Healing Quality of Shevat: Eating
The earth, or the land, is called adamah. It has the same root as the word for human, Adam. (STOP! Hammer time! Jk, Hebrew Lesson 101: all Hebrew words evolve from a 3-letter root called a shoresh, super important to the Hebrew language and in Jewish text. A lot of seemingly unrelated words actually share a shoresh, interpretive catnip for rabbis. We’ll to stop here, although there’s a whole lot more to explain. If we got you curious, explore on your own and nerd out on the shoresh to your heart’s content. Everything has a root, everything has a soul, even our words.)
In fact, right in the beginning of Genesis, when God is busy creating the world (nbd), the teaching tells us that God put a soul in the body, and this body was made from earth. In the same story of creation, it clearly states, “All the plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; [humans] shall have them for food.” Trees also come from the earth, and guess what? There’s a 3,000+ year-old Jewish tradition that links trees to humans and trees to the Torah, all of which is celebrated during Tu B’shevat.
At the core of Judaism is the belief in one God. If humans are from the land, and trees, plants, vegetables, fruits, and animals are also from the land, then we’re all connected, and the energy we need to fuel our earth-made bodies must come from the same source, the land.
In 2018 our food systems are scarily off-kilter. The people of Venezuela stand for hours in line to, maybe, get a single sack of cornmeal or tube of toothpaste. Meanwhile, 20% of the produce grown in the US never reaches a human mouth. Some are desperate for food, others have too much, and still others can only access chemically altered “food” (Cheetos and Lunchables, we’re looking at you).
Societal pressures to look a specific way depending on your gender, skyrocketing levels of stress and anxiety, and a relentless media stream inflame an already fraught connection between what we eat and how we feel.
Food. Is. Medicine.
Food is medicine. Say it with us — Food. Is. Medicine. That means considering what we eat, how we grow our crops, and the relationships we develop with what, how, when, and with whom we eat.
So many plants that rise from the earth have the capability to heal. They contain vitamins, minerals, fats, carbohydrates, and other essential materials we don’t yet fully understand. But we do know this: what we eat can be the difference between living in health or in sickness.
If you stopped someone on the street and asked them to list three foods they could be eating to live a healthier life, they’d probably answer that question in a second. It’s not about knowing what we should be eating; it’s about taking action and putting the good stuff in our mouths. But, eating is complicated. It can be hard to find healthy options and just too tempting to eat the bad stuff (whatup, Caramel Cocoa Cluster Frappuccino.) Too many times we’re out of touch or...well...taste. Michael Pollan says it best:
“We’ve learned to choose our foods by the numbers (calories, carbs, fats, RDA’s, price, whatever), relying more heavily on our reading and computational skills than upon our senses. We’ve lost all confidence in our sense of taste and smell, which can’t detect the invisible macro- and micro- nutrients science has taught us to worry about, and which food processors have become adept at deceiving anyway…
“The American supermarket – chilled and stocked with hermetically sealed packages bristling with information – has effectively shut out the Nose and elevated the Eye. ”
…No wonder we have become, in the midst of our astounding abundance, the world’s most anxious eaters.”
-Michael Pollan
Well Circle Intro Activities: Mild, Medium, Hot
If you’re digging the food theme of Shevat, here are three exercises to get your Well Circle going this month. Each one goes a little deeper than the next. Turn up the heat to taste.
Mild: Find joy! Go around and share your favorite food and why.
Medium: Before you meet for Shevat ask each member of your Well Circle to research her favorite food that grows from the earth. Have each woman share out for 5 minutes, making sure to hit the medicinal and nutritional qualities of that fruit, vegetable, tree, flower, or plant.
Hot: Go around your Well Circle sharing your relationship to food/eating. Make sure to create true space for deep listening and deep sharing. (Suggestion: refer to the At The Well Culture and Guide booklet to use the “dibarti/shamanu” exercise to set the context for the conversation.)