Now Is the Time for Pure Chocolate in a Date
Life brings bitter and sweet together.
Dear Healthy Jew,
We’re living through bittersweet times.
These days are sort of like pure 100% cocoa chocolate inside a medjool date, just as we ate together on Friday’s neighborhood foraging walk in the park as we sipped freshly brewed foraged fennel tea.
Just a few dozen miles from where I sit writing to you, the hostages - our brothers and sisters - are nearing the end of their second year of brutal captivity. Our soldiers are still dying in Gaza, as are civilians all over Israel. Thousands of families and dozens of communities remain shattered, tens of thousands of reserves yet again called up to serve our nation.
Let’s not forget the bitterness.
Life isn’t always sweet. Wars and other crises are like 100% chocolate, very bitter but very healthy, very real food. Hard times and tastes help us grow, even if in real time we often don’t understand how.
So as Healthy Jews, we want our chocolate to be 100% cocoa. Any lower percentage means the rest is sugar: 72% is 28% sugar. Imagine pouring a quarter-cup of sugar into a cup of soup! (I know, pure cocoa chocolate is pricier than the standard, but when you think how much each piece costs, it’s only a few cents.)
One second, I need to pause as our family heads to our safe room, which happens to be the boys’ bedroom. The ayatollahs are sending ballistic missiles.
Ok, now I’m back, sitting on the floor as Achiya continues his afternoon nap undisturbed.
Yet it’s not all bitter.
Whether we call it miracles, Israeli ingenuity, or both, it’s sweet when our battered nation arises like a lion to face and destroy our worst existential threat in almost a century. Good things are happening, and the feeling on the street (whenever we dare venture out) is more hopeful and happy than it’s been in years.
Dates, too, are sweet, delicious, and packed with nutrients, and one of the few dried fruits that aren’t commonly processed with sugar and preservatives. They’re also very cheap (at least here in Israel): you can easily find a whole kilo for 20 shekel (less than $6).
As Healthy Jews, we want our sweetness to come only from the real world, a strong burst of energy straight from God’s creation. Dates are the “honey” of Israel’s special seven species.
Life is whole when we embrace its opposite flavors together.
The sweet is real, and so is the bitter. Neither of them need to be modified or enhanced; they are fine exactly as we find them. There are no mistakes in God’s world - neither the tragedies of October 7, 2023 nor the victories of June 13, 2025.
When we embrace both better and worse times, the pain and joy are softer, more manageable. They are parts of the package of life, not problems waiting for us to fix them.
It’s like 100% chocolate inside a date, where opposite tastes blend in harmony, each sharing their unique flavor and depth.
Life is in session today, bitter and sweet together.
Chocolate in dates is also so popular on our hikes at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah:
Want to learn more about the complex tastes of food and life? Check out this post, one of Healthy Jew’s firsts:
Thank you for reading Healthy Jew.
Here are 2 great paths to continue the journey:
Also check out this intro and index to explore hundreds of posts about our 3 Healthy Jew topics: Wellness with Wisdom, Land of Life (Israel), and Sensible Spirituality.
Finally, always feel free to reach out here with any comments, questions, or complaints:
I look forward to hearing from you!
Be well,
Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman
Please note: All content published on Healthy Jew is for informational and educational purposes only. Talk to a qualified professional before taking any action or substance that you read about here.
I never needed the date for my dark dark chocolate consumption, as having been a very low sugar consumer for quite some time, I appreciate the natural sweetness of even good 100% cacao chocolate. The offerings from Holy Cacao, which you used in the video, are amazing, and have received gold medals in international competitions. But I agree that dates are an amazing sweetener, which I use extensively in nutrition-packed smoothies to feed my family tasty yet nutrient rich goodness.
This is what one reader replied to this post by email:
"I am allergic to chocolate but I gave my husband a mejadool date with 85% chocolate and he was amazed at how the two were delicious together and so very satisfying. I loved your comments about fully experiencing the reality of life, both the sweet and the bitter to become strong and as my husband said, they are actually delicious when combined.
We have a “bitter” experience right now. We moved recently and bought a house that seemed to only need some few repairs. The kitchen turned out to have a leak below the sink that had soaked the wall behind the lower cabinets and promoted the growth of black mold that was making us sick. All the lower cabinets are now torn out and we had to set up a camp stove in the dining room and bring in any water to cook or wash dishes from one of the bathrooms. The second bathroom had a clog from a pack rat nest and we could not use it. Most of my dishes and cooking materials were packed away by the people who came in to tear out the cabinets and then treat the mold and they left a loud fan and dehumidifier to run 24/7 for 10 days to dry everything. The fan put out a lot of heat and the weather has been unseasonably hot.
We are active seniors and all this hauling water and not being able to find anything because we are not even unpacked in the house has been exhausting.
BUT every morning we wake up just before sunrise to experience the beauty of the sun coming up over the mountains we view from our house. We look out from our patio on to an area with no neighbors behind us where quail and dove families appear to search for food as other birds fly and talk to each other. We have friendly kind neighbors and we were surprised that there is a “secret” garden/park two blocks away that I cannot even describe in its combination of desert and mountain trees, cactus, shrubs, flowers, and amazing gathering areas with varied artistic expression by the volunteers that created and maintain it.
Our life is truly a Date with that chocolate inside and these contrasts are making us stronger in our confidence in how much HaShem has guided us to this place for His own reasons."