Like many of you, I approach the New Year and Yom Kippur with a heavy heart. Ashamnu. We have sinned. Much is not well, not as it should or can be. Our communities are filled with anger, fear, hatred, pain, and acrimony.
Our tradition placed a heavy burden on us. Atonement is only attainable when accompanied by a commitment to change one’s behaviour. The burden is doubly heavy, for we are not merely responsible for our individual failings, but for our societal ones. Ashamnu. We have sinned. Yom Kippur is not merely a day of prayer in search of Divine forgiveness, but a day of taking responsibility for the world that we have created.
There are so many places to start this process and, for those who don’t know where, the Jewish prayer book provides guidance. Ashamnu. Bagadnu. Gazalnu. Dibarnu dofi. We have sinned. We have betrayed. We have taken that which is not ours. We have spoken evil.
This year, I will begin with the sin of certainty. The certainty that I have the truth and others do not. The certainty that I am right and others wrong. The certainty that I am good and others bad. The certainty that I love my country and others do not.
“Our God and God of our ancestors, we are neither so insolent nor so obstinate as to claim in your presence that we are righteous, without sin; for we, like our ancestors who came before us, have sinned.” (Yom Kippur Machzor)
Inherent to every social structure is the reality of difference. Members, adherents, citizens, who join or are joined together by blood, race, gender, ideology, religion, culture or nationality, inevitably find themselves disagreeing over issues both minor and major. Differences are a permanent and inevitable reality of life. By themselves, they do not undermine social cohesion. What threatens unity is how we respond to the reality.
The three conceptual tools for reflecting on difference are pluralism, tolerance and deviance. When those who are different are classified as deviant, the possibility of a shared society with them comes to an end. It is here that the sin of certainty spreads its destructive poison. The hubris of certainty allows one to shun and shame those who do not share in the truth as you know it, and to move them to the margins of society, if not outside it. Armed with certainty, acts of blatant aggression are clothed with the garments of self-preservation and sanctioned as acts of group loyalty.
A certainty of a different form is played out in the category of pluralism. We are pluralistic toward those differences that we assume to be of equal value to our own positions – “These and these are the words of the living God.” With pluralism, we accommodate difference that we believe is equally authentic and that we can associate as being on par with our truth, our knowledge and our beliefs. These and these are the words of the living God, but not those and those. And the one who decides is us.
Why tolerate that which I believe to be wrong?
The danger that lies with the sin of certainty is that it attempts to create social life around the categories of pluralism and deviance alone. Difference to which I ascribe value is accommodated and welcomed as my friend. Difference that I do not, is rejected and ostracized as my enemy. I and my certainty are the ultimate arbiters of who is in and who is out, who is valued and who is not, who is to be cared for and who is not, who is to be respected and who vilified.
It is tolerance, the often-derided category, that is most absent in much of contemporary social discourse. One does not tolerate that which one values, but rather that which one thinks is wrong. Tolerance can only take root in those places where we are able to relinquish our claim to certainty. Why tolerate that which I believe to be wrong? Because I know it is possible that my belief may also be wrong. Because I believe that truth, knowledge and enlightenment will only grow when I expose my certainty to the critique of others; when I am open to learn from others’ truths, knowledge and experience.
Why tolerate that which I believe to be wrong? Because I and those like me do not have a monopoly over the “true” identity of our society. It is theirs just as much as it is ours. We are destined to live with those who believe and do that which we hold to be intolerable. In some cases, judgment of deviance is both called for and necessary and, without boundaries, our societies will dissolve and lose any purpose, meaning and identity.
Which difference do we tolerate, and which do we not, is the question. The sin of certainty both blinds us to this question and renders us incapable of such discernment. The price? The price is the dysfunctional harmful social discourse and behaviour dominating our lives today.
“Our God and God of our ancestors, we are neither so insolent nor so obstinate as to claim in Your presence we are certain.”
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartmanis president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.
Although beekeeping as an occupation is not mentioned in the Bible, bees are mentioned four times, honeycombs are referred to eight times and honey is referred to 26 times. Archeologists actually have discovered proof that there was beekeeping and honey 3,000 years ago in a site in northern Israel.
Among Ashkenazim, sweet desserts for Rosh Hashanah are customary, particularly lekach, or honey cake, and teiglach, a hard, doughy, honey and nut cookie. Some say the origin of the sweets comes from a passage in the book of Hosea mentioning “love cakes of raisins.” There is also a passage in II Samuel, which talks about the multitude of Israel, “to everyone a cake of bread and a cake made in a pan and a sweet cake.”
It was Ezra, the fifth-century BCE religious leader who was commissioned by the Persian king to direct Jewish affairs in Judea, and Nehemiah, a political leader and cup bearer of the king in the fifth century BCE, who told the returning exiles to eat and drink sweet things.
