Preserving life is a Jewish value. The Hebrew for that value is pikuakh nefesh (peh-KOO-akh NEH-fesh.)
Human beings cannot live without eating, but right now we need to be vigilant about the coronavirus, a disease that is highly contagious and for which there is as yet no treatment or cure.
This medical doctor offers training on how to safely handle groceries, and how to handle groceries you are taking to someone else.
May all of you reading this be safe and well.
My colleague and friend Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder posted this photo and question on Facebook recently:
In case you are wondering what’s actually in there:
The discussion that followed was very funny, with many different camps. Some people have wonderful childhood associations for these little slices of fruit flavored agar. Others were firm that they are “Evil!” Still others were torn – “Both!”
It set me to thinking about my own reaction to many processed Passover foods. I do not attach moral values to food, but golly, some of these things are weird if you didn’t grow up with them. For instance, to my mind, “Fruit Slices” are basically sugar that comes with glue to stick it between your teeth. There’s better candy to be had.
My favorite Passover junk food is chocolate covered matzah, which will probably be a mystery to many of my readers. How good it is depends mostly on the quality of the chocolate. This year I have bought Fair Trade Chocolate for Passover, which I know is (1) good chocolate and (2) ethically produced. I’m planning to dip the matzah in chocolate myself, then drizzle it with caramel. It will be delicious and not junk food at all, more of a Passover dessert!
Most of the processed Passover foods are junk, that is, foods without significant nutritional value. One exception is gefilte fish, which can be a good source of protein. A piece of gefilte fish has more protein than a large egg!
Passover is a festival of springtime. While the food manufacturers would like us to buy things in boxes labeled “Kosher for Passover,” I prefer to make it a festival of fruits and vegetables. The strawberries are often at their peak for Pesach. Asparagus is another food that’s just right at that time. Other goodies will be coming ripe, depending on where you live. Once the seder is over, I dispense with the matzah and just eat the lovely things that are growing this time of year.
Enjoy your Passover treats, be they fresh strawberries or chocolate matzah, or even Fruit Slices!
P.S. In case you are wondering, Maneschewitz, Osem, and the Fair Trade Chocolate people have not paid me to promote their products. The only product I recommend you buy is the Fair Trade Chocolate, since most chocolate on the market today is produced by enslaved persons, mostly children.
Over on Afroculinaria, Michael Twitty has some wonderful teaching about a traditional Sephardic food for Rosh HaShanah: black eyed peas! (Please go read that post – you won’t regret the time – a fabulous description of Sephardic food customs among other things!)
I ate black eyed peas on January 1 when I was growing up in the South. The custom was that if you ate the BEP’s you would have good luck and prosperity in the New Year. Michael Twitty does a great job of explaining why the Sephardim eat them – go read his article!
If you are unsure of what to do with BEP’s, get a can of them at the grocery store. If you are used to making dried legumes, you can go that route. Either way, once you have firm edible beans, you can mix them or serve them with rice for a delicious dish. Personally, I don’t do much at all to them, just serve with rice and a selection of hot pepper sauces. Let your guests choose the level of heat they want.
Some recipes call for meat in the peas. I make mine from dried peas in the crock pot, no meat, just water and beans and some chopped onions until the beans are soft. Then I season to taste with salt and pepper, spoon them over rice and serve. The tray of assorted hot sauces makes for some pleasant conversation at the table.
Happy whatever kind of New Year that you celebrate!
The image with this post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The owner is Toby Hudson.
One of my favorite blogs is Rachel Mankowitz’s The Cricket Pages. She just published a post about her memories around kosher food, which I share with my readers. Enjoy.
Jewish tradition sanctifies the entire process of obtaining food, preparing it, and eating it. This has always been the case with us; some of the earliest writings about Jews by outsiders have commented upon our food practices.
KASHRUT (kash-ROOT) is set of rules set forth originally in the Torah, refined in the Talmud and subsequent interpretation. The key texts for Jewish dietary law are in Exodus 23 and 34, Leviticus 11, and Deuteronomy 14. Those texts outline which animals are suitable to eat, which animals are forbidden, which birds and water creatures may be eaten and which are forbidden. For more about food laws in the Bible, MyJewishLearning.com has an excellent article.
To summarize the rules, animals must have cloven hooves and chew their cud. Fish must have fins and scales. Birds must not be predators or scavengers. No “creepy-crawlies” may be eaten (no shrimp, no snakes, no snails, etc.) Meat and milk must be eaten separately. One must not consume the blood of any creature. Over the centuries, rabbis have set the boundaries of practice so that these rules are not accidentally broken.
Animals are slaughtered according to the rules of kashrut, which is derived from the process by which animals were slaughtered for sacrifice in the Temple. Animals must be calmed, and the knife must be very sharp, so that the animal does not suffer unduly. Proper shechitah [slaughtering] severs the carotid and jugular as well as the windpipe very rapidly; animals die within seconds. Only certain parts of an animal are considered kosher, and a kosher butcher has to be specially trained to cut the meat up properly.
