REVEALING THE SPICE OF TORAH

If you happened upon the Hebrew University Jerusalem Botanical Garden or the Botanic Garden of the University of Tel Aviv and you met a Chassid there, you should know that he is R’ Avrohom Dahan. He is a researcher and a member of the senior staff who conducts research and supervises hundreds of types of plants as well as various spices. * For the past six years he has been devoting his life to his childhood love, botany. In his free time, he researches segulos and sources from Torah literature about the powers and segulos of plants in Eretz Yisroel.

At the southern end of Mt. Carmel, between Zichron Yaakov and Binyamina, is Ramat HaNadiv, a nature park and gardens which memorialize Baron Benjamin Rothschild. A community has formed here that is committed to maintaining a balance between man and nature. There is a recycling project in which branches, grass, leaves etc. are collected and processed into compost that is then reused for gardening. Many people visit the gardens as do researchers and botanists from all over the world.

The community that lives on this pastoral yishuv is committed to nature and its laws. Sadly, with the same measure of devotion, they are far from Torah and mitzvos. This is why it was most surprising to see in the brochure that they produced before their annual vacation for employees, that one of the speakers that the organizers of the place arranged for their employees is none other than R’ Avrohom Dahan of Ramat Yishai. Though if you know him, it is not surprising at all.

After years in the field of restaurants and hotels in which he worked in managerial positions, he decided on a new career course and for the past six years has been devoting his life to researching plants and herbs in Eretz Yisroel according to Torah sources. He is presently in the final stage of writing an ambitious and revolutionary project – a five volume encyclopedia called Talmud HaTzmachim. “The added dimension of the project is that we also included Chassidic and kabbalistic explanations on every plant and spice,” says R’ Dahan.

“The purpose in writing the encyclopedia is to expose the public to and make accessible the subject of Jewish herbal healing. The objective was to locate and identify spices, healing herbs, fruit and fragrance trees in Jewish sources, to see how earlier sages used them and to understand their nutritional contribution. I was surprised to discover ancient recipes ‘hidden’ away in the Jewish cupboard, which were unknown even to researchers in this field.”

He got to know the people of Ramat HaNadiv as well as many of the researchers and botanists through his work. Previously, those people who are generally part of a tiny sector of elite Leftists were surprised to meet a Chassid, but since then they have learned to respect him as a colleague and an extremely knowledgeable person. They are helped by him tremendously in their research. He is even invited to botanical regions throughout the country.

DRAMATIC RESCUE

If you were sure that R’ Dahan was born on a kibbutz or a moshav that grows spices or plants, you are mistaken. He was born to Iraqi immigrants and grew up in an urban environment in Ohr Yehuda. From a very young age he yearned to connect to the earth. When he passed bar mitzva age, he begged his parents to look for a kibbutz dormitory where he could stay and learn.

“My father refused,” he recalls. “Life in the city bored me. It was superficial and lacked any imagination and I was a rebellious kid. I would go to class and sit with my feet up and pass the time.”

His rebellion soon showed in his marks. From a child whose marks were in the top percentile of his class he went down to zero. His parents realized they had no choice and asked the Jewish Agency for help in finding a suitable kibbutz.

“One of my uncles suggested sending me to an agricultural dormitory, Mikveh Yisroel, which was nearby. My parents agreed and we went to check it out. At first, the people there did not want to accept me because of my terrible marks, but the principal, Dr. Gideon Katz, realized that it was impossible for a child to get a zero in every subject and he accepted me on a trial basis for three months in the weak class. The expanses in the village, the planting and harvesting, the work with plants, got me going again. It was a dream come true.”

Of course, his marks went back up. It was such a sensation that the staff talked about it. He “turned on the burners” and within three months he was promoted to the honors class. Some more months went by and local history was made when Dahan was picked as head of the student council even though he wasn’t yet in the highest grade. “I specialized in raising sheep, algae and vegetables. I also worked in the hothouses and in growing flowers and ornamental trees.”