Honey cakes traditionally include honey, spices, coffee and brown sugar as major ingredients, but some contain cognac, brandy, orange or lemon peel and nuts. In Curaçao, for example, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, raisins, nuts or currants, lemon or orange peel is added. In Zimbabwe, Jews include allspice, cinnamon, cloves, raisins, chopped nuts, brandy and chopped candied fruit in their honey cake.
In That Hungarian’s in My Kitchen, Linda Radke includes a Hungarian recipe from her family, which includes the basic ingredients and orange juice. A cookbook of Russian recipes includes a Ukrainian honey cake, medivik, with the basic ingredients as well as cardamom, orange peel, raisins, walnuts and apricots.
In The Jewish Book of Food, Claudia Roden writes that honey cake was a favourite in Germany as far back as the Middle Ages, and that lebkuchen, honey gingerbread, was also mentioned as early as the 12th century.
According to John Cooper in Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food, references to honey cake were made in the 12th century by a French sage, Simcha of Vitry, author of the Machzor Vitry, and by German rabbi Eleazar Judah ben Kalonymos. Cooper writes that, on the new moon in the month of Nissan, boys at Jewish school were given honig lekach, honey cake: “Originally, the names of angels were inscribed on the honey cake and amulets were attached to them, but later this practice was discarded.” According to Cooper, the words lebkuchen and lekach probably came to be related to the German word for lick, lecke.
By the 16th century, lekach was known as a Rosh Hashanah sweet. It also became popular for other lifecycle celebrations, such as betrothals and weddings. Malvina W. Liebman writes in Jewish Cooking from Boston to Baghdad that Crypto-Jews in 16th-century Latin America ate honey cake at weddings, in memory of the honeycomb that an angel gave to Asenath when she married Joseph.
In The Complete International Jewish Cookbook, Evelyn Rose (z”l), a maven of Jewish cooking from England, wrote that the first cakes made with artificial raising agents were honey cake, and honey was the chosen sweetener because sugar was not widely available until the end of the 19th century. As an aside, she also recommends keeping a honey cake in a closed container for a week before serving it, so it will “mature.”
Among the Chassidim, it was customary for the rebbe to distribute lekach to his followers, and others would request a piece of honey cake from one another on Erev Yom Kippur. This transaction symbolized a substitute for any charity the person might choose to receive.
Gil Marks (z”l), in The World of Jewish Desserts, says fluuden, a layered yeast cake, was traditional for Rosh Hashanah among Franco-German Jews. Made with a cheese filling, it could be eaten after a meat meal, since they only waited one hour between meat and dairy. Strudel, from the German word for whirlpool, was also common for Rosh Hashanah among European Jews.
The most traditional cookie for Rosh Hashanah is teiglach, the dough pieces dropped into a hot honey syrup and simmered until brown then left to cool. It has been suggested that this Eastern European sweet was probably invented by some housewife who had dough left over and dropped the pieces into a boiling honey syrup.
Many Jews of Sephardi background make tishpishti for Rosh Hashanah. This cake with walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pecans, has a hot syrup poured over it. The syrup can be made with sugar, water and liqueur, according to Rabbi Robert Sternberg in The Sephardic Kitchen. Sternberg also points to rodanchas as a popular Sephardi Rosh Hashanah sweet. These spiral-shaped pastries of phyllo dough contain a pumpkin or squash filling because these vegetables and their shape symbolize the cycle of life and the ascent of the soul into heaven.
Here are some honey cakes to try this year.
TISHPISHTI Jews who lived in Turkey after being expelled from Spain in 1492 adopted this dish, whose name means “quick and done.” Some say it was always served on Rosh Hashanah, but it was also popular for Passover because it has no flour.
2 cups ground almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios or walnuts 1 cup cake meal 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground cloves or allspice 6 separated eggs 1 cup sugar 2 tbsp orange juice 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 tbsp grated lemon or orange peel * * * 3/4 cup honey 1/2 cup sugar 2/3 cup water 1/4 cup lemon juice
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a rectangular baking pan.
In a mixing bowl, combine nuts, cake meal, cinnamon and cloves or allspice.
In another bowl, beat egg yolks with sugar. Add to nut mixture along with orange juice, oil and lemon or orange peel.
Beat egg whites in another bowl until stiff. Fold into batter. Pour into cake pan and bake 45 minutes.
Place honey, sugar, water and lemon juice in a saucepan. Stir until sugar dissolves. Increase heat, bring to a boil and cook for one minute. Let cool.
Cut cake into squares or diamonds. Drizzle syrup over cake. Serve warm or at room temperature.
