Periodically I will hear someone say that a food is kosher because “a rabbi said a prayer over it.” Not true. Kashrut is a complex topic, so I’ll tackle in it manageable “bites.”
Since Shabbat is coming, let’s start with wine.
Kosher wine is wine that has been produced and handled only by Sabbath-observing Jews, and for which all ingredients were also kosher.
You can tell if wine is kosher by looking for the hecksher (rabbinical mark) on the label.
The rules for kosher wine go back to ancient times, when wine was used to worship idols. To avoid wine that has been tainted by idol worship, kosher wine must be handled only by observant Jews. This includes the servers who pour the wine.
Wine has an important role in many Jewish celebrations, including welcoming Shabbat, making Havdalah at the end of Shabbat, kiddush for holidays, brit milah (circumcision) and weddings.
Not all kosher wines taste “like cough syrup.” Some labels are now producing wines that can compare favorably with non-kosher wines on the market.
Some people like the sweet wines like Manischewitz.
For more information about kosher wine, check out this article from the Kosher Wine Society.
Rabbi Jacob Saul Dwek and officials of the great synagogue of Aleppo. Jewish life in Syria came to an end in the 20th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are places in the world where there are very few Jews, and where Judaism is officially or unofficially forbidden by the state. One of the great mysteries of the Internet, to me, is that periodically someone in one of those countries will write to my friends at BecomingJewish.net and inquire about conversion to Judaism.
All the folks at BecomingJewish.net can do is write back to them and explain that (1) it isn’t safe to convert to Judaism in their country and (2) there are few or no Jews there, so it isn’t possible to convert.
On the one hand, it makes me sad to think that someone who wants to be Jewish is living in a place where they simply cannot become Jewish. On the other hand, it speaks to a real misunderstanding of Jewish life, because even if they could convert, they could not have any kind of meaningful experience of Jewish life without a community.
Judaism isn’t something you do by yourself. It isn’t private, it isn’t personal. It is communal. We pray in a minyan, a group of ten or more. We have a minyan for important occasions, like a bris. How can you have a seder, if you have no one with whom to discuss? We don’t even study alone!
This is why my first advice to anyone converting to Judaism is to find a rabbi, find a community, and to be regular at everything: services, events, and so on. It’s only by spending time with Jews that you can learn to be a Jew, and get the goodies of Jewish life.
As for the people writing letters from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to BecomingJewish.net, I have no idea what’s going on there. If they are real, I hope they can find their way to a place where there are more Jews.
From the articles you see for beginners about “Keeping Shabbat,” you might get the idea that Friday night is the whole shooting match. Not true!
Friday night is “Shabbat dinner,” true, and in many Reform synagogues, Friday night is the most-attended service, but Shabbat goes on until sundown on Saturday, and for me, Saturday can be the best part. Some things I love about Saturday and Shabbat:
Yes, the Saturday morning Torah service is long. It’s also beautiful, and we get to take the Torah out and march around with it and handle it and read from it. There are few more powerful ways to connect with our ancient past (more about Torah scrolls in a future post, I promise.)
Saturday kiddush lunch is the meal after the Saturday morning service. It might be at synagogue, or it might be at home. It starts with the kiddush (a toast to Shabbat, basically) and involves tasty food eaten in a leisurely fashion, preferably with friends. Yum.
Saturday afternoon is full of possibilities. For starters, there is Napping. Napping on Shabbat is glorious and decadent: it perhaps says better than anything that we are not slaves.
Saturday “naps” can also be put in quotations. If there is a time during the week when it is the accepted routine for the entire family to nap, that frees parents for affection and lovemaking.
Saturday afternoon can also be a time for hanging out and chatting. Before electronics took over every nanosecond of our lives, when the world was young… you remember. Or not. But that world can come back for a little while on Saturday afternoon.
And then – let’s be real here – maybe your world is set up in such a way that Friday evening Shabbat, services or dinner, simply can’t be observed properly. If that is the case, then don’t despair – find some Shabbat on Saturday.
Maybe you have your own ideas for Shabbat afternoons – I invite you to share them in the comments section. But whatever you do, don’t let anyone tell you that Shabbat is only Friday night, because Friday night is only the beginning!
Daylight savings time annoys me. It gives me jet lag without the pleasure of travel. However I have to admit that I learned some thing from it this year.
I woke before my alarm, gently, easily, perfectly rested. Then I saw the sunlight pouring in and jerked fully awake, horrified that I had slept through my alarm and would be late to teach my Sunday morning Intro class. I calmed only when I saw the clock: yes, it was only 6:30.
“Fall back an hour” gave me the additional hour of sleep that I usually deny myself. I felt GREAT.
