Q:
Watermelons are now in season and it got me thinking. You said that ready to eat fruit are colored by Hashem to attract our attention. So why is a watermelon not colored gaily outside? It should be colored red like an apple or golden like an orange.
A:
He’s asking a good question. An apple is bright red. An orange has a beautiful golden color. Why isn’t a watermelon bright red on the outside? Inside is a bright crimson but outside is green. Why isn’t the watermelon red on the outset like an apple?
The answer is that an apple is a one-time offer. It’s intended for one person, a one-time morsel, because if you bite into the apple in all probability you’ll finish it up. You don’t need help to eat up an apple. And therefore Hashem made it red to attract you, to make you want to eat it.
But a watermelon – let’s say you’re walking by a fruit stand and you see a bright red watermelon. So you get in the mood and you buy it and you’ll take a knife and cut into right away. And you’re eating it as you walk down the street.
But how much can you eat already? You would dive in and eat a big chunk but that’s all you can do. Any more and you’ll get a stomachache. What can you do with it? In the olden days, they weren’t as rich as we are today; there was no refrigeration. So you throw it in the gutter. It’s a pity. The rest would rot away. It would go to waste. You had to eat up now or nothing.
So Hashem says, “Nothing doing.” He gives it a ‘patient’ color that doesn’t attract you right away. These big fruits; melons, cantaloupes, don’t have beautiful colors on the outside because they are community fruits, family deserts.
So the watermelon says, “Have patience!” And before you cut into it, you say, “I’ll call together my family first.” Only when the whole family gathers and you’re all squatting on your haunches around your watermelon, that’s when you decide to open it up. No impatience, no impulsiveness, and everybody will eat his share and it won’t be wasted. And so because of the watermelon’s patient color, it’s something the family can eat.
That’s why all the big fruits are not colored so beautifully outside, to encourage patience whereas one-man fruit, oranges, bananas, grapes, apples, are beautifully colored to induce you to eat them right away.
You have to study that because we have two reasons, two cases why the color is not attractive. Either the thing is not fit to eat now; like the potato; it’s injurious to eat it now and the color warns you that you would only cause harm to yourself by eating it now. And the second is, if it’s too big for one person so the color causes you to be patient until the family gathers and then you can make the best use of it.
(December 1979)
Q:
Kiwis are a one-person fruit, so why do they have a poor look?
A:
The kiwi has a poor look because when the kiwi grows – they’re originally a wild fruit and the monkeys and rodents and other animals of the jungles have different ways of being attracted to the fruit. Kiwis, Hakadosh Baruch Hu made for animals in the wild. The monkeys are the ones pulling it out of the tree and therefore when the kiwi is ripe, it attracts the monkeys. The monkeys pull it off. Only that people in those neighborhoods near the jungle, they keep a sharp eye out and they try to get them before the monkeys. The kiwi looks like a monkey’s head.
(March 2001)
Q:
Why aren’t nuts also beautifully colored to attract our attention?
A:
Why isn’t the pecan brightly colored? Or the filbert; why isn’t it a beautiful red or pink?
The answer is their Creator doesn’t want them to be beautiful. He wants them to be carried along in your pockets for journeys because inside it’s full of nourishment. It’s full of fat and protein. You know sometimes you can take a match and ignite the meat – you can ignite it; it’ll burn because it’s so full of fat. Because that’s what you need for energy if you’re on the journey.
Now, if it had a beautiful color you’d eat it up immediately and nothing would be left for the rest of your trip. So the Creator makes it a color that encourages patience: “Nothing to be excited over the color here. There’s nothing exciting here.” So you have patience with it. That’s why nuts don’t have any beautiful colors because it’s supposed to encourage patience.
That’s why nuts have a tough carrying case by the way. Because they’re for later, for lunch. But if you carry your lunch like a plum it’ll get squashed and spoiled. So Hashem made a lunchbox, a hard carrying case and you can carry it for weeks and months.
(September 1984)
