My husband introduced me to a practice that he found in a great book called The Art Of Amazement by Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld. We tried this exercise together, and It really changed my prospective on how I experience not food, but the simpler things in life.
The Seven-Minute Orange
"Give each person a whole Mandarin orange, one segment of a navel orange, knife, plate, and napkin.
To begin, please enjoy the single segment right now, but do not eat the entire orange!
(Read to group)
The art of eating an orange, according to Judaism, is really the art of orange appreciation...
Please hold up the whole orange and examine it. Notice its texture, how it looks and feels. Is it heavy or light?
(pause)
smell it.
(pause)
How does it smell? Have you ever noticed on an orange tree how these delightful globules stand out in contrast to the green leaves, just begging to be picked?
Please take your knife and cut the orange into quarters.
Does the smell change?
Hold up one quarter.
Imagine you were an alien from outer space and landed here on earth on a really hot day and you were quite thirsty, and someone said, "Have one of these."
would you know which part to bit into?
Isn't the inside so much more juicy and inviting then the rind?
smell it again.
What is this orange mostly made of?
Obviously it's water. Probably at least 90 percent water but why doesn't all the liquid fall out when we tip it over? After all, we've just cut it open!
Tip the orange so the flesh is facing down.
If you examine it closely, you'll notice that its actually made of tiny little sacks that hold the juice. It's amazing!
How did so much water get into this form? If I were to give you a bucket of water could you transform it into some of these?
What you have here is a direct chain of cause and effect from G-d to this orange in your hand! Are you starting to appreciate what an amazing gift this is? It's literally a gift!
If someone wanted you to fund the research to produce these things from scratch in the laboratory how much would we need to invest to make it happen?
Answer: Billions (or impossible). Yet you can buy them for literally pennies! And today you're eating it for free! What did you do to deserve such a wonderful gift?
Now, to eat your second piece of orange, please close your eyes, think of all the wonderful qualities of this orange, where it ultimately came from, how it is literally and figuratively a gift, and now bite into the orange, keep your eyes closed, and let it roll over your tongue, really taste it, and take your time to swallow.
How did the second bite compare?"
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