They’re a community of mushroom hunters, who know how to find some of nature’s richest food in venues you’d never expect
IT might not have been the Amazon Rain Forest or Redwood National Park, but Park Begin, south of Jerusalem on the outskirts of Beitar, was just fine for our purposes. We decided to join up with Tal Shaul, a computer programmer from the Bnei Brak suburb of Givat Shmuel, who never misses an opportunity to head for the woods after a good week of rain. By day’s end, Tal will have filled a box with an assortment of mushrooms for dinner, although he’s no desperate pauper who can’t afford groceries. But he is a nature lover, and nothing makes him happier than pulling up logs and peeking through underbrush in search of this wonder-food that actually grows in abundance all over Eretz Yisrael.
Mushrooms are one of nature’s most intriguing and mysterious foods. They look like they grow in the ground, but the “plant” you see is actually just the tip of a massive network of underground fungi, nurtured by a combination of air and decomposed matter. That’s why the brachah is shehakol, and there is no obligation (in Eretz Yisrael) of terumos and maasros.
While Israel might be classified as a desert nation, it’s blessed with many forests and wooded areas pulsing with life.
“People think of foragers as hippies living in tents and eating weeds,” says Tal, 36, who has been part of the mushroom foraging community for the last seven years, “but that’s very far from the truth. Israel is a small country without too many natural spaces that aren’t being built up, and although most people live in crowded cities, Israelis love the outdoors — they’ll make a picnic on any patch of grass they find — so this is a really good opportunity to get back to nature, and it doesn’t have to be a huge place. It can even be a park.
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