MOM’S HONEY LOAF CAKE I don’t recall my mom baking this, but it was in my collection of recipes as being hers.
3 1/2 cups flour 1/4 tsp salt 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/8 tsp ground cloves 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg 4 eggs 3/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup vegetable oil * * * 2 cups honey 1/2 cup strong coffee 1/2 cup raisins 1/2 cup chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease two loaf pans or a rectangular baking pan.
Combine in a bowl flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg.
Beat eggs and sugar in another bowl until fluffy. Add oil, honey and coffee.
Stir in flour mixture. Add raisins and nuts. Pour into pans. Bake for 1.5 hours.
Sybil Kaplanis a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.
I’m here to boldly encourage you to try something entirely different at your Rosh Hashanah table this year. No, not a pony. A new food. Serve it, to non-vegetarians. And, if anybody asks what they’re eating, confidently tell them it’s a family secret. Don’t forget to mention that, if you tell them, you’ll have to kill them. That generally stops people in their nosy tracks. Let me be perfectly transparent: the food I’m about to suggest is on the meat spectrum. Alright, meat adjacent.
Isn’t it enough that everyone’s oohing and ahhing over the unparalleled tenderness of the dish? The specifics are strictly on a need-to-know basis. And no one needs to know. Except your butcher. OK, enough. It’s beef tongue. You heard correctly. I’m aware it’s not politically correct – after all, some farmer is clearly stifling free speech. Even if it only belongs to a cow. (And, technically, they can’t speak anyway. So moot point.)
Just so we’re clear, beef tongue is definitely not vegan. Or vegetarian-friendly. Not by a New York mile. I’m simply providing you with an alternative to screaming chicken, Coca-Cola brisket and mayo-slathered, onion soup-mix salmon.
I know that beef tongue screams old school (and Council cookbook). But so do I. And, if we’re going to be honest about it, people are still enthusiastically scarfing down ketchup-glazed meatloaf and baked salami filled with French’s mustard. They’re just not yelling it from the rooftops. So, loosen up and try thinking of beef tongue as a distant relative. Second cousin twice removed. Only maybe a little farther. But, still, meat mishpachah.
Before you pooh-pooh it, give it a shot. At least Google it and see what other Jews have to say about it. Most delis sell it pickled. But, believe me, pickled tongue has nothing on the sweet and sour version. Personally, I prefer to just boil it, cool it and eat it in a sandwich. With yellow mustard. On white bread. I can see the lynch mob in the distance.
The cooking part is where it gets tricky. If you’re a man, chances are you can’t relate to what I’m about to describe. You ladies, on the other hand, will understand perfectly. The cooking per se is easy (see recipe below). The next part is where it gets awkward. Once it’s cooked, you need to peel off the rubbery outside skin: think of taking off a pair of too-thick, too-tight pantyhose. That are wet. And it’s a hot, humid day. Not a particularly appealing visual, but it’s fairly accurate hyperbole.
Trust me when I tell you that your family/guests will be drooling all over themselves, demanding the recipe – if they can get past the sordid cooking details. Without further ado, here goes. And don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the recipe. You’re welcome.
SWEET AND SOUR BEEF TONGUE
1 beef tongue 2 onions, peeled and quartered 3 cloves garlic, peeled and halved 2 bay leaves *** 15 oz can of tomato sauce 15 oz water 3/4 cup brown sugar juice of 1 lemon 1/2 cup sultana or dark raisins dash of Worcestershire sauce (optional) salt and pepper
Put the tongue and the rest of the ingredients into a deep pot with enough water to cover it well. Bring to a boil and simmer partly covered for about three-and-a-half hours, until tender when pierced with a fork. As it’s cooking, skim off the shmootz that forms on top. When tender, remove from the water. While it’s still warm, remove the skin (see detailed, gross description above), bones and stem. Slice and serve as is, or slice and serve with the sweet and sour sauce.
At the end of the day, a well-cooked beef tongue is all you need and nothing you don’t. But, I get that some of you are disgusted at the thought of eating tongue. So, for you finicky folks, I offer up another old school recipe – short ribs. This one is decades old and was handed down from my father’s cousin, Bertha Bloom. Nobody said it was diet food, so, if you’re not fussy about calories, go for it. Short ribs are notorious for being fatty, but therein lies most of their charm. Alright, all of their charm. You’ll diet tomorrow. And, hopefully, not die of clogged arteries tonight. But, have your cardiologist on speed dial, just in case.
