Quick Healthy Jew Updates:
Lots of action this Tuesday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan / April 9:
1. Open Foraging Walk outside or Ramat Bet Shemesh from 4:00-6:00pm. For more details and to register, write to contact@healthyjew.org.
2. Our monthly online Healthy Jew Workshop for paid subscribers will be 8:30-9:15pm (Israel) / 1:30-2:15pm (New York). The topic will be “Is Meditation Jewish?” (See the end of this article for more details.)
The wild plants of Israel’s natural world silently bear witness to the march of time, bonding together places and people of the past, present, and future. Knowing and eating them makes Israel come alive - our heritage isn't just a bunch of half-buried ruins, and Israel today isn’t only concrete buildings and sidewalks.
Foraging also provides a hands-on experience of all three parts of healthy Jewish living:
Eat Well. Many wild leaves, flowers, and fruits are unusually packed with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and even medicinal compounds. People often ask on foraging walks, “So what is this plant good for?” My first answer is usually that it’s very, very good for food.
Move Well. Foraging was humankind’s original exercise: moving around in search for sustenance. When walking in nature to gather food, we're deeply aware that life is a journey From Here to There.
Be Well. Foraging teaches stability, equanimity, and balance. Plant life stems from far beneath the ground, its sustenance and growth rooted in the timeless, motionless earth. By directly connecting with the world of plants, we too can leave the frenzy of life’s activities and worries, becoming just a bit plant-like.
Of course, we’re not always out on foraging walks, eating directly from God's delicious and nutritious produce. Yet foraging can teach us what to eat at home: real food that comes from the real world, not food-like substances concocted in a laboratory.
To find health and wellness, we don’t need (and it’s often not possible) to eat the most potent superfoods on earth and count every calorie and nutrient. It’s far more important is to eat mostly real food (what you’d find when foraging and hunting), some almost-real food (like plain potato chips and pretzels), and maybe an occasional food-like substance (no explanation needed).
This relationship with eating is far healthier, balanced, and more sustainable than judging foods as bad and junk or ignoring their effect on your health altogether.
You are as real as the reality of the food you eat.
As I explained in a recent post , eating well also includes creating a setting that supports eating real food as a matter of course. A great way to do that is to think of foraging walks whenever you shop for food and eat it.
If you snack on cookies all morning, you probably won’t prepare salad or soup for lunch. You might not even have the ingredients on hand, because you’re detached from the natural world’s produce.
On the other extreme, eating only organic raw plant foods might break your bank and stress you out, while offering mostly speculative advantages in health and longevity. You also won’t be able to shop in regular stores or eat in most restaurants, which might detach you from friends and family.
It’s far more realistic and affordable to buy and eat a large variety of real foods that look and taste like all the delicious and nutritious foods that you’d find on a foraging walk: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, meat and milk. Real foods from the real world, without getting too caught up on the details.
We don’t live on the trail. But we can import God’s world into our city-life by filling our refrigerators and cabinets with real foods. And there’s no better way to experience real food than on a foraging walk in Israel’s natural world.
Let’s go foraging!
This Tuesday afternoon I’m guiding an open Foraging Walk outside or Ramat Bet Shemesh from 4:00-6:00pm. For more details and to register, reply to this email or write to contact@healthyjew.org.
Plus: Online Healthy Jew Workshop This Tuesday!
Many meditation traditions originate in the religions of the East, particularly the many strands of Buddhism. Therefore, you might have heard Jews say things like this:
“They” probe the depths of the psyche until somehow they decide all is nothingness. “We” serve the real God and live by His words, imbuing meaning to earthy living.
“They” escape the physical world. “We” sanctify it.
So do Healthy Jews have any business meditating? Or will this send us off to India in search of a cow to worship all the way to nirvana?
In this Tuesday’s online Healthy Jew workshop, I’ll show you the nuanced relationship between Judaism and the contemplative traditions. We’ll meet on Zoom from 8:30-9:15pm (Israel) / 1:30-2:15pm (New York), and I’ll send out the recording on Wednesday morning.
These workshops are special events for paid subscribers to The Healthy Jew, who will all receive the Zoom link on Tuesday morning (watch your email inbox!). If you’re not yet part of the community, now is a great time to join.
Life is a Foraging Walk