How Many Worms Are in Your Date Spread?

There is a concept called "Trima" in the Gemara. It is familiar to anyone who has studied Tractate Brachot and seen how the Gemara debates and deliberates about its laws. Those who have ever dealt with the laws of blessings have asked themselves what exactly is this Trima... True, there are many opinions about what Trima looks like, and consequently many opinions about what blessing to recite over it. But before we come to bless it, it's worth knowing a bit about whether it's permissible to eat it, what this Trima actually is, and whether in our days it can be consumed as a kosher product, especially a mehadrin one. Therefore, it's worth expanding a bit.

Trima is actually the name for crushed fruits, but when they brought Trima as an example, they demonstrated it with dates. Even today, there are several types of crushed dates. There is the preserved date, which is perhaps what Rashi meant in his interpretation, "Trima - something that is slightly crushed but not completely mashed." On the other hand, there is Rambam's interpretation that these are dates that have been pressed, "with their pits removed, and made into a dough-like substance." However, it seems this isn't exactly the date spread of our time. Let us explain why:

Date cultivation in Israel is among the finest there is, and if we were fortunate enough to be like those abroad, to whom all the finest fruits are exported, we would notice dates called "Bon Bon," which are almost the size of a pear, and taste like "honeycomb in honey." Even the exported Medjool is superior to what we are accustomed to seeing. So immediately after harvesting, the date sorting begins, separating dates that have already ripened from those that still need to undergo artificial ripening. This is done after spreading the dates on plastic trays inside a greenhouse made of plastic that collects heat, or through fans and heating ovens that distribute heat, for several days, until the fruit reaches the desired ripeness level for marketing. After that, the dates arrive at packing houses where they are sorted into several grades.

After the dates are sorted, all grade C fruits are set aside as they are not suitable for marketing as dates... usually because they are already "tzamel" – too dry, and their sugar content reaches only about 75%, making their taste somewhat bitter. In other cases, they are simply crushed or split dates... so there is no choice but to change their purpose and market them at a slightly higher price as a "preserved date," as date spread, or even as date syrup (silan).

The preserved date, unlike a preserved cucumber which is preserved in saltwater or vinegar, is preserved in a press that compresses the dates and crushes them, but not completely – the original form of the date is still recognizable, in its full glory, without anyone knowing that these dates never looked that good, and were even a fertile nest for all kinds of worms and pests. It's important to know that in the date growing process, it's very possible that the tree on which the dates grow is heavily infested, so methods have been developed here in Israel to pass the dates through various steaming processes to drive away the worms swarming around them. But even if we set this aside and think that the Medjool date is indeed relatively the least infested, this is only when the date appears whole and healthy, without any signs of punctures. But the dates classified as grade C, which were open and exposed throughout the ripening process and during storage, are not in this condition at all, and are even defined as presumed to be infested. Despite all this, preserved dates are made from them, just as they are, without checking them one by one and sorting out the infested ones. Therefore, in reality, there is no preserved date bearing the kashrut of any Badatz. Moreover, the Badatz Beit Yosef has forbidden using them in any way, not even as filling for Iraqi "Ba'ba" cookies...

Date Spread

Date spread is also usually made from the same type of dates used for preserved dates, but with a slightly different process. Here too there are different levels of kashrut, and unfortunately many good people have stumbled on this...

After all the grade C dates have been sorted, they are brought to the factory that produces date spread and silan. First, the dates pass through a machine that removes the pits, and only after the dates are clean of any pit or hard substance do they enter cooking pots. After the dates have been cooked with water and sugar, to the point where white foam begins to bubble, the extraction stage begins, and all the liquids are extracted from the dates. The liquid that comes out of the date is collected, and this is what is used for the familiar silan. Of course, most of the silan produced in Israel undergoes dilution with water and sweetening with sugar, but it is still concentrate extracted from the date.

True, here we don't have the problem of worms, since the silan comes as a viscous liquid that undergoes filtering, and thus, even if there were some worms in the date in the past, they have been filtered out of the liquid. But of course, there is still an obligation to verify the kashrut of the dates themselves, and perhaps they are from the Heter Mechira, and whether teruma and ma'aser have been separated from them...

After extracting the liquid from the dates, the cooked dates remain by themselves. These dates are ground, and they become date spread.

This is where problems begin to arise. After all, these dates were presumed to be infested, so how is it permissible to grind them with the worms in them? And even if we set aside the issue of intentionally nullifying a prohibition, because we'll try to explain that the factory's intention was to produce spread and not to grind worms, and therefore the worms are nullified in the mixture and do not prohibit it (which, by the way, is also a matter of dispute among the poskim...), still one's mind is not at ease, for who said that the grinding actually ground and crushed the worm, perhaps the grinding was very coarse?

Indeed, whole moths and even crawling insects have often been found in date spread even after grinding, and therefore a mehadrin kashrut organization does thorough sample tests of the dates before grinding, to verify that they are not presumed to have worms and that the product is clean. Moreover, there is also care taken that the level of grinding is such that it ensures that if there was any creature - it was ground, and once ground, we have a rule that it is nullified in the majority...

By the way, one of the colleagues related that not long ago he had no choice but to not approve any dry date for date spread, and as a result, that factory was forced to produce the spread from moist dates. But it's not pleasant to say that not everyone operates this way...

And to conclude - if we began with Trima, let's end with it and remind that even after the diversity of opinions, the well-known opinion of Maran the Yabia Omer zt"l is that even a fruit that has been well ground has not lost its ha'etz blessing, as ruled by the Shulchan Aruch. But on the other hand, the opinion of Ashkenazi poskim is that a fruit that has been well ground, and especially if it has been cooked, loses its ha'etz blessing and becomes shehakol, and if so, it's interesting what the blessing would be on date spread according to their approach, since it has undergone cooking, and also grinding in a utensil...