BERT BLOOM’S BARBEQUE SHORT RIBS
Season two pounds of short ribs with salt, pepper and garlic salt then broil them until brown and half cooked. Transfer them to a covered Dutch oven (or similar deep roasting pan). For the sauce:
1 cup chili sauce 1/4 cup ketchup 4 tsp dry mustard 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 clove garlic, crushed 1 tbsp soy sauce small tin of crushed pineapple
Mix the ingredients together – including the juice from the pineapple tin, but not the pineapple – put in a pot and bring to a boil. Pour the sauce over the ribs and cook covered at 300°F to 325°F for one-and-a-half to two hours, basting occasionally. Add the crushed pineapple 20 minutes before it’s finished cooking and leave uncovered. Prepare to be awed by the yumminess factor.
For your guests who prefer healthy food, you may want to direct them elsewhere for Rosh Hashanah dinner. Or, if you’re a really nice and accommodating host, make them a marinated tofu mock-roast. Or a Tofurkey. But, for those of you indulging in the short ribs, now might be a good time to loosen your belt or unzip your skirt, and prepare to stuff your belly. It’s Rosh Hashanah. Celebrate with some new arterial stents! Tell Dr. Saul I sent you.
Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.
Services in the Schara Tzedeck auditorium, with social-distancing measures in place. (photo by Camille Wener)
In early March, Canadians were just beginning to take COVID-19 seriously. Then, in what seemed like an instant, the province shut down all places where people gather. Religious organizations were forced to close their doors – in some cases for the first time in more than a century – and rethink everything about how they engage with their congregants.
In a survey of rabbis and synagogue leaders across British Columbia after a summer of COVID, what emerges is not so much a story of hardship and difficulty but of resilience, creativity and a paring away of the superfluous to rediscover the most elemental things that we seek from spirituality and community.
The loss of life, the horrible illness and difficult recovery have directly affected thousands of British Columbia families, but we have fared better than many other jurisdictions. Even those not directly affected by the virus itself have had heartbreaking occasions, such as losing loved ones to other causes without family beside them, funerals and shivahs conducted online and, of course, the various burdens and isolation experienced by older people, those who live alone or others who are especially vulnerable.
As we approach High Holidays that are assured to be unlike any we have experienced before, there is an air of anxiety, but more evident is a flexibility and commitment to make the holidays as meaningful as possible. Although close coordination has taken place through RAV, the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver, every congregation is finding its own way and the holidays in most cases will occur along a spectrum of hybrid in-person and online services, most with multiple smaller, shorter programs. Services that routinely occur outdoors, such as Tashlich, will be joined in some cases with shofar-blowing and other services held out of doors. Despite all, reaction among rabbis is that community engagement and flexibility have made these months far better than could have been predicted in March.
“From day one, our motto was, we are not ramping down, we are ramping up,” said Rabbi Jonathan Infeld. His Conservative shul, Beth Israel, had not previously done programs or services online but, within 24 hours of the shutdown, all activities had moved online.
Zoom, an online meeting platform that almost no one had heard of before the pandemic, has proved a lifeline for individuals and communities, including almost all synagogues in the province. The platform’s interactivity allows individuals to participate in services, make virtual aliyot, engage in back-and-forth with teachers and guest speakers, and participate from home in numbers that rabbis say are routinely higher than in-person programs in “normal” times. “The social community of the synagogue’s remained intact,” said Infeld.
Most of Beth Israel’s congregants will experience the High Holidays from home, online. “It’s only the people who are leading the services and/or their families who will be in the building,” he said.
Provincial regulations permit a maximum of 50 people in any gathering, with social distancing enforced. For synagogues, that number varies based on the size of a sanctuary and the reality is that, to ensure two-metre separation, smaller synagogues will be able to accommodate far fewer than 50.
For the Orthodox Congregation Schara Tzedeck, however, online Shabbat and holiday services are not an option.
“We’ve had to think very creatively,” said Camille Wenner, executive director of the synagogue. “This was the first time in 110 years that our doors closed for davening,” she said.
People who had made minyan every week of their life suddenly couldn’t.
“That was really difficult,” said Wenner. “That’s why it was so important for us to mobilize a chesed committee to connect with everyone and make sure that everyone was OK. That’s how the idea of Shabbat in a Box developed and the idea of feeding people and making them feel that that ritual of Shabbat is still very much alive, you don’t have to be here to do it, we can still do it together.” That concept will be extended to Rosh Hashanah in a Box, which will go to more than 300 households.
Office administrator Anna Herman is among those who sanitize the prayer books for congregants to use at services. (photo by Camille Wener)
Schara Tzedeck was the first Orthodox synagogue in Canada to reopen to limited in-person services, on June 1. “It was nerve-racking,” Wenner admitted. The usual single Shabbat service has been increased to two. Hand sanitizers and masks are required. Those who do not bring their own siddur are handed a newly cleaned one. Additional custodial staff are on hand to wipe down the entire sanctuary between services. An online registration program allows congregants to see how many of the 50 seats remain available.