Some have tried to justify the rules of kashrut by speculating that they are for health or cleanliness. As expressed in the text, and as practiced by Jews for centuries, they are not rules with “reasons why.” The “why” is that they are commandments.
Today Jews who keep kosher do so for many reasons, for instance:
Some Jews do not keep kosher, but they avoid forbidden animals: they do not eat pork or shellfish. Some keep a limited form of kashrut, but only at home; when they are out, they don’t worry about it. Some Jews do not keep the food commandments at all, but they are aware that they do not keep them; even in non-observance there is awareness.
There are many interesting modern thoughts about kashrut. Some raise ethical questions about the treatment of laborers and/or of animals in modern kosher food processing plants. Some raise questions about sustainable food practices and our stewardship of the earth.
I heard a sermon when I was a student that made a huge impression on me. Rabbi Gersh Zylberman suggested to us that when we look at the dietary law as a whole, what we see is a complex of practices that discourage and limit the consumption of animal products. Combined with other texts that advocate for kindness towards animals, he argued that we should allow kashrut to move us toward a vegan lifestyle. Inspired, I researched a vegan diet and kept it for a time; but eventually I decided I was not yet ready for that degree of holiness.
Do you keep kosher? Is your diet influenced in any way by your Jewishness? Why, or why not?
The sanctification of ordinary life is a hallmark of Jewish living. “You shall be holy, as the Eternal your God is holy” begins the Holiness Code, the very heart of the Torah (Leviticus 19.)
So when we eat, we take an ordinary thing (eating) and turn it into something more, something sacred, by surrounding the act of eating with blessings.
First, we NOTICE: I’m going to eat dinner!
Then, we ACKNOWLEDGE by blessing: Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Creator of Time & Space, who brings forth bread from the earth. We acknowledge that we are not the Bosses of Dinner: even if I cooked that dinner, I did not grind the flour, I did not grow the green beans, and I certainly didn’t give life to all the various components of the meal. By blessing I acknowledge that it is a miracle that the meal exists and that many human hands and perhaps animal lives went into making it. I acknowledge that this meal is a miracle.
Then we EAT. Yay!
Then we BLESS again. This time it is a long blessing called the Birkat Hamazon, It is a set of four blessings that we say because of the mitzvah (commandment) in Deuteronomy 8:10 “You will eat, and you will be satisfied, and you will bless.” This time it is a thank you blessing, but it doesn’t stop with a private thanksgiving. It goes on to thank God for sustaining all creatures, for sustaining the Jewish People, asking that God sustain the Jews in the future (sort of a thanks-in-advance) and then a fourth blessings gives thanks for all the many happy relations between God and Israel. Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel, Memphis has made a very nice YouTube video you can watch below.
“I am not going to eat that doughnut; I’m going to be good.”
If you are an American, you’ve heard it. If you are an American woman, you’ve heard it a lot. But when was the last time you heard yourself or someone else say it about something that actually had moral value?
“I’m to obey every traffic law today. I’m going to be good.”
“I’m going to lobby against my own financial interests in favor of the interests of the poor. I’m going to be good.”
“I’m going to speak kindly to every person I meet for the next hour. I’m going to be good.”
… or even in reference to food:
“I’m not going to buy or eat chocolate that might have been produced by enslaved children. I’m going to be good.”
“I’m not going to buy or eat food that causes human or animal suffering. I’m going to be good.”
In Isaiah 58, God says to Israel:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
What kind of a world could we build if we put the energy into actual good deeds that we put into dieting and diet talk?
This post was inspired by:
As a regular blogger, I’m interested in seeing the statistics that wordpress supplies about my blog, especially how many people read the blog, and what brings them here. Today I noticed that one person reached the blog by googling: “blessings for people who make coffee.”
Sadly, I doubt they found what they were looking for here (but maybe they found something else useful – I hope so.) But it set me to thinking: yes, a person who makes coffee for others is a blessing! And perhaps we should bless them.
Blessings in Judaism are curious. We call them blessings because they begin with the word, “Baruch” (bless). But the Object of our blessing is always God: Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of Time&Space, who…[fill in the blank here.] So a blessing for the person who makes coffee might run like this:
“Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of Time&Space, who gives strength and kindness to the person who makes coffee.”
Baruch Atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haOlam, sheh noteyn ko-ach v’hesed l’mi shehmechin cafeh.
“But!” you are thinking, “Why bless God, when Sally made the coffee?”
One answer to this is that Sally’s making coffee, but God made both Sally and the coffee. We bless God to sanctify the details of our lives – not because they weren’t holy before, but because by blessing, we are noticing the holiness already in them.
Another answer is that we bless God in those circumstances because we see a little bit of the Holy One in Sally, with her strength and kindness to make coffee for others in the morning.
Blessings don’t mean that we think there is an Old Man in the Sky who needs blessing. Blessings mean that we notice holiness before us in the world, and know that holiness is a treasure worth celebrating.