When he finished school in Mikveh Yisroel he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in the Air Force. His officers’ course coincided with the outbreak of the first Intifada and he was called upon, together with other soldiers, to man the Jenin district.

“Every day we would deal with rock throwing and Molotov cocktails, but one incident stands out for me. One day, we were called to extract a collaborator with the IDF from the village of Arabeh which is near Jenin. We went in a military command car, six soldiers and me, their commander. Intelligence was obviously flawed because when we arrived at the building, hundreds of masked Arabs attacked us with rocks and other weapons of destruction.

“Right off, the command car was hit and we had to get out and enter one of the houses and defend ourselves there. But the hoodlums chased us and we fired the materials we had that are used to disperse demonstrators. That did not deter them and it reached the point that one of the soldiers was injured by a knife which landed on him. When we saw that, and that reinforcements were delayed, I ordered my men to use live ammunition. Thanks to that, we retreated from the village. The results were three dead terrorists and others who were injured.

“The story made waves and an investigative committee looked into it and concluded that we acted properly. But this incident made a tremendous impression on me and I decided to leave the army.”

Upon his release, he joined a program which combines study and volunteering on a kibbutz. He moved to Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan.

“Those were days of self-searching while being completely disconnected from Jewish tradition. When I met my wife Michal, from one of the moshavim in the Jezreel Valley, we moved to live on a nearby moshav and together realized her culinary dream of opening a gourmet catering service. It quickly became the hottest thing in the north. Many distinguished people, including heads of state, ate the food we prepared.”

For years life was tranquil. They did not lack for money or prestige, but then came Yom Kippur and changed everything.

“Yom Kippur in those days was not a reason to change one’s routine. On the contrary, all the fixing up and jobs that needed to be done to maintain the house and the garden were postponed for this day. That Yom Kippur, we traveled to my in-laws and I was on a ladder painting the tile roof.

“It was about five in the afternoon, the time when shuls are praying N’ila. I was painting when I suddenly began to leak tears. I did not understand what was happening to me. The tears turned to sobs which welled up from within without my having any control whatsoever. Suddenly the niggun “Keil Nora Alila” played in my head that I remembered singing when I was boy standing next to my grandfather in shul in Ohr Yehuda. My legs trembled and my teeth chattered. I got off the ladder and took a shower where I sobbed for a long time. Thoughts raced in my head about how I had deteriorated to such an extent and had departed from tradition.

“A few days after Yom Kippur I met a good friend, Erez Ovadia, from the yishuv Gan Ner, and I told him what I had experienced. He suggested that I meet with a rabbi. I was so distant at that point that his suggestion seemed unrealistic. What did I have to do with a rabbi? But in the end I agreed and went to a shiur given by R’ Yitzchok Yadgar of Taanachim. He spoke, and I felt he was speaking to me. ‘Start coming regularly,’ he requested, but in my great fear I disappeared for half a year. When I couldn’t take it in anymore, I went back to the shiurim and became one of his regular students.”

He began neglecting his previous lifestyle and got more involved with Torah. His wife, who did not grow up in a traditional home, did not understand what had come over him and wasn’t particularly cooperative.

“R’ Yadgar always told me not to pass my wife by, and to do everything in ways of pleasantness, and that’s what I did. In the meantime, we moved to Ramat Yishai where I joined the Chabad community led by the shliach and rav of the yishuv, R’ Yosef Yitzchok Wolosov. The shliach arranged a Shabbos Achdus in Kfar Chabad and my wife agreed to join me.”

The Dahans were hosted by R’ Avrohom and Yaffa Kadosh and had an inspiring Shabbos with them.

“On Motzaei Shabbos, there was a Melaveh Malka and each person was asked to make a hachlata. I was flabbergasted when I heard my wife say she commits to keeping Shabbos and to covering her hair. It was completely unexpected. She bypassed me and since then, it’s all history. That was the point of crossing the sea and since then, we made further and further progress in the ways of Chassidus. The house changed completely and we became Chassidim. The ones who helped us a lot in the beginning were the Grossman family from Migdal HaEmek whom we met through the shluchim in Kfar Boruch.”’

