Carob, it’s not just “fake chocolate”

When I visited Israel for the first time in 1989, my foster mother was amazed by the fact that Jerusalem is full of carob trees that the locals seem to utterly ignore. The ripe pods drop to the sidewalk and litter parked cars overnight, but it seemed that no one was picking up the pods and taking them home to eat. She, of course, being a big carob fan and health food nut harvested as much carob pod as she could, and used it in all sorts of experimental recipes at home for nutritional and medicinal purposes — and of course, for its sweet taste.

More than 20 years later, and I still have that same surprised feeling when I see trees full of carob and no one taking it all home. Sure, in the shuk here in Haifa you can buy carob pods, but why don’t people get some of that free food? I just don’t know. Maybe it’s because carob has a tradition in the Middle East of being animal fodder and famine food.

Carob is actually an amazing plant. It’s native to the Mediterranean area, and archeological evidence shows that it has been used by humans in the area where modern Israel sits for more than 4000 years. The wood is used to make slow burning charcoal and can also be used to make beautiful furniture, household items, or sculptures. The pod and the seed are used for food, medicinal and industrial uses.

The carob pod is high in pectin which means that it is useful as a thickener for both food and industrial uses. It also has significant tannin content which serves as an antibacterial agent and helps to stop some toxins and free-radicals from being absorbed into your body. Another component of the carob pod is lignans which have been shown to be antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti-inflammatory. This also makes carob useful in remedies for bacterial or viral diarrhea. It treats both the symptoms and the cause of the diarrhea, and it’s safe even for small infants.

Speaking of infants, carob powder is used as a thickening agent in special feeds made for babies with gastro-oesophageal reflux. The carob serves a double purpose in making the formula more palatable and reducing reflux. Carob can also be used for relief of heartburn or chronic GERD in adults.

Carob syrup is also used as a soothing remedy for sore throat and cough.

Carob has shown usefulness in lowering cholesterol and in fighting cancer, diabetes and lupus.

Carob seeds also have many important uses. The endosperm contains a useful carbohydrate, galactomannan, that can be used to make locust bean gum which is used in food and industry. The embryo of the seed is used to make high-protein carob germ.

I mentioned that there are industrial uses for carob, too. It’s used as a surface thickener for papers, as a coating for threads used industrial weaving to prevent thread breakage, and as a liner for well walls to improve their resistance and strength. Carob is used as a flotation agent in mining. It is used as a water binder in explosives. It is even used in petroleum processing to make a more stable product.

Carob trees also have the advantage of being highly fire resistant. They have traditionally been planted amongst more flammable crops such as olive trees and grains in order to retard fires and improve the chances of saving at least some of a farm in the event that a fire should start. In some places, it is common to plant carob trees near the house in order to protect from fires. (The site Bat Plants points out that it would be a good idea for Southern California homeowners to consider this Middle Eastern tradition when thinking about their recent history.)

Bat Plants taught me another very cool thing about carob trees in Israel. They have a special relationship with the bats that I love watching when I take my dog out for walks at night. Egyptian Rousett bats like to eat carob pods and spit out the seeds, which is one of the reasons you can find so many carob trees — and bats! — in many Israeli towns.

Loquat is in season!

It’s mid April and my house is full of bags of loquats, called “shesek” in Hebrew, from a couple of friends’ trees. Loquat trees bare lots of fruit which ripen nearly all at once, so anyone who has a tree has to eat all the fruit quickly or find plenty of friends to give their fruit away to if they want to avoid wasting all that great food.

I asked my friends what you could do with loquats, and they all kind of looked at me funny. “You eat them!”

I said, “Do you make loquat pies? Jellies? Syrups?”

“Nah. That’s too much work. You have to get the seeds out and stuff. It wouldn’t be worth it. You just pick the fruit and eat it fresh.” One of my friends explained.

But, that seemed like such a silly, too-modern answer to me. No one a hundred years ago would let a perfectly good fruit like the loquat go to waste just because you couldn’t eat the fresh fruit fast enough. There had to be other things that were done to the fruit to make the harvest last longer, to preserve the fruit, or to make it more palatable when you find yourself gorging on a near mono-diet of last week’s harvest. A little bit of research was valuable, however.