For the holidays, services will be expanded to meet demand, she said. Rabbis and cantors who work in day schools and elsewhere in the community have volunteered to lead smaller services, which will occur in various places throughout the building and may even take place under a tent in the parking lot, if need be.
“The services will be condensed to about two hours instead of the regular five,” she said. “Right now, we’re looking at six or seven services back to back starting at 6:30 in the morning.”
The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture normally doesn’t run programming through the summer. But, this year, the Sholem Aleichem Speakers Series has continued every Friday on Zoom and Exploring Jewish Writers, on Saturday mornings, also has continued through the summer, said Donna Becker, the centre’s executive director. “Both of them are better attended on Zoom than they were in person,” she said.
Peretz Centre holiday services will feature Stephen Aberle singing Kol Nidre, but the usual musical program, which sees the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir interspersed with the audience, is obviously out of the question.
This year’s High Holidays will be the first since the inception of the progressive congregation Ahavat Olam in 2004 that will not be held at the Peretz Centre. Said board member Alan Bayless: “We would prefer not to use computers for Shabbat or High Holiday services, but we believe that virtual services are necessary for our community this year given the danger of the coronavirus.”
Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg of Chabad Lubavitch BC, said the 10 Chabad centres in the province are all adopting protocols appropriate for their congregants’ needs. He worries that, with daily infection reports often heading in the wrong direction, the province may re-impose stricter regulations by the time the holidays roll around. Either way, he suspects many or most people will be marking the holidays at home. “It’s the reality,” he said. “It’s a question of what works and what is acceptable and what isn’t.”
On the positive side, online learning has skyrocketed.
“The amount of study that’s going on by Zoom is absolutely unprecedented,” Wineberg said. “That’s the silver lining. I have a feeling that it will continue once this pandemic is over, God willing as soon as possible, I think people are going to continue learning that way. You have the convenience of sitting in your home and participating almost as if you are there – that’s the new reality.”
The Reform synagogue Temple Sholom had a running leap at livestreaming services, so some of the infrastructure was well in place before the pandemic. The difference now is the effort they are going to not just to allow people at home to observe, but to participate in the services. Classes, webinars and other programs have been expanded online. The Men’s Club and the Sisterhood have moved their programs onto Zoom. The accessibility means Temple Sholom programs are reaching new audiences, often far outside Vancouver.
The summer weather has allowed the synagogue to hold some events in parks and in the courtyard behind the shul. Still, Rabbi Carey Brown has no illusions that these High Holidays will be like any other. For one thing, only clergy will be in the sanctuary.
“It will be really different,” said Brown, who is the synagogue’s associate rabbi. “We are working really hard to put together High Holiday services and experiences that will help people feel the sense of the season, both the newness of the new year and the reflectiveness of the season.”
The Okanagan Jewish Community, which does not have a permanent rabbi, has depended on volunteers to deliver programs and services. The Kelowna-area centre has seen significant growth, and is running an 11-person conversion class and various adult education programs on Zoom. As great as all that is, Steven Finkelman, the centre’s president, thinks this might be a tough year financially for the group, a concern expressed by several interviewees. Revenue generated at the High Holidays and through in-person galas or other fundraising events in normal years is likely to suffer this year.
While online programming has proven hugely popular, there can be no denying that this experience has resulted in some missed opportunities. Rabbi Philip Gibbs of West Vancouver’s Conservative shul Har-El, has pangs of regret when he thinks back to the grand plans the synagogue had in January for a year of innovation and new initiatives.
“I was very excited about both the scale and the types and the variety of programming – more cooking events or culturally focused programs that really were going to give our community the chance to gather and engage in a really fun, exciting and meaningful way,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve lost that opportunity.”
The challenges and opportunities of the High Holidays will be met with one or more services on different days, he said. While he and his congregation are making the best of the situation, Gibbs laments the loss of in-person collective connection.
Similarly, Rabbi Hannah Dresner of Or Shalom, which is affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement, grieves the loss of some in-person connections. However, she feels that Zoom can provide an intimacy that a large group gathering might not. As well, not only are out-of-towners joining Or Shalom’s offerings, but the rabbi and others are surfing programs throughout the Jewish world and beyond.
“I just think it’s a time when the world is our oyster,” said Dresner. “Spiritually you can look for whatever kinds of workshops you want, so people are experimenting a lot more.”
Or Shalom will hold successive Tashlich services at False Creek, each accommodating congregants in limited numbers. For the well-being of ducks and other birds, Or Shalom members drop leaves rather than bread in the water.