EVERY PLANT HAS ITS (JEWISH) SOURCE

Avrohom did not abandon his love for nature and his strong attachment to plants. On many occasions he would go on trips and walk the pathways of Eretz Yisroel, collecting wild vegetation for eating.

“I especially loved visiting the forests of the Jezreel Valley in Ramot Menashe and other open nature preserves. With my involvement in Judaism, I learned that every Jew is obligated to harness his talents to instill G-dliness in the world. That’s when I decided to go back and work in the field I loved. After getting the Rebbe’s bracha, I left my prestigious job as an hotelier and began looking into who was teaching about plants and their properties.

“It was obvious to me that if it is going to be plants, then it has to be those things which are mentioned in the sources, for I sought to be involved more in the spiritual dimension of this field. I looked for schools but not one of them taught about plants in Eretz Yisroel. There is one place that teaches the properties of plants in Indian medicine, a second that teaches Chinese medicine, a third for western medicine, but for some reason I was not drawn to any of this.

“A few days later I learned the daily Chitas and at the end of chapter 8 of Tanya it says that one who learns the wisdom of the nations of the world lowers the chochma, bina, and daas of the G-dly soul to the depths of klipa. I read this again and again and realized why my soul was not drawn to these secular approaches.”

By Divine Providence, he came across a brochure which said that in a nearby yishuv, Beit Lechem HaGlilit, there was a spice farm where they were offering a course given by owners of the farm together with a guest professor of the history of Eretz Yisroel at the University of Haifa. The topic was “Plants of Eretz Yisroel and their Medicinal Uses in Ancient Times.”

“I was thrilled and signed up for the course, but when it ended I felt that we had just begun, that we had just touched the tip of the iceberg, and I left with a feeling of having lost out. Was a course that met six times all the Jewish sources had to offer about the properties of plants?

“A short while later, I was riding bikes with my son and by mistake, I rode into the Volcani Institute located in the area. I looked around me and was amazed – there were fields of herbs and spices. I spent a long time looking around and decided I wanted to volunteer in this place because I would learn a lot. That same day, I called the director, Dr. Netiv Dudai. He accepted me but was bit taken aback by my religious appearance. He wasn’t used to religious people being interested in plants but treated me nicely. Once a week, for a long time, I volunteered there.

“I was like a child in a candy store,” said Dahan laughing. From that point, he began working with the plants most devotedly. He was given the job of mapping all the types of plants that grew at the institute, which gave him vast knowledge about the names and categories of plants.

“At a certain point, I felt frustrated as it seemed impossible to me that the Jewish, traditional medicine of plants and spices disappeared. I met with men in academia and they warned me that it was hard work. ‘You will need to collect information and shreds of information from thousands of books and manuscripts and figure out the names of the plants.’ This did not discourage me; I considered it a challenge.”

R’ Dahan set out on what he knew would be a long journey, but accompanied by the Rebbe’s brachos he considered this work a shlichus. There had been some researchers, who had done work in this field, but there still hadn’t been a comprehensive project completed and he decided to take it on.

“I collected a list of hundreds of plants that I knew grew in Eretz Yisroel and began doing botanical research, the first of its kind. I dug around in university archives, I visited libraries, I dug up old books and immersed in them for nearly six years. Not a day goes by without my involvement in this and without discovering new things.

“I gathered all the sources in a five volume encyclopedia and called it Talmud HaTzmachim. The purpose of my research, as a resident of the Jezreel Valley, a gatherer of wild plants for eating, a researcher of medicinal herbs and the wilds of Eretz Yisroel, was to make accessible ‘Jewish Herbal Medicine’ to the public.

“Over the years, I found impressive evidence at institutions and academies, in botanical gardens and agricultural places of research. I also collected thousands of bits of information that were scattered throughout the Jewish bookcase in Tanach, the Mishna, the Talmud, Kabbala and Chassidus, as well as ancient medical manuscripts whose origin is Jewish doctors and wise men. I collected it all and edited it in academic fashion.