First off, it might be that there weren’t any loquats in Israel 100 or so years ago, since some varieties of the tree were imported from California and Spain and others were intentionally developed here. That might explain the lack of a local repertoire loquat dishes.

On the other hand, the tree is native to China, and the Chinese figured out not only a number of recipes for these fruit, but also some medicinal uses. Loquats are actually great in jellies and jams because of their high pectin content. Like apples, they can be used to make a jelly or syrup that is mainly another fruit jell better. They are great in fruit salads or fruit cups, and you can make pies with them, too. If you eat a lot of the fruit, they have a gentle sedative effect that lasts for 24 hours. A syrup of the fruit is also good to ease sore throats. There is also a light wine which can be made from loquats.

Other parts of the plant also have uses. The leaves of the tree are used in some Chinese medicine compounds. A decoction of the leaves can be used as a mouthwash in cases of thrush, or for the treatment of coughs or bronchitis. The leaves can be used fresh or dried, so if you have only short term access to a tree, it makes sense to harvest some for drying and keep them on hand for later. The young leaves and the seeds contain cyanogenetic glycocides which turn into cyanide when digested. Even so, there is a sake which is made exclusively from the seeds. It’s also possible to roast the seeds, grind them, and use them as a coffee substitute.

Olives

If we’re going to explore the native edible and medicinal plants of Israel, we can’t possibly miss out on the olive tree. Olives are a staple food all around the Mediterranean, and in recent years there’s been a lot of talk in mainstream press about how healthy olives and olive oils can be.

Olives have been shown to help reduce the risk of heart disease, prevent colon cancer, and reduce the severity of asthma, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. There is evidence that olives may help to reduce the severity of hot flashes in some women experiencing menopause, too. Olives have monounsaturated fats which help protect you from high cholesterol and vitamin E which is a fat-soluble anti-oxidant.

For a great food which will help reduce your risk of winter colds, try adding a bowl of olives and garlic to your lunch or dinner table! The two together

You may not know that there is even more to the story of olives. Olive leaves can be used as a herbal medicine, as well.

Olive leaf extracts have been shown to lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and induce natural insulin release. There have also been studies showing the olive leaf extract has an antimicrobial effect, and so it is used to fight infection. It is possible to take olive leaf extract either in tincture form, tea or simply in the form of crushed, dried leaves. In all cases, the flavor is pretty bitter. In fact, it is believed that the bitter flavor is caused by the very compound in the leaf that gives you all those wonderful benefits, oleuropein.

Olives have their place in Torah, too. In parashat Noah, a dove brings an olive branch to signify that it is safe to move out of the ark. From that we get the saying, “to extend an olive branch” which means extending a gesture or sign of peace. The oil used in the menorot in the Tabernacle and later in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was olive oil which was specially prepared for just that purpose. These are not the only references to olives, either. Olives are so important to the food and livelihood in Israel that olives are mentioned again and again in the Tanach and the Talmud as food crop, as source of holy oil, and as a metaphorical symbol.

For more information and references to articles in medical journals, see The Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s herbal reference on Olive Leaf

The Date Palm

וָאֵרֵד לְהַצִּילוֹ מִיַּד מִצְרַיִם, וּלְהַעֲלֹתוֹ מִן-הָאָרֶץ הַהִוא, אֶל-אֶרֶץ טוֹבָה וּרְחָבָה, אֶל-אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ–אֶל-מְקוֹם הַכְּנַעֲנִי, וְהַחִתִּי, וְהָאֱמֹרִי וְהַפְּרִזִּי, וְהַחִוִּי וְהַיְבוּסִי.
שמות ג ח

And I came down to save them from the hand of Egypt, and to raise them up from that land, to a good and wide land, to a land filled with milk and honey — to the place of the Canaanite, the Hitite, the Amorite, the Perezite, the Hivite and the Jebusite.
Exodus 3:8

The honey that fills the Land of Israel is not, as you might have imagined, honey made by bees. It is actually date honey that the Torah is referring to. Dates are a fantastic food, and they can be found throughout the length of Israel wherever there is enough water to grow a date palm. Date palms serve as shade and as a source of food in Israel.

And here’s an interesting thought: The judge Deborah sat under a date palm when she heard the disputes of the people and judged them. Like most Hebrew names, Deborah isn’t just an interesting sound, it has a meaning. “D’vorah” is the word for a tough little desert bee. So we have an neat coincidence, here. There is a sort of Biblical word play in which the “bee” (Deborah) sits under the source of honey (the date tree).

