Cashews—the secret of the nuts in Parashat Bechukotai

Cashews—the secret of the nuts in Parashat Bechukotai

On the Shabbat of the Torah portion “Bechukotai”, there is a beautiful minhag—to eat “kashio” nuts (cashews). Gaon Rabbi Dov Kook of Tiberias (may he live long) reveals that in this portion, the word “keri” (contrary, in defiance) is repeated seven times. The great Onkelos translates it into Aramaic as “kashio”—קשיו, which in Hebrew refers to cashew nuts. One should read the portion and, on this Shabbat, recite the blessing “Borei Pri HaEtz” with kavanah, eat cashews, and have the following kavanah: “May all the hardness of my heart be removed through eating this cashew, and may everything be transformed for the better.” In this way, one performs the act of hamtakat dinim (sweetening the judgments). After all, the word “keri” is connected with the judgments described in this portion: “...then I will go against you in anger (keri).” Rabbi Kook teaches that this counterbalances the hardness of our hearts. It is good to take cashews with you for a mitzvah, for example to a brit, and say that we are now eating cashews in order to rid ourselves of hardness of heart. Parashat Bechukotai (26:3–46) 3. If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments and do them, 4. I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5. Your threshing shall overtake your vintage, and your vintage shall overtake your sowing; you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land. 6. I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone; I will give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross your land. 7. You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8. Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. 9. I will look with favor upon you, and make you fertile and multiply you; and I will maintain My covenant with you. 10. You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make room for the new. 11. I will establish My abode in your midst, and I will not reject you. 12. I will be ever present in your midst: I will be your G-d, and you shall be My people. 13. I the L-rd am your G-d who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be their slaves; I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. 14. But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, 15. if you reject My laws and spurn My rules, so that you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant, 16. I in turn will do this to you: I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and the body to languish; you shall sow your seed to no purpose, for your enemies shall eat it. 17. I will set My face against you: you shall be routed by your enemies, and your foes shall dominate you; you shall flee though none pursues. 18. And if, for all that, you do not obey Me, I will go on to discipline you sevenfold for your sins. 19. I will break your proud glory and make your skies like iron and your earth like copper. 20. Your strength shall be for nothing; your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit. 21. And if you go against Me and do not obey Me, I will go on to strike you sevenfold for your sins. 22. I will loose wild beasts against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and wipe out your cattle; they shall decimate you, and your roads shall be deserted. 23. And if these things fail to discipline you for Me, and you remain hostile to Me, 24. I in turn will remain hostile to you; I, in turn, will strike you sevenfold for your sins. 25. I will bring a sword against you to wreak vengeance for the covenant; and when you withdraw into your towns, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hands of the enemy. 26. When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven, and they shall ration out your bread by weight; and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. 27. But if, despite this, you do not obey Me and remain hostile to Me, 28. I will act against you in wrathful hostility; I, in turn, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. 29. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30. I will destroy your shrines and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your fetishes; and I will reject you. 31. I will lay your cities in ruin and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not savor your pleasing odors. 32. I will make the land desolate, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled by it. 33. And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin. 34. Then shall the land make up for its sabbaths, throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its sabbaths. 35. Throughout the time that it is desolate, it shall observe the rest that it did not observe in your sabbaths while you were dwelling upon it. 36. As for those of you who survive, I will cast a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf shall send them fleeing; they shall flee as though fleeing from the sword, and they shall fall though none pursues. 37. With no one pursuing, they shall stumble over one another as before the sword. You shall not be able to stand your ground before your enemies. 38. You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall consume you. 39. Those of you who survive shall be heartsick over their iniquity in the lands of your enemies; more, they shall be heartsick over the iniquities of their fathers. 40. But when they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, the trespass that they committed against Me, indeed, their hostility toward Me, 41. when I, too, have been hostile toward them and have taken them into the land of their enemies—then shall their uncircumcised hearts humble themselves and they shall make amends for their iniquity. 42. Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob; I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land. 43. For the land shall be forsaken of them, making up for its sabbaths by being desolate of them, while they atone for their iniquity; because they rejected My rules and spurned My laws. 44. Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them—for I am the L-rd their G-d. 45. I will remember in their favor the covenant with their ancestors, whom I freed from the land of Egypt before the very eyes of the nations to be their G-d: I am the L-rd. 46. These are the laws, rules, and instructions that the L-rd established between Himself and the Israelite people, through Moses, on Mount Sinai. (From a trip to Meron to the Rashbi with the “Yodei Binah” Yeshivah)