“I love the creative challenge, but I can’t say it doesn’t keep me up at night,” Dresner said, laughing. “I hear a lot of rabbis say, I didn’t sign up for this. There’s nothing that we’re doing that I signed up for.”
This extraordinary time has forced and invited rabbis and others to reconsider everything. The changes have made her reflect on “what’s at the heart of the service, what do we really need, what’s extraneous, what makes it tedious? Because it cannot be tedious. It’s got to be tight, shorter and beautiful.”
Rabbi Levi Varnai of the Bayit in Richmond concurs that the crisis forced a reckoning. “If a synagogue is not doing services – and we don’t do services online – what do we do? It got us thinking to the real core of what a synagogue is really supposed to be about,” he said.
As an Orthodox shul, the Bayit cannot stream services on Shabbat or the holidays, but they have expanded classes throughout the week and held socially distanced events at Garry Point Park. Pre-Shabbat events help people prepare for the Sabbath and regular phone calls and visits by the rabbi and volunteers to speak with people from a distance and drop off packages keep a sense of community alive.
Now that limited in-person gatherings are permitted, the shul’s size permits 25 congregants. But even that is not quite as it was. “It’s coming in, praying and going, which is great because it’s more than we had before that,” he said, but there’s no food and no kibbitzing.
The holidays will see multiple services and people can arrange to be there specifically for Yizkor but perhaps not come for the entire day.
The chaos of shifting suddenly from the way things have always been done has not left Varnai a lot of time to reflect. But, when pressed, he acknowledged how surreal it is.
“It’s a huge change to the regular Jewish life that I’m accustomed to since I was a young boy, since my bar mitzvah, praying three times a day with a quorum of others,” he said. It’s a stunning transformation, but entirely within Jewish tradition. “We always put safety and well-being and health first.”
He puts the whole thing in perspective. “Our people came out of the centuries and had to go through a lot worse,” he said. “Not going to synagogue is not fun but, thank God, other generations were challenged with much greater hardships and we’re relatively blessed.”
Beth Hamidrash, the only Sephardi synagogue in Canada west of Toronto, counts among its congregants Dr. Jocelyn Srigley, a microbiologist who is a director with the infection prevention and control branch of the Provincial Health Services Authority. Rabbi Shlomo Gabay and shul president Eyal Daniel credit Srigley with helping guide them through this difficult time and say it was on her advice that their synagogue was the first in the city to close.
Services at Beth Hamidrash with COVID-19 precautions in place. (photo from Beth Hamidrash)
Despite the challenges, however, engagement is better than ever, said the rabbi. Daniel added that synagogue membership has actually jumped 20% since the pandemic began, something he credits to an increased desire for meaning, and also a direct outreach he began when he became president in June to encourage occasional attendees to commit to membership.
The strange situation has also helped strengthen relations between Beth Hamidrash and the two Sephardi congregations in Seattle. They virtually co-hosted an Israeli historian speaking on Medieval Spain, for example.
Probably no rabbi has had an experience quite like Rabbi Susan Tendler. The new spiritual leader at Richmond’s Conservative shul Beth Tikvah arrived in the midst of the lockdown with her family from her previous posting in Chattanooga, Tenn. The family then had to quarantine for 14 days, with community members dropping off prepared meals and greeting the family from a distance. Despite that unusual arrival, or perhaps because of it, she has reflected on big things.
“While I would never wish the pandemic on this world or on any person, really, this is an opportunity for renewal,” she said. “We do all have to reconsider what we’re doing and what our goals are and find new paths for reaching them.”
While hoping that services might return to normal in the not-too-distant future, she acknowledged that the very term sanctuary implies that every congregant must feel secure. “At a minimum,” she said, “it has to feel safe.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been amended to reflect that Or Shalom is affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement, not the Reconstructionist movement, as stated in the original online and print versions.
Most of us are familiar with the spies who were dispatched by Moses to “spy” out the land of Canaan – they cut down a branch with a cluster of grapes on a staff and carried it back. Grapes were part of the summer harvest in ancient Israel. In fact, there was a holiday called Feast of First Fruits and Wine because grapes were the first major crop to ripen. It was not mentioned in the Bible, but in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was celebrated on the third day of Av (July 24 this year), with Israelites bringing grapes to the Temple. So, here are some grape recipes in case you want to celebrate this little-known holiday.
VINEYARD CHICKEN (I found this in an Empire Kosher recipe brochure many years ago. It makes eight servings.)
2 4-to-4.5-pound roasting chickens 2 lemons, cut in half 1/4 cup Dijon mustard 4 tsp ground ginger salt and pepper to taste 2 tsp dry basil 2 tsp your favourite herb 6 peeled, quartered onions 4 cups chicken broth 1 cup orange juice 4 cups seedless red and green grapes 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or cilantro
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Rinse and pat dry chickens. Squeeze half lemon over each chicken. Place two lemon halves inside each chicken.
