GV-NA-GI-TLV-GE-I
New Member
This is nearing the High Holy Days in the Jewish calendar and a friend sent this to me. I've read Lucette Lagnado's memoirs of her life in Egypt...wonderful read (The Man in the White Shark Skin Suit). The following article is likewise wonderful and gives a lot of insight into food...and why it is prepared certain ways...in prayer. I thought this might be interesting for others to read:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c228_a16656/Special_Sections/Text_Context.html
Finding God Through Food
by Lucette Lagnado
Apples dipped in honey? That tradition, so central to the Rosh HaShanah tables of Ashkenazi Jews—and many Sephardic ones as well—was completely unknown to me as a child in Cairo, even though my Egyptian-Jewish family observed the holiday as meticulously as if it were another seder.
And in a way it was.
There were multiple courses and prayers to go with them, all in a particular order, as on Passover. We sat down to dine at a table set with a white tablecloth, always white, because white was the color of the New Year. Mom covered the bread with a white embroidered cloth napkin, and there were sweet-smelling white flowers known as fol, a relative of jasmine.
We recited one blessing after another throughout the evening meal. And while we didn’t have apples—they were very exotic in Cairo, pricey and available only at one or two vendors in the city—we, too, had our contingent of items to help us pray for a good year.
My favorite was the delicate jam made of Italian squash my mother grated by hand. Known as confiture D’arah in that delightful combination of French and Arabic common to the Levant, where two or three languages are used to describe a single entity, the light green concoction was pungent with orange water, which Mom used liberally in her cooking.
Once we settled in America, our High Holiday table didn’t change. We continued exactly as we had in Egypt.
Yes, apples were now plentiful and available for pennies, but we didn’t want them.
If food was our conduit to God, as it is, I suppose, for so many Jews, ours was a strange and magical and elaborate road.
We ate large bowls of black-eyed peas—they were essential to our prayers. And Swiss chard and pomegranate seeds. But the pièce de résistance was the miniature herbed omelets Mom made for each one of us seated at the table: round and golden and stuffed with leeks and parsley.
In a way, we were no different from our Ashkenazi neighbors who asked God for a sweet year while dipping into honey. We simply gave ourselves more opportunities to do so. For example, when we ate the pomegranate, we prayed “that our merits increase like the seeds of a pomegranate.” Or as we devoured the black-eyed peas, we asked God: “May it be Your will that our merits increase like the black-eyed peas.”
I loved that: the blessing as well as the black-eyed peas.
In the case of Mom’s delectable jam, we asked that any evil decree against us be torn up.
But our Rosh HaShanah dinner came with a twist; along with the feel-good blessings about having our virtues recognized and averting any evil decrees, there were also several blessings where we prayed to have our enemies abolished, destroyed, eradicated.
And that is what always fascinated me about Rosh HaShanah—and what I found jarring. Not so much the sappy stuff as the amazingly vengeful-sounding prayers, almost curses really, that were said at the same joyful, hopeful dinner table.
For example, the first items we ate were dates, when we recited the blessing: “May it be Your will, Hashem, that our adversaries and enemies and all who seek to do us evil cease to exist.”
We’d say this and then bite into a sweet, delicious date. Huh?
Then, as we had the leeks in Mom’s omelets, we prayed to God “that our adversaries and enemies and all who seek to do us evil be decimated.” Similarly with the Swiss chard, we asked again
of God “that our adversaries and en-emies and all who seek to do us evil will be removed.”
Admittedly, the rest of the night was all about abundance and sweetness; but I was always haunted by these other blessings.
In preparation for this year’s holiday, I decided to consult a couple of rabbis I know and like from the Ashkenazi and Sephardic tradition and ask them point blank why this very holy night seems to have this rather angry overtone. Rabbi Rafe Konikov of Chabad of Southampton Jewish Center offered a pragmatic interpretation, saying that in Judaism the most important ordinance is to remain alive—and that includes asking God to eradicate our enemies.
“We cherish life, and so with dates, we ask to make sure no one will stand up and take us out,” Rabbi Konikov said.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c228_a16656/Special_Sections/Text_Context.html
Finding God Through Food
by Lucette Lagnado
Apples dipped in honey? That tradition, so central to the Rosh HaShanah tables of Ashkenazi Jews—and many Sephardic ones as well—was completely unknown to me as a child in Cairo, even though my Egyptian-Jewish family observed the holiday as meticulously as if it were another seder.
And in a way it was.
There were multiple courses and prayers to go with them, all in a particular order, as on Passover. We sat down to dine at a table set with a white tablecloth, always white, because white was the color of the New Year. Mom covered the bread with a white embroidered cloth napkin, and there were sweet-smelling white flowers known as fol, a relative of jasmine.
We recited one blessing after another throughout the evening meal. And while we didn’t have apples—they were very exotic in Cairo, pricey and available only at one or two vendors in the city—we, too, had our contingent of items to help us pray for a good year.
My favorite was the delicate jam made of Italian squash my mother grated by hand. Known as confiture D’arah in that delightful combination of French and Arabic common to the Levant, where two or three languages are used to describe a single entity, the light green concoction was pungent with orange water, which Mom used liberally in her cooking.
Once we settled in America, our High Holiday table didn’t change. We continued exactly as we had in Egypt.
Yes, apples were now plentiful and available for pennies, but we didn’t want them.
If food was our conduit to God, as it is, I suppose, for so many Jews, ours was a strange and magical and elaborate road.
We ate large bowls of black-eyed peas—they were essential to our prayers. And Swiss chard and pomegranate seeds. But the pièce de résistance was the miniature herbed omelets Mom made for each one of us seated at the table: round and golden and stuffed with leeks and parsley.
In a way, we were no different from our Ashkenazi neighbors who asked God for a sweet year while dipping into honey. We simply gave ourselves more opportunities to do so. For example, when we ate the pomegranate, we prayed “that our merits increase like the seeds of a pomegranate.” Or as we devoured the black-eyed peas, we asked God: “May it be Your will that our merits increase like the black-eyed peas.”
I loved that: the blessing as well as the black-eyed peas.
In the case of Mom’s delectable jam, we asked that any evil decree against us be torn up.
But our Rosh HaShanah dinner came with a twist; along with the feel-good blessings about having our virtues recognized and averting any evil decrees, there were also several blessings where we prayed to have our enemies abolished, destroyed, eradicated.
And that is what always fascinated me about Rosh HaShanah—and what I found jarring. Not so much the sappy stuff as the amazingly vengeful-sounding prayers, almost curses really, that were said at the same joyful, hopeful dinner table.
For example, the first items we ate were dates, when we recited the blessing: “May it be Your will, Hashem, that our adversaries and enemies and all who seek to do us evil cease to exist.”
We’d say this and then bite into a sweet, delicious date. Huh?
Then, as we had the leeks in Mom’s omelets, we prayed to God “that our adversaries and enemies and all who seek to do us evil be decimated.” Similarly with the Swiss chard, we asked again
of God “that our adversaries and en-emies and all who seek to do us evil will be removed.”
Admittedly, the rest of the night was all about abundance and sweetness; but I was always haunted by these other blessings.
In preparation for this year’s holiday, I decided to consult a couple of rabbis I know and like from the Ashkenazi and Sephardic tradition and ask them point blank why this very holy night seems to have this rather angry overtone. Rabbi Rafe Konikov of Chabad of Southampton Jewish Center offered a pragmatic interpretation, saying that in Judaism the most important ordinance is to remain alive—and that includes asking God to eradicate our enemies.
“We cherish life, and so with dates, we ask to make sure no one will stand up and take us out,” Rabbi Konikov said.