“Along with trips to fields with medicinal herbs and spices, I journeyed through time to the magnificent Jewish medical past, to holy sources and to ancient medical writings of Assaf the Doctor, R’ Shabtai Dunulo, the Rambam, the holy Ari, R’ Chaim Vital, Tuvia the Doctor, Ezra HaSofer, Tuvia Katz, R’ Nosson ben Yoel Falkira, R’ Meir ibn Aldabi, and others. To my surprise, I discovered the connection between plants and the soul powers as they are spoken of at length in Chabad Chassidus. I discovered that spices have marvelous medicinal uses when you understand their medical properties and their effect on the health of body and soul.

“A significant problem I encountered during my research was that the material is not always written in Hebrew and sometimes it is written only in a peripheral context. But slowly, while compiling and developing my research method, the pieces of information came together. The various encyclopedia entries tell us a story about Jewish herbal medicine which is thousands of years old and about what Jewish medicine is about, i.e. a synergy of body, soul and G-dliness.”

Can you give us an example of what made this work difficult?

“I’ll take the yo’ezer plant as an example. When the Jewish people were exiled to Bavel, the name changed to putnak. After Alexander Mokdon conquered Eretz Yisroel, its name changed to minta bara. When Bavel declined and the Jewish people moved to settle in Spain, we see that its name takes on Spanish aspects. Rashi is very helpful for he often explains the name of a plant in its various permutations. He creates a bridge so we understand which plant we are talking about.”

What did you discover about the healing properties of plants?

“In general, the medicine back then was quite different than medicine today. In Parshas Noach it says, ‘So long as the earth exists, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.’ Rashi divides this into two month periods: from mid-Tishrei till Kislev is zera, and from the middle of Kislev until Teves is kor, etc. with six seasons; in each one, a person needs to eat a different type of food.

“The role of a doctor is not to deal with symptoms as they do today, but to make sure a person is healthy by adjusting his food intake to the seasons as well as to the person’s temperament.”

Meaning?

“A nervous hot-tempered person, for example, should not eat black pepper, mustard or garlic.”

R’ Dahan gives an example of nigella, an herb of the buttercup family. “The growth and use of nigella in Eretz Yisroel is mentioned in sources 2800 years ago. It is first mentioned as a metaphor by the prophet Yeshaya to arouse the people to t’shuva when Sancheriv, King of Ashur, threatened the Jewish kingdom.

“In the time of the Mishna and Talmud, nigella is mentioned as a spice for food and most of its usage was to bake bread and pastries. In the Talmud, nigella is mentioned as a source of preventative nourishment which protects from heart disease. ‘Rabbi Chama b’Rabbi Chanina said, one accustomed to nigella does not have heart pain.’”

PLANTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHAZAL

R’ Dahan divides his work into three parts: first, the writing of his book; second, courses, workshops and nature tours. This is why you can meet him as a staff member in the Hebrew University Jerusalem Botanical Garden and at Michlelet Orot in Elkana and the Botanic Garden of Tel Aviv University and other academic platforms that have become aware of his research and articles. The third aspect of his work, with which he is busy these days, is his search for land where he can set up a botanic garden for plants and spices of Eretz Yisroel.

What role does Chassidus play in your work?

“Chassidus provides the finishing touches for this research. For example, take the eizov (hyssop) which was used when the Jews left Egypt. Hashem commanded Moshe to tell the Jewish people to take a lamb for a korban Pesach and the blood was to be smeared on the lintel and doorposts with a bunch of hyssop. The message is that the slaughtering of the lamb, the god of Egypt, the animal soul and the revelation of the G-dly soul is through the hyssop which represents humility and modesty (which is why it is used in other ceremonies, such as purifying the leper and preparing the ashes of the red heifer and is a symbol of purification, “purge me with hyssop and I will be purified”).

