and karmic architecture of the Modern State of Israel. The chart of this transit (pictured below) reads less like a forecast and more like a mirror held up to the nation’s soul.

Tu b'Shevat this year (as in most non-"leap" years) finds the Sun in Aquarius opposite the Moon in Leo. This is an axis that dramatizes the tension between sovereign identity and collective systems, between leadership and the future order, between the heart of a people and the ideologies shaping the world around them.

The public mood, collective memory, inherited trauma, and emotional identity of the people are lit up.This is a moment when feelings cannot be contained, when the people themselves become the vessel through which history is felt and expressed. The nation is not observing the moment; it is living inside it.

This emotional climax is further intensified by the proximity of Israel’s natal Pluto and Saturn in Leo, activating Pluto’s deep survival instincts and Saturn’s themes of authority, responsibility, and karmic burden. The result is a collective emotional state that is not simply dramatic, but existential. The people are not only feeling; they are remembering, re-living, and re-embodying the foundational narratives of power, vulnerability, and destiny that define the Modern State of Israel herself.

Notable that this is the first national holiday to fall after the body of the last hostage held in Gaza was finally returned home. The collective sigh of relief and the communal exhale could be heard and felt throughout the Jewish world, not only in Israel.

Rejoicing and relief is not the end of the story, nor the lesson learned. Today's transiting Sun in Aquarius forms an exact opposition to Israel’s natal Pluto in Leo, which becomes the structural spine of the chart. In mundane astrology, Sun–Pluto oppositions correlate with periods of profound confrontation with power, legitimacy, and survival. But here, Pluto is not an abstract force. It sits in Israel’s tenth house, the realm of national authority, leadership, and historical destiny. This makes the transit feel less like a political cycle and more like a mythic reckoning.

The living State, symbolized by the Sun, is being forced into direct confrontation with its founding shadow, its raw will to survive, and the deepest unconscious forces that have shaped its identity since 1948. Pluto does not negotiate. It demands transformation, and it does not allow systems to emerge unchanged.

What makes this lunation even more extraordinary is the concentration of planets transiting Aquarius in Israel’s 4th House. Pluto, Mars, the Sun, Venus, and Mercury all gather in this most foundational sector of the chart, the House associated with homeland, territory, ancestral roots, internal security, and the literal ground beneath the state. The 4th House is where nations store their deepest sense of belonging and vulnerability. To have such an intense Aquarian stellium transiting through Israel's 4th suggests that revolutionary, future-oriented, and destabilizing energies are not operating at the level of foreign affairs or abstract ideology, but at the level of the homeland itself. This is astro-shorthand for internal structure, existential security, and the future shape of the state’s foundations.

Aquarius brings themes of technology, networks, collective systems, ideology, and historical discontinuity. Mars and Pluto together in this space describe extreme internal pressure, militarized decision-making, and strategic actions driven by survival logic. The Sun and Mercury indicate leadership attention turned inward, critical decisions, and potentially defining announcements or revelations. Venus adds the dimension of values, alliances, legitimacy, and moral framing, suggesting that even the ethical and relational identity of the state is being re-evaluated under this cosmic pressure. THE FUTURE OF THE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL is being contested at the level of its roots, not merely its policies.

The Full Moon also forms a square to Israel’s nodal axis, deepening the karmic dimension of the chart. Israel’s North Node in Taurus in the seventh house points toward a destiny of stability, material grounding, and survival through alliances and relational diplomacy. The South Node in Scorpio in the first house reflects a default mode of crisis consciousness, siege mentality, and identity forged through existential threat and trauma.

This is a karmic test of national identity. The chart asks whether Israel will remain locked in Scorpio survival mode or evolve toward Taurus stability, grounded security, and genuine partnership with the wider world.

This chart reads like a historical inflection point, a moment in which Israel’s emotional psyche, power structure, homeland foundations, and karmic trajectory are all placed under the same psychic spotlight.

This chart captures a moment of time shaped by wars that redefine national meaning, regime transformations, mythic turning points in collective consciousness, and periods in which a people are forced to renegotiate who they are and why they exist.

Tu b’Shevat 2026 is not really about fruit on trees. It is about ROOTS. It is about the roots of the State herself being tested, pruned, and re-seeded by history.

Jewish astrology tells us that Leo is Shimon, whose rage was kindled by the kidnapping and rape of his sister Dinah, and who took his rage to the town of Shechem and utterly destroyed it. Aquarius is Asher, whose bounty was shared with all his brother-Tribes and who supplied the oil for the Israelite nation.

This Full Leo Moon comes at the very end of Israel's war with Gaza, with no more Israelis being held there, at the cost of utter destruction of the territory. The transiting planets in Aquarius opposite Israel's natal Moon, Pluto, and Saturn in Leo gives the answer to that destruction. Aquarius is not just Asher's olive oil, it is the D'li - the water bucket - and more than any other Zodiac sign, the constellation associated with the Jewish People.

The B'nai Yissachar tells us that just as the bucket is the servant of the water, Israel is the servant of HaShem. Understand that to "serve" in this context means, in the most Asher-like sense, to pour out like a waiter pours a glass of water for a customer in a diner.

Today's most pressing question: What is being poured from Israel's bucket What is being served? The living waters of Torah? Or the bitter waters of Marah?

The Full Moon in Leo of Tu b'Shevat is a mirror, before which Israel stands to behold her own soul, asking herself: who are you becoming now?