Eat Well, Be Well

In a world with supermarkets competing over size and product variation, foraging — hunting and gathering wild grown food — isn’t usually high on your average Jew’s to-do list. But research, as Reb Shmuel Chaim shared, points to health benefits, increased mindfulness, and a sense of purpose and peace that all come from spending time in nature and eating its plants.

Reb Shmuel Chaim’s foraging walk begins with a large, beautiful tree. “This tree,” he says, “holds the story of this valley. Look at it. See how mysterious it looks?”

Personally, I would never have noticed, but he’s right. There’s something coldly beautiful about it, with dozens of sphere-shaped bunches of red and blue berries protruding out from its branches.

It’s the Elah tree, first mentioned in the Torah when Yaakov buried Rivkah’s servant Devorah, m’tachas ha’eilah. And it was in this very valley that a young shepherd faced off against a half-breed giant, staring him down, and eventually, felling him with a single stone: Dovid and Goliyas.

“I find it incredible,” Reb Shmuel Chaim says, patting a branch proudly, “that this tree is a descendant of a tree that witnessed the epic standoff. Perhaps Dovid walked this very path on his way out of the valley after the legendary battle. Oh, and you can eat its berries. They’re ha’eitz. And because they grow wild, you don’t have to worry about terumos or gezel — they’re all permissible to eat.” (Wild produce can be a source of other agricultural prohibitions, and it’s advisable to consult a halachic authority before partaking of this natural bounty.)

After a short debate whether to try the bluer ones or the redder ones, we each take a berry and try it out. It’s not the most flavorful, and has a sharp and tangy taste, but we did just pick it off a random tree, so the fact that we ate it at all was an experience. Reb Shmuel Chaim reports that many foragers have gained an acquired taste for Elah berries, though it might take some acclimation to appreciate the flavor. “When we get past the crinkly packages of perfectly sugared and salted snacks,” he says, “we discover how Hashem’s world offers a large variety of tastes and smells, with something for every personality and preference.”

Reb Shmuel Chaim’s mantra for healthy Jewish living, he explains as we inch further up the path, is “Eat well, move well, and be well.”

Moving well, he explains, as we trudge upward, is all about moving with constructive effort, mindfully. Running on a treadmill like a lab rat isn’t the exercise we were built for. Our bodies were created to forage, to walk and wander and search for food in the world G-d created.

When we’re walking “from here to there,” as he likes to say (and expands at length in his book, Land of Health: Israel’s War for Wellness), searching for nourishing foods, we are energized, healthy, happy, and whole. Life — and moving well — are all about going somewhere. We’re exploring Hashem’s beautiful world and discovering what it has to offer us.

“When I move my body,” he says, “I become the journey toward the destination. And right over there,” he points, “is a trail to Yerushalayim. I’ve hiked it twice.”

We look out at the vast scenery, mountains melting into the skyline.

“How long did it take?”

“Just a full day’s walk.”

Reb Shmuel Chaim’s not into organic cornflakes and superfoods and antioxidants and all the fancy buzzwords; his research shows that they aren’t the key for living a fulfilling life.

“Even if we get every nutrient perfect, we can’t really know for sure if we’re going to be healthy and focused, or distracted, depressed, and sick. Much more important is making realistic choices about eating real foods that come from the real world, the world that Hashem made, as Hashem made it, in the way Hashem made it,” he says. “So when we’re out foraging in the wild, we’re doing the most healthy thing we can in regard to eating.”

The Full Gamut

We stop at a tree further up the path. This one I recognize; my neighborhood in Yerushalayim has a beautiful courtyard filled with olive trees.

The trees themselves are a mystery; who planted them and when? But it’s a mystery for another day.

“The idea of k’zayis,” Reb Shmuel Chaim says, patting a tree branch, “is the center of the way Jewish people look at things. The Apta Rav explains that indeed all eating is ‘like a zayis.’ The olive itself, as the Gemara teaches, causes forgetting, while the oil hidden inside supports memory. In parallel, the act of eating distracts from avodas Hashem, but if we eat the right foods for the right reasons, they nourish our spiritual life, too.

“The olive tree,” he continues, “also expresses the full gamut of life’s experiences, demonstrating how life comes with health, happiness, wellness, and also with not-wellness and not-happiness. Olive trees are very evidently sometimes happy, sometimes sad. This one is not very happy. Just look.”