“Beyond the botanical perspective and the perspective from how it appears in the sources, I bring ideas in connection to its centrality to the Exodus, when the Jewish people were told to slaughter the lamb and to take hyssop and dip it in blood and smear it on the lintel and doorposts. The message is clear: in order to break through from slavery to the Geula, what’s needed is: 1) a bundle – unification of forces, and 2) hyssop – modesty and humility and t’shuva. Real unity, humility and modesty – personally and collectively – are the key to the Geula, then and now. If you want success, act like hyssop, with humility and modesty.

“People from moshavim, kibbutzim, and the field of botany are exposed to these messages. They have no Torah knowledge and I provide them with this connection which I got from the teachings of Chassidus and the sichos of the Rebbe.”

R’ Dahan points out that other researchers preceded him, including Rav Burstein from Machon Puah and Professor Zohar Amar from Bar Ilan University, but until now nobody had done such comprehensive research. Each one sufficed with one narrow niche. He gives an example to illustrate what his research has brought to the field.

“Let’s take the tzari (persimmon resin). It is probably the mythological persimmon which grew in the Jericho Valley. The tzari appears twice in the Torah: in the sale of Yosef when the Yishmaelim brought tzari down to Egypt. Also, the prophets use tzari as a metaphor. During the war of Masada we see the Romans taking three legions of warriors to fight the handful of rebellious Jews. Why did they need to send such a large contingent of soldiers there?

“The reason which seems likely is that in that area there were many persimmon orchards which served as a medicinal fruit for a wide range of diseases and the Romans were afraid the Jews would take control of it. When I opened the work of R’ Chaim Vital, Shaar HaKavanos, in the Drushei Birchos HaShachar, he makes a parallel, quoting his rebbi, the holy Ari, between the spices of the Ketores to the G-dly S’firos. Tzari is Kesser, kosht is chochma, mor is chesed, charkom is netzach, etc. Chassidus takes these s’firos and draws a parallel to man’s soul and we can understand the power of each plant. I note the process in the encyclopedia.”

Last year, R’ Dahan began researching the grape, its properties and its citations in the sources.

“Until the seventh century, Eretz Yisroel was the biggest exporter of wine in the world. No wonder then that in every archaeological dig they find things associated with wine production. When Dr. Shimmy Drori of Yeinot HaBikaa heard about the research I’m doing, he contacted me and told me that in the digs in Tel Shiloh they found grape vines and they managed to revive them and they are starting to blossom. Science today has the ability to take shards of ancient history and revive them.

“I met with him and we agreed that I would do the research work and he would provide the findings from the site. It will be interesting to taste wine from 1500 years ago and earlier. I consider it closure, for when I was in the dorm in Mikveh Yisroel as a kid, I worked in the vineyard. That is where I began my research in the field, research which will be the final chapter to all the research I did on plants of Eretz Yisroel which I will soon finish writing.”

PLANTS IN
THE ERA OF GEULA

R’ Dahan feels that the world is ready for Geula. The discoveries being made in the field are only intensifying the Jewish identity among the researchers.

“I don’t hesitate to talk in the language of Geula, to bring Chassidus to my audiences, most of whom are not religious and even further than that. When I show them the depth there is to plants, based on sources in Chazal and the Rishonim and Acharonim, they realize that Judaism is not what their teachers forced down their throat over the years. Just today I spoke with the curator of the botanic gardens of one of the prestigious universities here. She wanted to hear about my work and was amazed by it. ‘When your encyclopedia is published, it will be placed on the top shelf,’ she said. And she is known as a thorough atheist.”

According to R’ Dahan, even the nations of the world are connecting to the depth in Torah including the medicinal properties of plants. Among his other activities, R’ Dahan works with B’nei Noach and spreads the Sheva Mitzvos:

“Seven years ago, a German company learned what Rabbi Chama bar Chanina said about the properties of the nigella that is good for the heart. The drug company checked this out scientifically and was amazed by the results and quickly patented it. I understand they have already begun marketing it there.”