But what are dates good for besides your sweet tooth? Well, it turns out that they are a fantastic source of nutrition and medicine. They are high in fiber and also contain calcium, sulfur, iron, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, copper and magnesium as well as vitamin A, vitamin C and several of the B complex vitamins. Dates are believed to help relieve constipation, intestinal disorders, heart problems, sore throats, some of the symptoms of the common cold or flu, sexual weakness, diarrhea and even abdominal cancer. They are also good for underweight people who need to gain weight, or for people who are working on building lean muscle mass.

If someone is having stomach problems, a paste made by boiling dates in milk makes a highly nutritious and easily digestible food. Of course, you don’t have to wait to be sick to try it, as this paste makes a wonderful breakfast food or sweet snack.

Some herbalists recommend that people with weak hearts should eat dates twice a week. Soak them over night and then crush and eat them in the morning.

Dates are also said to help cure hangover. It’s best if you can get them fresh, soak them over night and then eat them in the morning, but if you weren’t thinking ahead the night before while you were drunk, you might try the dates boiled in milk recipe, or boil them in water if you prefer and then use a hand blender to turn them into a thick drink.

An infusion or decoction of dates can also be used in treatment of sore throat, colds, bronchial catarrh, and was considered a good remedy for fever in times past.

The gum from a wounded trunk is used to treat diarrhea or genito-urinary problems.

Date palm root is used against toothache.

The seeds are ground up and used in some Ayurvedic medicines in India, as well. It’s likely that ancient Israelites had medicines that they made from the seeds, too, but I did not find any specific recipes.

By the way, if you don’t like cow’s milk but want to try the boiled “milk and (date) honey” recipe, I suggest that do as the early Israelites probably did and use goat’s milk instead. It’s a little more expensive if you don’t happen to have a goat of your own, but, oo, yum!

The plants of the Earth

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת-כָּל-עֵשֶׂב זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע אֲשֶׁר עַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָאָרֶץ, וְאֶת-כָּל-הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר-בּוֹ פְרִי-עֵץ, זֹרֵעַ זָרַע:  לָכֶם יִהְיֶה, לְאָכְלָה

בראשית א כט

And God said, here I give you all the plants which bare seeds that are on the face of the Earth, and all the trees which bare fruit so that they will be your food.

Genesis 1:29

The Earth is filled with plants which are good to eat and plants which are good for healing.  Some would say that these two jobs are not separate but in fact one role.

One of my favorite writers and teachers of herbal medicine is Susun Weed. She points to Hippocrates who said, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food,” and she suggests that the best herbal allies are those which are not poisonous to our bodies in normal food-dosages. She also says in her book Healing Wise that the “Wise Woman approach” to health and wholeness is to be flexible enough to use whatever tools are best for a given situation. In otherwords, use the gentle approach as a general rule, but when the battle gets tough, if you need to pull out the poisonous stuff (or the surgery or whatever else), don’t shy away from it.

I am currently exploring the plants of Israel, getting to know them better as healers and food, as ground cover, as lure for birds and wildlife, and generally as an integral part of this amazing Land. It dawned on me even as I was writing the first two posts about medicinal plants in Israel that I was starting with the poisonous and the esoteric. Since that time I’ve been thinking about how best to proceed. Should I continue to write up information about lesser-known plants and their properties? Or should I instead focus my attention on common herbs of this land which are good for food and medicine.

I believe that all plants have spiritual lessons to teach, just as all animals do, and every person you ever meet does. Each part of creation is a piece of God Themselves, a small shell from the great explosion that created it all, a tiny spark of the Divine, but those shells are not the Whole. This is not worship of creation, but reverence. The plants are not my gods, but my friends and allies. Only God is my God, but all of creation has something to share.

And so, after much thought I realized that I didn’t have to focus on one sort of medicinal plant or the other. The posts about herbalism will have some of this and some of that. Some posts will have recipes for foods or medicines. Some will simply tell a bit about a plant that you may or may not be familiar with but which grows in the Land of Israel. And I hope that you, wherever you may be, will feel closer to this Land as you read, and I hope that the knowledge of these plants and the recipes I share will help bring more health and more wholeness into your life.

