With the recent debate about the benefits or lack of
benefits to organic
food, it is fascinating to read that the arguments about what kinds of
foods are good for you or not has been going on for millennia. This page of Talmud,
for example, contains such wisdom as: “Milt is good for the teeth but bad for
the bowels; horse-beans are bad for the teeth but good for the bowels. All raw
vegetables make the complexion pale and all things not fully grown retard
growth.” Not to mention that one should not eat vegetables before breakfast,
because it will give you bad breath.
But there is a fascinating reference to the “fruit of Genessaret.”
Gennesar (often spelled “Ginnosar”) is the narrow and very fertile plain along
Lake Kinnert or the Sea of Galilee. Kinnert,
so called because it’s fruit is as sweet as the sound of the kinor or
harp, is the Biblical and modern word for the Greek form: Gennesar.
The Plain of Gennesar shows up in Rabbinic literature,
Josephus and the New Testament. Clearly well known the fruit from this fertile
area are described as being large, easy to digest and causing the skin to grow
smooth. “R. Abbahu used to eat of them [so freely] that a fly slipped off his
forehead” – his skin being so smooth it could gain no foothold! The fruit
seemed to have other, more interesting effects: “R. Ammi and R. Assi used to
eat of them till their hair fell out. R. Simeon b. Lakish ate until his mind
began to wander.”
According to legend, the fruits of Gennesaret were not
allowed in Jerusalem during the pilgrimage, out of fear that people will come
to Jerusalem just for these fruits and forget about their religious
obligations.
Yum!
