DID YOU?
Bs''d
One of the first questions asked when getting to heaven is: "Did you taste all of God's fruits?"
The Talmud says that one of the first questions we're asked when getting to heaven is: "Did you taste all of God's fruits?" The beauty of fruit is that it not only sustains us nutritionally, but includes many fringe benefits like taste, texture, color, and form. We will be asked, "Did you taste all the fruits?" – in other words, did you appreciate God's gifts in this world?
The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. (Ezekiel 34:27-28)
In order to serve God, one needs access to the enjoyment of the beauties of nature – meadows full of flowers, majestic mountains, flowing rivers. For all these are essential to the spiritual development of even the holiest of people. (Rabbi Abraham ben Maimonides, cited by Rabbi David E. Stein in A Garden of Choice Fruits, Shomrei Adamah, 1991).
R' Abba taught: There is no greater revealing of redemption than that which the verse states: "And you, mountains of Israel, you shall give forth your branches and you shall bear your fruit for my people Israel, for they shall soon come." (Ezekiel 36:8; Talmud Sanhedrin 98a).
Rabbi Simon said, "There is no plant without an angel in Heaven tending it and telling it, 'Grow!'" (Genesis Rabba 10:7).
And I will restore my people Israel and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine, they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit. (Amos 9:14)
Israel is like the date palm, of which none is wasted; its dates are for eating, its lulavim are for blessing; its fronds are for thatching; its fibers are for ropes; its webbing for sieves; its thick trunks for building – so it is with Israel, which contains no waste. (Genesis Rabbah 41)
And G-d said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is on the earth," and it was so. And the earth blossomed with grass, herbs and trees, and G-d saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:9-13)
The tree of life has five hundred thousand kinds of fruit, each differing in taste. The appearance of one fruit is not like the appearance of the other, and the fragrance of one fruit is not like the fragrance of the other. Clouds of glory hover above the tree, and from the four directions winds blow on it, so that its fragrance is wafted from world's end to world's end." (Yalkut Bereishit 2)
"And first of all [mi-kedem, usually translated as "in the East"], the Eternal God planted a Garden in Eden [Genesis 2:8] Therefore … occupy yourselves first and foremost with planting (Leviticus Rabbah 25:3).
It was the custom when a boy was born to plant a cedar tree and when a girl was born to plant a pine tree, and when they married, the tree was cut down and a canopy made of the branches. (Gittin 57a)
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