Moving toward redemption

As we begin our Torah reading at the first chapter again, I’d like to consider the question of progress versus decay of humans and perhaps even all of creation.

There are those who believe that as time goes by, we get farther and farther away from G-d. They say that the generation that was physically present at Sinai was the holiest, and that as we get farther away from that point we get more and more sinful, less and less about to live up to the mitzvot or able to grasp the true meaning of G-d’s words. That idea is patently wrong-headed. Let’s explore why.

Let’s start with a simple test. What did that generation do? They complained against their leaders. They complained against G-d. They created the golden calf. They broke the ten commandments almost as soon as they were given. When spying out the Land, they rejected it as too full of giants and scary things. Did they merit the Promised Land? No, most did not, and even the two that did had serious *failings of their own. So, clearly, that generation was not the height of holiness.

Let’s also consider the question of what they understood of Torah. Did they have ALL of the Torah knowledge that we have today? No. It is said that Moses had all of the written and the oral Torah up on Sinai, but really, that’s not exactly possible. The value and wealth of the oral Torah comes from the fact that it is part of a dialog — a dialog between generations and a dialog between Israel and G-d. Moses could have known what would be discussed, and even might have known all of the explanations of every law, but he could not possibly have held the richness that has developed since then.

Finally, a much bigger test. Who is closer to the breakage of our relationship of Union in the Garden? Who is closer to that point when Adam and Eve broke Trust and took the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Of course, it is those of the past generations who are closer to that moment — whether we take the story to be literal or a figure for a transformation in human consciousness. And who is closer to the time of Redemption when we will know Union and the Garden again?

You might look at the world and say that it is getting worse and worse. After all, there are more people suffering today than ever before. There are worse wars, more crime, more incredible cruelty and evil. There is violence on the streets, state-sponsored terror and torture, and many more banal forms of cruelty. But if you say that the world is falling apart and going to hell, you would only be half right.

The world is also getting better and better as history progresses. There is more wealth today than ever. There is better health care. There are better living conditions for most people on the planet. There is more charity and better infrastructure to support far-reaching acts of kindness.

You know, it wasn’t until the begining of the Industrial Revolution that anything like the abolition movement that worked to end slavery ever existed. It wasn’t until the last 200 years that there has ever been an SPCA. The idea of Greenpeace could not have gotten off the ground in the middle ages or in ancient times. And while churches and monastaries of different religions throughout history have provided charitable supports for those in need, there has never been anything on the scale of Oxfam or UNESCO or the Red Cross before. Think of organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights watch. None of these things existed in the past, and the opportunities that we have — and that people take — to give of themselves in acts of kindness is absolutely unprecedented in all of history.

The thing is that the world is getting worse, and it is also getting better. The fruit which was eaten was the knowledge of Good and Evil.

We are all Adam. We are all Eve. We are all in the process of Knowing Good And Evil. Our Redemption comes at that moment when we have fully integrated the meaning of these two extremes and our brokenness can become Unity again. At that moment, G-d will call out to us in the Garden to ask us where we are, and we will answer, “We are Here.”

*I’ll leave those failings to the reader to study up on, in part because some of them come with something of a political payload I’d rather not tackle right now.

Yoreh – The first rains

One of the cool things about living in Israel after a lifetime of doing the “Jewish thing” in another place, is the way that our holidays really do meet up with the cycles of the year here. In Israel you can be truly Jewish (or Hebrew or Israelite, as you prefer) and truly Earth-Based in your faith, spirituality and practice.

The rain just started here in central Israel about 10 minutes ago.  There have been a few much needed rains at night in the last couple of weeks, but this is the first time we’ve gotten a real downpour in the daytime this year. In Hebrew there is a word for this: Yoreh. (יורה). Most years the Yoreh comes within a few days of the start of Sukkot when we change a single prayer in the Amida from requesting “the dews” to requesting “the winds and the rains”.

Today is the fourth day of Sukkot and the first rains have come.

Apple of Sodom (Calotropis procera)

This unlikely sounding plant is not some firy punishment from heaven as I imagined when I first read about it. In fact, it is a  medicinal with a large number of traditional uses as well as modern research into the usage of its components in pharmaceuticals for arthritis. The plant is said by some references to be “not human friendly” because of its toxicity, however it is clear that there are safe ways to prepare and use this herb. It would not be recommended to sit down to a meal of Apple of Sodom, however, or to take this herb without further information about dosages, preparations, and side effects.