Combine Dijon mustard, ginger, salt, pepper and herbs in a bowl to make a paste.
Rub mixture over each chicken and place rest in each cavity. Put chickens into a large roasting pan. Scatter four onions in the pan. Roast 30 minutes.
Meantime, combine giblets, neck, two onions, chicken broth and orange juice in a saucepan. Simmer 25 minutes.
Reduce oven to 375°F. Strain broth and add 1.5 cups to roasting pan. Roast 15 minutes and baste. Repeat three more times. Remove chicken, let rest 15 minutes and cut into serving pieces.
Remove lemons, return chicken pieces to roasting pan, spoon juices and onions over chicken. Scatter grapes over chicken and add remaining broth. Cover and bake 15 minutes.
Serve on a large platter with grapes and juices and sauce. Garnish with fresh basil or cilantro.
MIDDLE EASTERN ORANGE BLOSSOM FRUIT BOWL (six servings; pareve)
1 fresh pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into slices then quarters from each slice 2 large peeled, sectioned oranges 2 cups seedless red or green grapes 1/4 cup orange blossom flower water or orange-flavoured liqueur 1/4 cup slivered almonds confectioners sugar cinnamon mint sprigs
In a bowl, mix pineapple pieces, orange sections, grapes and orange flower water. Cover and refrigerate two hours.
Put nuts into a small frying pan. Cook and stir until toasted. Remove to a small bowl.
Arrange fruits on a large platter. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar, cinnamon and toasted nuts. Garnish with mint sprigs. Serve cold.
GRAPES IN BRANDY (five to six servings; dairy)
3/4 cup honey 3/8 cup brandy 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 pound seedless red and green grapes, without stems 1 cup sour cream lemon peel curls
On the day before serving, mix the honey, brandy and lemon juice. Place the grapes in a large bowl and pour the mixture over them. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, divide the fruit mixture into serving dishes, champagne glasses or any unusual glass. Spoon sour cream on top of each. Garnish with lemon peel curls.
Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.
National Hebrew Book Week has taken place every year in June. Its fate for this year, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, is unclear. (photo from gojerusalem.com)
In Israel, you know Shavuot is approaching when you see the grocery stores setting up displays of pasta and spaghetti sauce. The pandemic shouldn’t change that.
Israelis are obsessed with the thought of eating non-meat meals on Shavuot. I suspect that at the heart of this obsession is the feeling that, even today, many people still consider eating a non-meat meal equivalent to eating less than a full meal. Hence, the worry that there really will be a satisfying meal to appropriately celebrate the holiday.
While there are many lovely explanations about why we eat dairy on Shavuot, they seem to be secondary to some practical considerations. As Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin points out, in the late spring, young calves, lambs and kids are weaned. Thus, historically at this time in Europe, there was an abundance of milk. Bear in mind that refrigeration is a fairly new process and that, prior to refrigeration, farmers needed to move fast with perishable milk. They made cheese and butter, which, likewise, needed to be consumed relatively fast. This dairy excess may have motivated some Jews to eat dairy on Shavuot. (See the article “Why do Jews Eat Milk and Dairy Products on Shavuot?” on the Schechter Institutes’ website, schechter.edu.)
But, eating a non-meat meal on Shavuot is not restricted to the customs of European Jewry. As Jewish food expert Claudia Roden notes in The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York, Sephardi Jews in Syria made cheese pies called sambousak bi jibn, Tunisian Jews had a special dairy couscous recipe and, in places like Turkey and the Balkans, Jews prepared a milk pudding called sutlage for Shavuot. (If you don’t want to eat animal-based foods, you don’t need to feel left out. The United Kingdom’s Jewish Vegetarian Society helps you enjoy a variety of traditional, but vegan, cheesecake recipes.)
So from where did all this dairy focus originate? One appealing explanation reminds us of what was supposed to have happened on Shavuot, namely that the Jewish people received the Torah. In Gematria, the Hebrew word for milk (chalav) adds up to 40, the number of days on which Moses stayed on Mount Sinai in order to receive the Torah.
Significantly, studying the Torah and other Jewish texts on Shavuot eve has become a major trend in Israel, as well as in the Diaspora. The big Israeli cities offer any number of options for participating in a tikkun leil Shavuot. These free learning sessions welcome the participation of all of Israeli society, from the religious to the secular, and everyone in between. Those living in smaller towns and on kibbutzim and moshavim likewise hold study sessions on the night of the holiday.
