Community Magazine May 2013

Peter Benton, a staff member of the Canadian Department of Agriculture, tried applying the results of these experiments to help corn crops battle insect infestation, which usually resulted in heavy damage. He recorded sounds similar to those of bats and played them in the fields. The fields were rapidly cured of the intruders. However, if these researchers thought that their efforts would increase the full complement of crops around the world, they were wrong. It turns out that certain types of music that promote the growth of one strain of plant decrease the growth rate of another. Science has still not been able to solve the mystery of the individual tonal preferences of plants. The Talmud also speaks about the effect of sound on plants.: The person who [cut the plants used for incense in the Temple] would say, ‘Grind it well, grind it well!’ because the sound improves the spices. On the other hand, Rabbi Yochanan said that while the sound is good for plants, it can actually damage wine, which improves far better when it sits in a quiet place. (Keritut 6b) Plants Can Communicate! A more recent discovery, based upon studies conducted in California, Japan, and Germany since 1996, is that plants have a sophisticated chemical language through which they communicate not only with members of their own species, but also with different types of plants, and even with insects. For instance, when scientists clipped leaves of a sagebrush plant in a way that mimicked the damage caused by insects, the plant released a puff of a chemical called methyl jasmonate. Tobacco plants growing downwind picked up on the chemical and immediately began boosting their own level of an enzyme that makes their leaves less tasty to insects. These tobacco plants suffered 60 percent less damage from grasshoppers and caterpillars than tobacco plants situated next to unclipped sagebrush. More recently, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan let spider mites loose on lima bean plants and tracked the plants’ responses. They found five different defense mechanisms. First, each injured plant released a chemical that changed its flavor, making it less attractive to the mites. Then, the plants released other chemicals that drifted away. Other lima bean plants received the chemical and immediately began giving off the same chemicals, making them less tasty and warning still more lima bean plants, before the mites had even reached them. Most amazingly, some of them released chemicals which summoned a whole new batch of mites, those which actually eat the spider mites attacking the lima bean plants. These amazing discoveries of plant language, at the cutting edge of botanical research, were already known to the Jewish sages thousands of years ago. The Ramban, in his introduction to his commentary on the Torah, wrote: King Solomon, of blessed memory, to whom Gd gave both wisdom and knowledge, knew everything in the Torah. In fact, his grasp of the Torah was so deep that he understood the secrets of all things, including the language of plants, the language of trees and roots, and all things both hidden and revealed. He discovered all this through the study of Torah and its commentaries and teachings. Additionally, the Talmud describes the wisdom of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the leading sage in the Land of Israel in the first century CE: “Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai knew every part of the Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara, Halachot…, astronomy, numerical calculations, the language of the angels, the language of the spirit world, and the language of the trees…” (Sukkah 28a). Indeed, plants do have a language and can communicate – a fact revealed by Gd through His Torah millennia ago! Rabbi Zamir Cohen is the founder of the Hidabroot organization and has written several books on the topics of Jewish thought and law, including his national bestseller, The Coming Revolution. Plants can hear! - In 1950, Dr. T. S. Singh, conducted experiments that proved that plants that were played music to - grew faster and produced seeds at an above average rate. Farmers that recorded pleasant music and played it on loudspeakers for an hour each day had harvests that were up to 60% greater than the normal yield! It has been proven scientifically through many experiments that plants thrive on music. 50 Community magazine