The whole dried plant is said to be a tonic, an antihelminthic, and an expectorant.  The dried roots are used to treat bronchitis, asthma, eczema, leprosy, and elephantiasis. The latex of the plant is processed for use in treating inflammations, arthritis, vertigo, baldness or thinning hair, and even paralysis.

On the down side, the latex is also a poison which is effectively used on arrow heads. I was not able to determine if this poison was only used in war or also in food hunting (thus suggesting that cooking would neutralize the poison). Also, you should be extra careful with the latex of this plant anywhere near your eyes, as it can cause sight impairment which could be permanent.

Further reading:

• The Herb Society of America Promising Plants article on Calotropis procera.
• Flowers in Israel Calotropis procera page
• The HUJI Flora in Israel Calotropis procera page

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum)

I knew of this plant first from Bach Flower Remedies. Many years ago now, while I was still living in Seattle, the Star of Bethlehem flower essence was prescribed to me for a short while. But Bach Flower Remedies generally have to do with emotional issues, not physical ones (though, of course, the physical and emotional are related). When I started looking for information about local medicinal plants, here in Israel, this was a logical one to look up.

I was shocked to find out what the use of this plant is. This is not a sweet, comfy, daily use kind of plant ally. Star of Bethlehem has one listed medicinal use: to combat congestive heart failure.

WebMD explains that this plant has an action similar to the drug digoxin.

Of course, WebMD doesn’t give any dosage information, and simply says not to use it. However, digoxin is taken once a day, in some cases for years. I would guess that somewhere in some ancient medicinal text there is some similar use of this plant, but I have not yet found any such reference.

Dukes Handbook of Medicinal Plants from the Bible does have some information on Star of Bethlehem on pages 312-315, but the end result is more questions than actual information. I would not, based on the information I have available currently, recommend the use of this plant at all to anyone ever.*

For more information about this plant and its distribution within Israel, see the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Flora of Israel Online

*Of course, being the imaginative person that I am, I can imagine some apocalyptic world in which there was no access to other medical options, and a person with congestive heart failure. Despite the constant expectation of such total societal collapse by environmentalists and religious fanatics alike, I doubt it’ll ever come to though, though. (chas ve chalilla, as they say)

White Space

One of my friends shared feed in GoogleReader had a post in it about “white space”. I should have starred the post and re-shared it, but it took a while for the depth of the post to really sink in to me. I don’t know where it came from, so I can’t link back, but I’d like to share the wisdom. Forgive me for not citing its source properly.

The idea of white space in life is like the margins around a page of text in a book. Go ahead. Pick up a book, and look at how much white space is there, around the edges. How much white space is there between the paragraphs. Even the space between words serves a purpose. Now, look at this Webpage, and look at a few others. Look at some poetry, too, and consider how the white space there enhances the rhythm and sometimes even the meaning of the piece.

The white space helps to give the text shape, but it also helps you to focus on the words.  Copy some text out of a well-spaced document into a new file and take out all the margins and the spaces between the paragraphs and it becomes much harder to read. Change the letter spacing and the line spacing to decrease white space even further and you will find it even more difficult to concentrate on the words and gather meaning from the text.

Life is like that, too. We need white space to help us concentrate, to help us focus, and to shape the meaning of events and tasks.

There is a problem, though. In our society we’ve come to put multitasking on a pedestal, and we’ve come to think of any moment not spent doing constant tasks as being “wasted”. In fact, we are robbing ourselves of quality and of meaning. We are doing poorly at each task as we try to combine them too tightly. We are losing the opportunity to enjoy our successes and learn from our failures. We are missing cues because our attention is split.

I am hugely guilty of this hyper-multitasking. It’s something I’ve been working on in a small way, but that one blog entry that I read really put the whole problem — or rather the whole solution — into clear relief.

Do one task at a time. Do not rush. Do not over schedule life. Assume that you will live forever, if you must, so that you can breathe and take your time with each moment. See a task. Do it completely. Move on to the next one. Or stop for a moment and breathe. And then do another task. But don’t talk on the phone and type in a text chat while compiling code and taking notes on your great novel. Give each thing it’s space.

Let the white space of your life help you to do better work, be more fullfilled, and less stressed out.