We make tremendous fuss in our culture about “fitness” which is almost always code for “weight.” But we often abuse our bodies in socially approved ways which leave us anything but truly fit,
There is a prayer for the body which Jews have said from ancient times, Asher Yatzar. It reminds us that our bodies are intricate creations which can be disrupted by a small misfunction. I am going to pay more attention to getting enough sleep. So thank you, Daylight Savings, for pointing out to me that I need to make this small teshuvah (adjustment.)
Is there something you need to do to take better care of your marvelous, mysterious body?
As my life gets more chaotic with the process of moving (cleaning out one place, settling into another, with all the attendant messes involved) I notice that I’ve gotten less regular about posting here. So I am taking action! I registered for NaBloPoMo, It’s a lot of things (click on the link to learn more) but for me, it’s a commitment to post every single day in the month of November.
This is how things often happen with me: if I want to prioritize something, there’s nothing quite like making a public commitment to it. So there it is: let’s see if I can keep blogging while my life gets scattered all over San Leandro, CA.
“Home” is such an important place, and it can be such a slippery concept when we are under stress. I am living in two places right now, not fully in either, and the division is stressful. My office is in one place, my bed in another. Most of my clothes are in boxes, and I already know of one thing that probably got packed when it should have gone to Goodwill. Or maybe it didn’t. Nothing is sure anymore except that a lot of stuff is lost temporarily.
Our ancestors spent 40 years in the wilderness, wondering when they would get home to a place they had never seen. A whole generation had to pass before they could get to where they were going. Right now I can identify with them, even though I’m only moving a couple of miles, because I have pulled up the roots in one place and not yet put them all the way down in another. I’m living out of boxes, out of my car, and my car is a mess. When I think of it this way, though, I can’t fuss much: by the end of the month, I will be home. And in the meantime, writing this blog will be a fixed point in a moving universe, something that always helps me feel more secure.
When in your life have you been stuck in between? What did you do to take care of yourself in the meantime?
I’ve been a Jewish professional for almost 14 years.
I started with the Outreach Department of the Union for Reform Judaism (then the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.) There I was part of a national staff that assisted congregations in planning programming to be more welcoming to new members of the community, including converts to Judaism, interfaith households, and Jews who had grown up without Jewish community.
“Programs” were at the heart of the work. We designed programs to help people integrate into their congregations. We designed programs to help the congregations grow into more welcoming places. We designed programs to help people talk about difficult topics like Christmas trees, and in-laws. And all that work was important.
Looking back, though, I think the most important programs were those that taught people how to “do Jewish”: how to light Shabbat candles, how to prepare for the High Holy Days, how to set a Passover table, and so on. Those programs taught people that they didn’t need programs: they needed to take action themselves. And in retrospect, we left out a very important instruction: Now that you know how, go include others in this mitzvah you’ve learned how to do.
But “programs” are not the reason that Jewish civilization has thrived for three millennia – Jews living Torah and teaching it to others is how we have survived to this day. Instruction books can only tell “how to,” whether written in codices by 16th century mystics or in blogs by modern day rabbis. They cannot transmit the warmth of the table, the camaraderie of an afternoon spent decorating a sukkah with friends, the laughter around a Shabbat table. They cannot transmit the power of simple human presence at a shivah.
Many of us want the warmth, the camaraderie, the laughter, and the comfort. But we will not get them from “programs.” We will get them from living Torah with other Jews. That is why I’m moving into a place where I can more easily have people over: I want to teach Torah by Doing Torah. And what I want to tell you is that you can do this too.
Join me on this adventure. Invite someone for this Shabbat. Invite others to join you, even if nothing is kosher, even if it is at a restaurant, even if you do it with takeout on a card table. Don’t think of it as entertaining – think of it as what it is: Torah.
Yossi ben Yochanon from Jerusalem said: “Let your home be open wide to the multitudes. — Pirkei Avot 1:5
I posted last night just before Shabbat that we were going to have our first Shabbat dinner in our new home. It was wonderful! Our friend Dawn came, and we blessed and talked and had a wonderful time. The food was simple but it was eaten in the glow of Shabbat candles.
Now I grant you, having one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone I call “sister” to Shabbat dinner is hardly a wild act of hospitality. Still, it set a tone: we are not going to be hermits in that house, Linda and I. We are going to have guests at the table as often as we can. Food won’t be fancy (not with my cooking!) but it will be eaten with others.
