At the start of this week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, the Torah reminds us that God gave us the land of Israel, “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 26:9). When the Torah says honey, it likely does not mean honey from bees, but rather “honey” from fruit trees, particularly date honey and fig honey. This is illustrated by a well-known story from the Talmud (Ketubot 111b):
Rami ben Ezekiel once paid a visit to Bnei Brak where he saw goats grazing under fig trees while honey was flowing from the figs, and milk ran from them, and these mingled with each other. “This is indeed,” he remarked, “[a land] flowing with milk and honey.”
If the Torah does not speak of bee honey, while clearly stating that bees are not kosher for consumption, why is bee honey kosher? This is especially problematic in light of the Mishnaic principle that “whatever goes forth from the unclean is unclean, and whatever goes forth from the clean is clean”.
Yet, from other places in Scripture we see that bee honey is absolutely kosher. For example, we read in Judges 14:5-9 about Samson’s famous brawl with a lion on his way to Timnah. Samson killed the lion and later, on his way back home, saw that bees had strangely built a nest inside the lion carcass, at which point Samson took some of their honey and ate it, and even brought some to his parents.
Amazingly, in 2010 archaeologists discovered the earliest known beekeeping and honey-making apparatus in the world, dating back three thousand years—in Israel! Bee honey was clearly as popular among ancient Israelites as it is among modern-day Jews. How is it kosher?
Excretions of Flying Insects
The Talmud (Bechorot 7b) comments on the above Mishnah and discusses the nature of bee honey:
“Whatever goes forth from the unclean is unclean, and whatever goes forth from the clean is clean”… an objection was raised: Why did [the Sages] say that honey from bees is permitted? Because the bees store it up in their bodies but do not drain it from their bodies… The Divine Law expressly permitted honey, for it was taught: R. Jacob says, “Yet these may you eat of all the winged swarming things…” [Leviticus 11:21] This you may eat, but you are forbidden to eat an unclean winged swarming thing. But is not an unclean winged swarming thing expressly mentioned in the Scripture [as forbidden]? Rather we must explain [thus]: An unclean flying thing that swarms you must not eat, but you may eat what an unclean flying thing casts forth from its body. And what is this? This is bees’ honey.
This passage follows a long discussion which analyzes different excretions of non-kosher animals; whether they are thick or thin, and whether they come out like they came in, or if the animal had processed the substance in its body and transformed it. The Talmud suggests that bees take up the nectar and collect it in their sacs, but do not actually digest and “excrete” it. This is true, as we know that nectar is collected into a special sac, the “honey stomach”, where it is mixed with enzymes and transformed into honey, before being regurgitated into the honeycomb. (More specifically, the bees actually regurgitate the pre-honey substance into the mouths of other bees, multiple times, before the substance is put into the comb, then exposed to air currents from the bees’ beating wings in order to evaporate out the water and produce that final, thick and sweet product.)
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that one who eats honey is not just consuming flower nectar, but also ingesting compounds from the bee itself. The Talmud knows this, which is probably why it goes on to prove that honey is still kosher by creatively interpreting the Torah’s verses. It concludes that while flying insects themselves are not kosher to eat (except several species of locust, as explicitly stated in the Torah), the excretions of such flying insects are kosher. Interestingly, this relates to another special flying insect, whose excretions have been identified with none other than manna!
Manna from Heaven or Manna from Lice?
The Sinai Peninsula is home to a species of lice called Trabutina mannipara. This lice infests the Tamarisk trees that grow in the Sinai, sucking the tree’s sap, and in turn, excreting a white, honey-like substance. This edible substance is very sweet, and also very light and flakey, which means that it doesn’t last long before the sun dries it all up. Sounds familiar?
The Torah tells us that the Israelites consumed sweet, white manna in the wilderness, which was like frost and had to be harvested in the morning just as the dew ascended (Exodus 16:14, Numbers 11:7-8). Not surprisingly, the Trabutina mannipara lice has been nicknamed the “manna mealybug”, and its excretions are called mann by the Sinai Bedouins who still harvest and eat it.
Based on the Talmudic principle of the excretions of flying insects being permissible for consumption, the lice manna, like bee honey, is kosher. In fact, the Talmud (Berakhot 57b) overtly connects the two substances, stating that “honey is one-sixtieth of manna”.
Of course, the Torah states that manna was miraculously sent from Heaven, and the Talmud (Chagigah 12b) notes precisely where in the Heavens it was “ground up”. Besides, only about 500 pounds of “Sinai manna” is produced annually by the lice—not nearly enough to feed an entire nation of people subsisting off of manna almost exclusively.
Still, the existence of Sinai manna is no coincidence. A well-known Jewish dictum is that all things in the material world are only a reflection of spiritual entities above. Perhaps the lice manna is that physical counterpart of the Israelites’ Heavenly manna.
Honey, too, must have a spiritual counterpart. Rabbi Avraham Schorr points out that the gematria of dvash (דבש), “honey”, is 306, equal to the difference between guf (גוף), “body”, and neshamah (נשמה), “soul”. Honey is symbolic of that spiritual substance that “glues” the soul to the body. In just two weeks’ time, we will be dipping various foods in honey during the Rosh Hashanah meal, in part symbolizing our hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life, thus keeping the soul glued to its body for one more sweet new year.