Recently I came across pickles olives that were actually bitter. They were on sale, so I bought around a dozen jars.
You see, most canned olives are so processed with who-knows-what that they’ve completely lost their authentic, refreshing bitterness. Which is unfortunate, because it’s so healthy to taste and appreciate bitterness.
Why?
As we just experienced in the 3 weeks of national mourning, Jewish history holds many times of bitterness. Our personal lives too contain painful, uncomfortable periods. Life isn’t always sweet.
If everything was always smooth and perfect, we wouldn’t appreciate the goodness when it arrives. Life would be predictable and meaningless. Pain wouldn’t transform us into more sensitive people. We would never shine a little light into the dark depths of our souls, and into the souls of our friends.
Bitterness teaches never to take sweetness for granted. As we come to embrace the bitter, we value — maybe even enjoy — the challenges, and the effort we put in to get through them. We own the goodness that we built with hard work when we could have given up.
We are what we eat: not only “health” and “unhealthy” foods, but also the way we relate to the rich variety of our foods’ tastes. Just as we comb nutrient labels for microscopic molecules, we can open our minds and hearts to the plethora of tastes in every meal, and often in every bite.
As I learned from bitter olives, every taste has something to teach us.
The Talmud teaches that eating olives “regularly” harms memory, while olive oil boosts memory. I discussed the significance of this teaching here:
Based on this tradition, many people avoid eating olives. While following this custom is commendable, some authorities rule that that pickled olives (like the ones available today) are fine, especially when eaten together with a meal of other foods. Others hold that adding a bit of olive oil — which boosts memory — negates the olive’s harmful effects. Even if you don’t want to rely on these lenient opinions, the Talmud’s language implies that an occasional olive is harmless, so I wouldn’t worry about mindfully eating a bitter olive or two. (For sources on the topic, check out this article.)
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Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman
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