I went looking for the source of the midrash that Abraham’s tent was open on four sides, and I found this article by Rabbi Monique Susskind Goldberg. It seems that in the commentary on the mishnah above, Pirkei Avot 1:5, the talmudic commentary gives the example of Job, whose home was open on four sides to all guests. He is then compared unfavorably to Abraham, who actually ran out on the road to welcome his guests in Genesis 18. If Abraham was even more hospitable than Job, then his tent was also open on four sides, or so the reasoning goes. The point is that hospitality is a mitzvah, an key part of being a Jew.
So we’ve begun. I’m sure it will be better when we have chairs for everyone and the oven actually works!
I am constantly telling my students that Shabbat dinner can be simple. Here is an example from my own life. We have not-quite-moved-into a new home. There is only a little furniture, but we do have running water and electricity, so I decided that tonight was the night for our first Shabbat dinner here. Menu:
takeout roast chicken – my spouse picked it up at a store that makes tasty chicken
salad – nothing fancy
challah – made and brought by a friend (our first Shabbat guest!)
grapes and dates for dessert
a bottle of wine
Kiddush cups
Candles
… on a folding table. We have two chairs so I will sit on the exercise ball I brought here to rest my back while moving. It’s makeshift. It’s ramshackle. It will be very tasty, and it will be shared with a friend. SHABBAT!
My point is, YOU CAN DO THIS.
Now I have to go and see if we have anything for napkins. Shabbat shalom!
Roxie’s Bagel & Lox Open Face Sandwich (Photo credit: GregoryH)
“I’m a cultural Jew.”
People generally say it after they find out I’m a rabbi. I know exactly what’s going on when they say it: they suspect that I will judge them a Bad Jew, because they aren’t “religious.” And either they are cringing at the prospect of judgment or they are angry at the prospect of judgment. Either way, it’s a barrier.
I wish I could convince them that I know enough about Jewish history and Jewish scripture to withhold my judgment. Whatever the ideal of “a good Jew” one may have in mind, history offers a wild diversity of Jewish role models. Secular Jews have been active in many of the great social justice movements of our time. They have been influential philosophers, artists, scientists, musicians, lawyers, actors, writers, and economists. Their Jewish cultural identity has informed their lives and work.
I am much more interested in what you are doing about being Jewish, than that it happens in a way approved by some particular corner of the tribe. There are many ways to be Jewish. Let’s celebrate them all.
From Rabbi Adar:Dawn Kepler is my friend and teacher. Years and years ago, she mentored me through conversion. She is the founding director of Building Jewish Bridges: Embracing Interfaith Couples & Families in Berkeley, CA. Dawn has worked in outreach to unaffiliated and interfaith couples since 1990. BJB’s programs also address the unique concerns of Jewish minorities that are often a subset of the interfaith population – multiracial, multiethnic and LGBT Jews.
In response to the needs of seekers and converts to Judaism, Dawn works with Linda Burnett on programs offered through the website www.becomingjewish.net.
She wrote to her mailing list about my Who’s the Most Jewish? post and said some things I wish I’d said. So I thought, “Gosh, it’s time for a guest blogger!”
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Whether you were born Jewish or converted to Judaism it is highly tempting to get caught up in the mental high jinks of other people, especially ones who are verbally poking you with a stick. But don’t. Don’t let someone else’s insecurity color your confidence and your actions.
Read Rabbi Adar’s article, Who’s the Most Jewish? and ask yourself, do I need more learning? Do I want to read Hebrew better? Would I really feel better if I had converted or was converting in a more traditional movement?
Do what YOU need to feel authentic. I have a friend who began with a Reform conversion and years later decided to have a Conservative one. Then more years passed and she became Orthodox and had a third conversion with an Orthodox rabbi. Some people refer to this as an ‘upgrade.’ It’s not. An upgrade means to raise to a higher standard. What standard are you shooting for? Judaism demands that we use our brains, learn what our sages have taught and then upgrade our lives.
You know the story of Zusya who wept for fear that he had not been himself. In other words he had not fulfilled his potential. The upgrade you must pursue is to and do whatever it is that you were created for. Only you really know what that is.
So let’s think about it.
One of the most empowering things for a Jew by choice is to be active in Jewish community. If you are on a committee, setting out the oneg, cooking for the homeless project, helping out in the shul office, bringing snacks to Hebrew school, you’ll gain a sense of personal ownership. Make your shul, YOUR SHUL. Make your rabbi, YOUR RABBI.
I have a friend who decided to get on the chevra kadisha (the committee that prepares the dead for burial), another one joined the hospitality committee, another volunteers at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, another donates services from his business to various agencies’ fundraisers, another reads with kids through the Jewish Literacy Project, and another heads his shul’s blood drive.
Find out what your passion in the Jewish community is and DO IT. OWN your Judaism! Now lech lecha! Get going!
She wrote to her mailing list about my