We all squint at the tree. Now that he mentioned it, it is looking pretty peaky, bare-branched, and kind of dejected….

“You see, there are barely any fruits on it. There are branches that are halfway stripped off. This is not the type of olive branch that I would suggest for us to make tea out of, for example — oh, yeah, we’ll be making tea, right out here. The leaves themselves are a bit sad.”

The olive leaf, he explains, is used by herbalists to lower blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure. It’s especially beneficial to combat prediabetes (along with a steady exercise regimen and smart eating).

We then stop to admire a cluster of ruins situated across the path: Hirbet Qeiafa, probably the ancient city of Shaarayim.

“This was a beis medrash,” Reb Shmuel Chaim says. He gestures to where the stones gap.

“The gap shows us where a gate once stood. The gate of the city was where the beis medrash was situated in the times of the Shoftim. Batei medrash were then split into four, and see how there are four rooms here? Whenever anyone would enter or leave the city, they would meet the chachamim, the zekeinim, the Sanhedrin, sitting, learning Torah, judging the people, guiding the people. That was what happened in the shaar ha’ir. This is one of the few places in the area of Israel where we can experience and learn inside a beis medrash from almost three thousand years ago.”

Unlike all the other ancient cities of this area, there were no pig bones found in this ancient city by archeologists — only bones of cows, sheep, and goats, further evidence that this is a Jewish city of old.

We bend to admire milk thistle, a flowering herb that we can’t eat until spring. Foraging is like life, Reb Shmuel Chaim reminds us, with constantly shifting stages and different offerings available in different seasons.

The ancestors of these plants, which have been growing every year, again and again and again, were eaten by our ancestors living in the times of the Shoftim, Reb Shmuel Chaim says, wonder coloring his voice. Right now, when we’re in such a terrible eis tzarah, these plants can give us hope: We know that this cycle of Eretz Yisrael’s rebirth must lead to some sort of redemption. It’s just like foraging: in early winter everything dies, and the foraging season takes a break until around January. Hashem is the “melech mei’mis u’mechayeh, umatzmiach yeshuah” — He “plants” salvation after death.

“Atah sakum terachem Tzion ki eis lachanena ki va moed. The Sefer HaKuzari concludes with explaining how the next pasuk tell us when that day will come: ‘Ki ratzu avadecha es avaneha, ve’es afarah yechoneinu’ — The essence of the teshuvah that will bring the Geulah is wanting, caring, and finding Hashem in His stones, in His land. When we want to find Hashem in our material lives and not just as a vague idea in our souls, that’s when Mashiach will come,” Reb Shmuel Chaim says, looking around at his land.

We glance around at the stones; try to see what he sees.

Perfect Balance

“Now look at this plant!” Reb Shmuel Chaim says enthusiastically, pointing at a low plant with wide, fuzzy leaves. “It’s fascinating. It’s called butzin, Chazal mention it, just don’t—”

“Touch it,” he finishes, as one of the members of the group reaches out to fondle it. “Okay, don’t touch your eyes! Butzin can make someone go blind.”

We all take a giant step backward and offer water bottles to wash the butzin off.

Baruch Hashem, no one touches their eyes.

Butzin means candelabra in Aramaic, Reb Shmuel Chaim says. The plant does, in fact, look like an upside down chandelier. The flowers, we learn, are used by herbalists to treat ear infections. In English, it’s called mullein. But the fuzzy leaves have hairs on them that can seriously damage one’s eyesight.

We leave the sight of the ruins and the scary butzin behind and then stop at a tree. Reb Shmuel Chaim bends down and picks up a flat rock, before picking something off a tree.

“Almonds,” he says simply.

We pass around almonds, smashing open the shells with rocks.

“That bitter aftertaste is due to the cyanide.”

Okay. It’s not so often that I eat cyanide.

“All almonds, just like apple pits, have a small amount of cyanide,” Reb Shmuel Chaim corrects me. The Mishnah mentions shekeidim that start off sweet and end bitter — the opposite of the ones we buy in the store. In springtime, these wild almonds are soft and delicious and the entire nut can be eaten. But then, too, you don’t want to have too many. Reb Shmuel Chaim advises five or six, maximum.

We round the bend and pause. You can still see the ruins of the old city we’d just stood in, rocks jutting out toward the cerulean skies, but across the highway, towering new buildings are inching their way up in Ramat Beit Shemesh, in a spectacular juxtaposition of old and new.

