Rishon Rishon

Fruits of Israel

Iraq the Model has post on date palms:

The date is considered as a fruit and food and you can get many products from it such as vinegar, arak (the most famous local alcoholic drink in Iraq) and date honey (dibis) and the leaves of the palm has always been used in building cottages and furniture in the urban areas of Iraq.

Generally there’s a strong bond between Iraqis and date palms and there’s a saying that is believed to be one of Mohammed the prophet sayings that mention the date palm as being created from what was left of the ashes that Adam was created from, and the date palm was mentioned several times in the Koran.

Date palms are also well loved by Israelis, and mentioned numerous times in the Bible. They are considered one of the five fruits that particularly characterize the land of Israel, the others being grapes, figs, pomegranates, and olives.

tamar	– date	t'marim	– dates
`enav	– grape	`anavim	– grapes
t'ena	– fig	t'enim	– figs
rimon	– pomegranate	rimonim	– pomegranates
zayit	– olive	zeytim	– olives

Arak is also a popular drink in Israel, though in general, distilled drinks are not very popular here, by US standards. “Date honey” – dibis, is obviously a cognate to Hebrew dvash – “honey”. In fact, in Biblical Hebrew dvash meant date honey, as in the famous verse: “a land flowing with milk and honey” – eres zavat halav udvash (lit. a land oozing milk and honey).

Posted by David Boxenhorn at July 30, 2004 12:01 AM