Berakhot 41
The text today delivers a lesson in measurement, with food as the unit of measure:
Bread is the unit that is used to calculate the time required for one to become ritually impure when entering a house where someone afflicted with leprosy resides and his clothes become impure (if he is wearing rather than carrying them) in the time it takes to eat a half loaf of wheat (not barley) bread; barley is used as the measure for determining the impurity of a bone from a corpse; a wooden utensil can be cleansed of its impurity by breaking it and making it unusable if its holes are the size of a pomegranate; forbidden foods are measured through the sizing of olives and one is punished for breaking the covenant to fast on the holiest day of the year if he eats the equivalent of a large date on Yom Kippur.
Our portion size at meals have become so enormous that it is hard to imagine a single olive on a plate is worthy of a unit of measurement or a discussion on the order of saying a blessing when it is eaten with a radish. And did the Rabbis have an existential crisis every time they had a small meal over whether to eat the radish or olive first? They debated over what food type comes first when saying a blessing and whether to follow the order of each by the proximity to the word “land” in the following: The Torah (Deut.8:8) calls Israel, “a land of wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and date-honey.”
This seems to be pure minutiae with the parsing of the sentence from the Torah and the order that words appear to the word “land.” There is a lesson buried in all these debates about paying attention to even the smallest morsel of food and the blessing it brings to us from the earth. At the center of all the measurements and discussion on blessing order is our connection to the earth.
It is worth taking a moment to appreciate the role the little olive plays in our culture. The olive comes from large, sturdy trees that are rooted throughout Israel and withstand its arid climate. The olive is mentioned as an important unit of measure in today’s text and is one of the seven species mentioned in the bible. The olive branch is a global symbol of peace and is associated with vitality and celebrations; it serves as an emblem for the state of Israel and appears on the base of the menorah at the Knesset. Olive oil is believed to be the oil that fueled the Hanukkah miracle. And following on the theme from yesterday of food as a healing source, olives are instrumental to a healthy Mediterranean diet. Here is an article on the role olives play in Judaism:
https://www.myolivetree.com/symbolism-olive-tree-jewish-faith/