“Eretz Yisrael is a land of balance,” Reb Shmuel Chaim says. “Life is like that. When it comes to health, personally, I allow myself to eat for twelve hours a day, and the next twelve hours I don’t eat. The center is really the core of health, and it’s also the core of the land of Israel. This green swath of land we’re seeing here is the southern edge of a green area that goes all the way through Eretz Yisrael, through the Galil, through Lebanon, through Turkey, eastward to Russia, westward to Europe. If you go south of what we’re looking at right now, it’s all desert, straight into Africa to the west and Asia to the east. Eretz Yisrael holds in balance the opposite contrasts of the world: the dryness and wetness, heat and cold, energetic movement and quiet stillness of the desert.”

True Power

Rain from the steep Jerusalem mountains flows right down into this valley, Emek Ha’elah, making it one of the most fertile places in the country. But for around 400 years after Klal Yisrael entered Eretz Yisrael, they didn’t have sovereignty over this area. From here and on was the land of the Pelishtim. Goliyas, who came from Gat, was one of their prime warriors.

Reb Shmuel Chaim gestures at a tree. “This wild tree is probably the otod, which is mentioned in the Torah. When Yosef buries Yaakov toward the end of Sefer Bereishis, we hear about the Goren ha’otod. In English, it’s called the buckthorn.”

The buckthorn’s fruit is edible, although foragers actually have conflicting views about it, Reb Shmuel Chaim shares, because it’s used in herbalism as a purgative, which means that when people were sick, before they had antibiotics, they would clean everything out. It’s not dangerous, it can just cause discomfort.

“But adults can consume up to twenty fruits with no side effects,” he promises us. “We want fruits that aren’t yet shriveled up raisin-like, but also aren’t still green. They should be dark red with those beautiful lines.”

Yeah, I take just one. Way to scare people off. It really is delicious though, sweet and tasty as the best summer fruits you can buy in the store. Many millions grow every year for free all over Eretz Yisrael’s countryside.

Reb Shmuel Chaim points down a steep path. “Now we’re heading out of the ‘city.’ Let’s feel what we’re experiencing. This passageway was leading outward. This trail has been here for thousands of years. It’s not like the modern roads that are constructed by knocking a mountain in half. The ancient trails that we’re walking along today were built in the natural contours of the land. These are the very same trails that existed thousands of years ago.”

Now Reb Shmuel Chaim points to a random plant that I would have just chalked up as “shrubbery.” Green, leafy, your regular green growth. “This is wild lettuce. Taste it, and you’ll understand why our ancestors used it for maror.”

We take a taste of the lettuce. It’s bitter. “The ancestor of this plant that has been growing here wild forever. Fun fact? It possesses opium in it. So a little calming, soothing lettuce might just be what the doctor ordered….”

We pause for that to sink in, check if we’re all feeling extra mellow, and then continue down the path, careful not to slip. At the bottom, a shoulder-high fence stands. Reb Shmuel Chaim gestures forward.

“Over or under, let’s go.”

We all make it somehow, over or under, and just like that, we’re in a dried-out riverbed.

“Let’s really experience the story of this riverbed going back to the time of Dovid and Goliyas,” he says. “Goliyas stood in this valley, screaming terrible things about Am Yisrael and Hashem. Send down your strongest warrior, he demanded, and let us duel.

“Dovid came and told Goliyas: You’re a lot stronger than me. I’m not a fool. I’m not deluding myself into thinking my strength can match yours. I won’t come with tanks and jets and guns. You’re stronger than me. You’re a lot more physical than me. You’re a lot wealthier and mightier than me. But the same way you’re stronger than me, there’s Someone who’s stronger than you, and I’m going to access His Strength with prayer and faith. (see Shmuel Alef 17:45)

“Dovid then did his hishtadlus, taking stones from the Elah riverbed and throwing them at Goliyas with his slingshot. Goliyas fell down backwards, and Dovid went over and chopped off his head.”

Whenever we face a problem, Reb Shmuel Chaim explains, whether it’s with a modern-day people called Palestinians, or even with our own personal struggles — history repeats itself from here in Emek HaElah, where the mighty battled against the small, and we can access the same solution as then: turning to Hashem for help while doing our hishtadlus.

