It was a late on a chilly afternoon in November, the sun hanging low on the horizon—almost six months to the day before Sheldon’s bar mitzvah. Perhaps because of his enthusiasm for the forthcoming religious and social event, at that point in his young life Sheldon was still more engrossed with matters Jewish than he was with girls, cars, computer games, and basketball.
Morris Rosen, Sheldon’s father, suspected—with some trepidation—that a major shift in interests might come all-too-soon after the big celebration. Morris was a third-generation American; the family name had been shortened from Rosenberg when his grandfather entered the country through the Port of New York at Ellis Island.
Morris recalled fondly his own bar mitzvah at the large synagogue in St. Louis. Shortly after that, the entire family had moved to Southern California.
“Abba, can I ask you a question?” Sheldon queried, his brows puckered. He often used the Hebrew word for father when he was about to ask his dad for a favor.
“You just did,” Morris replied noncommittally. He carelessly thought he had managed to put Shel at a slight disadvantage in the forthcoming negotiations with his quick retort. Sheldon promptly ignored his father’s mildly sarcastic observation.
“Will you buy me a pomegranate? Please?”
Usually Sheldon asked for items costing considerably more money. A new bicycle. A battery-operated remote-control toy car. A CD player. “A pomegranate? That’s all?”
Sheldon nodded. “Yes. That’s all. Just one pomegranate,” he entreated.
“I didn’t know that you liked pomegranates,” Morris stated, still somewhat taken aback by his son’s modest request. “You’re in luck, Shel. Pomegranates are in season now. I’m sure we’ll be able to find enough room in our household budget to buy you one,” he chuckled. He was relieved that he had gotten off the hook so inexpensively.
“Pomegranates are okay,” Sheldon admitted, out of the corner of his mouth. “But, I don’t really want to eat it. I’m just going to count the seeds.”
Rosen took on a puzzled look. “Why on earth would you want to do that? Pomegranates must have hundreds of seeds.”
“Mrs. Goldstein says that according to the Midrash, each pomegranate has exactly 613 seeds—one for each commandment in the Torah. I want to check and see if she’s right.”
Mrs. Goldstein was Shel’s teacher at the Hebrew Academy. It was a sign of Sheldon’s increasing maturity that he seldom took anyone else’s words at face value anymore, if there was even a remote possibility that he could confirm facts for himself.
Somewhere in the back of Morris’s mind he remembered hearing about a connection between pomegranates and the Torah’s mitzvot. He also recalled being told that each seed in a pomegranate is a separate entity, to indicate that each mitzvah has its own unique importance.
Pomegranates—called rimonim in Hebrew—are one of the seven fruits enumerated in the Torah and for which the seven hills of Efrat are named. The others are figs, olives, dates, grapes, wheat, and barley. Of course, today the last two are considered to be grains and not fruits.
Pomegranates, with their abundance of seeds, each enclosed in a juice-filled jewel-like sac, are often considered to be a symbol of fertility. They have long been a favorite motif of Jewish art.
The capitals of two columns in the facade of the Temple in Jerusalem were decorated with pomegranates (1 Kings 7:42) and so were the robes of the High Priest (Exodus 28: 33-34). In the Israel Museum sits a thumb-sized ivory pomegranate, which had been used to bedeck a scepter used in the Holy Temple. And, rimonim adorn the two wooden staves of Torah scrolls.
During the traditional Sephardic sefer on Rosh Hashana, the phrase “May we be as full of mitzvot as the pomegranate is full of seeds” is recited. Similarly, it is said that each person, no matter how humble or simple, is as filled with mitzvot as a pomegranate is filled with seeds.
The pomegranate was purchased and Sheldon sat at the family’s dinette table and began peeling the dark red fruit, revealing a plethora of seeds inside. Soon his hands and shirt were stained dark purple from pomegranate juice.
“Ha! I knew it!” Shel exclaimed, nearly an hour after he began.
Morris glanced up from his book and peered at Sheldon over the top of his reading glasses. “What did you know?” he asked, a little apprehensive of what the answer might be.
“Mrs. Goldstein was wrong! There aren’t 613 seeds in a pomegranate!” Most every sentence spoken by a pre-teen is punctuated with an exclamation point or question mark, rarely with a period.
“Perhaps you lost track. How many did you count?”
“I counted 614! And, I didn’t lose track! I was very careful!” It was obvious from Sheldon’s petty petulance that his father’s slightly slighting remark was bordering on bruising the boy’s feelings. Pre-teens tend to be overly sensitive.
“Well, you’ll just have to count them again, to make sure,” Morris stated pragmatically.
“I can’t do that, Dad! I ate a whole bunch of the seeds! After I counted them!”
“Well, then, I’ll buy you another pomegranate, and you can check again.”