So let’s do what Dovid Hamelech did, in the same place he did it. Reb Shmuel Chaim bends down and picks some stones out of the dry Elah streambed, which goes through the valley. He throws them in the direction of Goliyas’s ancient standoff.

As his stones fall into the soft earth, he asks: What happened after that epic duel? A huge shift in our life in Eretz Yisrael that we can deeply appreciate while foraging right here. For the next thousand years, the center of Jewish life was the Shefelat Yehudah that begins in the Elah Valley. We were no longer stuck in the mountains, which lose their winter rains every year as they run off into these fertile valleys. We got access to most of the eretz zavas chalav u’devash.

Matter of Choice

Reb Shmuel Chaim is still envisioning that long-ago war as he turns to an interesting looking tree: strong, solid branches, with dense foliage of thin and thorny leaves. “Just imagine,” he says, “during that war, it might have been hot like today. The soldiers might have been dry and hungry, looking for something to eat. In Emek HaElah, they probably ate from the ancestors of the same fruit bushes that we’re foraging from today.

“For example, you see these trees with these funny leaves? This is not common at all in this area of Israel. This is called shitah malbinah. It’s a desert tree that usually grows in more southern locations. Listen carefully to its name — according to a lot of traditions and research, this is atzei shittim that were used for the Mishkan.

“On the other hand,” he says, pointing to a grassy shrub beneath the shitah malbinah, “this plant over here, is actually a very common plant: fennel, a cousin of the type we buy in the store. The part you buy is the underground bulb, which in the wild is hard and small. As foragers, we gather in the winter the dill-like leaves, and now in the summer the delicious fruits and the seeds.

“But beware!” he warns us as we draw close to the fennel. “Another cousin of this plant is called hemlock — one of the most poisonous things on the earth — it grows in Israel also. The way to check that this is not hemlock, and this is really important, is to rub it with your fingers and smell. If it smells like anise, then it’s fennel, not hemlock.”

We settle into the riverbed for a moment while Reb Shmuel Chaim shares some of the mindset he developed over years of foraging, healthy living, and deep research.

For humans, he says, good health requires good choice. An animal doesn’t use its mind to guide its body for health; its instincts do a very good job at prompting it to eat, drink, rest, or move. But people can get very confused because we have so many instincts, drives, and desires pulling us in all sorts of directions, often at the same time.

“You become a genuine person when you utilize your mind to care for your body,” he says. “Animals don’t have a purpose. But people think before they act. When I weigh my choices, that’s how I become a person worthy of the name.

“Of course, good health isn’t the ultimate purpose of any human being. The purpose of all purposes is to know Hashem and emulate His ways. But the place where the journey starts, where I become a real human being — and not only, in the Rambam’s words, an animal that looks like a human — is when my mind is guiding my body toward health.”

We stand there, arms filled with fennel and mustard seeds, and listen. Really listen.

“I don’t really get into all of the catchwords of antiaging and performance-enhancing and peak performance and all those things because my goal isn’t to win a marathon,” Reb Shmuel Chaim confesses. “I don’t even need to run a marathon. My goal isn’t to be the strongest man on the block.

“I want to be healthy, well, whole. My purpose with all this is to learn Torah and live by its mitzvos in the best way I can — and for me, that journey began when I started listening to and caring for my body with purposeful self-interest. Today I can concentrate on whatever I need to, am a useful member of my community, and rarely feel tired or sick. Most of the time I’m joyous and overflowing with energy. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve spent in bed over the past decade. My irritable bowel syndrome has completely disappeared. Much of this is the result of putting myself first — not just as a nice idea, but with practical strategies for eating well, moving well, and being well.

I’m even blessed to spend much of my day sharing what I’ve learned along the way — both in Torah and personal growth — with our talmidim at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah, where I serve as mashgiach ruchani and teach a nightly Healthy Jew class. And I recently published a book about the crucial role of the natural world of Eretz Yisrael in Yiddishkeit, together with practical strategies — many of them learned from my own personal experiences — for living well during challenging times like ours.”

The sun begins to set. The men gather for Minchah; piles of fennel, mustard, and yanbut hasadeh (another trailside plant with a interesting, doughy texture) laid on the ground at their feet. Eretz Yisrael is set aglow, prayers wafting towards pink skies.

Reb Shmuel Chaim sets up his tea set. Here on the ancient trails in the valley of Elah, he has everything he needs to draw nurturance and energy from nature.

“L’chayim!”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1035)