The idea of all-night studying originates with the kabbalists. The earliest members of this group apparently studied with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar, who lived in the second-century CE. It was this scholar (also known by his initials, as Rashbi) who stated: “G-d forbid that the Torah shall ever be forgotten!” (See the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat 138b.) By the Middle Ages, the kabbalistic all-night Shavuot study had really picked up steam in places such as Safed.
Studying the Torah and other Jewish texts on Shavuot eve has become a major trend in Israel, as well as in the Diaspora. (photo from pexels.com)
Some claim the reason for studying during the night is found in the midrash stating that it was a way to correct for the Children of Israel’s mistake of oversleeping on the morning they were meant to receive the Torah. Others claim, however, that the Hebrew word tikkun should not be translated as correction, but rather as adorning or decorating the bride. The bride in this instance is the people of Israel and the groom is either G-d and/or the Torah.
According to a late 17th-century Libyan tradition, Shavuot symbolizes the wedding day between the people of Israel and the Torah. According to this tradition, the Torah is the bride, which explains the title of the Libyan Shavuot text entitled Tikkun Kallah. Accordingly, those who read this tikkun are likened to bridal attendants.
The importance of studying on Shavuot is bolstered by the fact that Israel’s Hebrew Book Week (or, in some places, Book Month) begins right after Shavuot. I do not believe this occurrence is coincidental, but rather links us to the idea that we are still the People of the Book and a people of books.
The Israeli book fair has been running for many years. This year, 2020, would mark the 59th annual celebration of Hebrew Book Week and the fair’s age is all the more impressive when you recall how shaky was the Israeli state’s start as an independent entity. Recent years’ events have included Israeli authors appearing in coffee houses, story hours and plays for children, guided walks in Israel’s National Library, the more traditional book signings and, of course, the possibility of thumbing through thousands of Hebrew books.
In brief, our spring holiday offers opportunities for both spiritual and physical nourishment.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
The paper cut “Jerusalem Mizrah” by Yehudit Shadur (1928-2011). (photo from shadurarts.com)
Papercuts are created by taking a folded sheet of paper and drawing a design on one side. The folded sheet is then fastened to a wooden board and the design is cut out with a sharp knife. When the paper is unfolded, a symmetrical work of art appears.
Papercutting dates back to the fourth-century CE in China. It appeared in Western Asia by about the eighth century; in Europe by the 13th century and in Turkey, Switzerland and Germany by the 16th century. Papercutting has been a common Jewish folk art since the Middle Ages and, by the 17th century, it was popular for Shavuot.
Shevuoslekh (little Shavuots) and roysele (rosettes or flowers) were used to decorate windows on Shavuot. They were made of white paper, usually, and frequently displayed the phrase, “Chag haShavuot hazeh” – “this holiday of Shavuot.”
According to an article by Sara Horowitz in the recently defunct Canadian Jewish News a couple of years ago, “for Ashkenazi Jews, there was a particular link between papercutting and Shavuot, which stems from an old practice of decorating homes and synagogues with flowers, branches, boughs and trees. In shtetl culture, cut flowers were a luxury – pricey and perishable. And Jewish culture was deeply literate, so paper, especially used paper – was always around and available for artistic repurposing. Some sources cite the objection of 18th-scholar Vilna Gaon to the Shavuot greening as another reason for the development of a Shavuot papercutting tradition. Because church décor involved cut flowers and pagan practices involved trees, the Vilna Gaon viewed such customs as inherently non-Jewish.”
An acquaintance of mine from many years ago, Yehudit Shadur (1928-2011), and her husband, Joseph, wrote a history of the last three centuries of Jewish papercutting, called Traditional Jewish Papercuts: An Inner World of Art and Symbol. The book won a 1994 National Jewish Book Council Award.
Yehudit Shadur was considered to be the one who pioneered the contemporary revival of the Jewish papercutting tradition. Her works are represented in major museum collections. She also had museum exhibits in Israel, England and the United States.
Shadur’s website offers many quotes from the artist, including one from a 1996 exhibit catalogue, in which she states, “What at first seemed a simple craft proved to be an artistic medium of endless possibilities and variations – not only in the arrangement of time-honoured Jewish symbols imbued with deep and often complex significance, but also in the challenges of colour, composition and texture. Eventually, the subject matter of my papercuts went beyond traditional forms and content to express my personal vision as a contemporary artist….”
Some typical symbols in Shadur’s Jewish papercuts – and in those of others – are menorot, crowns (keter Torah, the crown of Torah), columns representing the Temple in Jerusalem, plants or trees (the Tree of Life, the Torah), and grapevines, lions and gazelles (all representing the people of Israel).
If you’re looking for an activity to do with your children, PJ Library (pjlibrary.org) offers the book The Art Lesson: A Shavuot Story written by Allison and Wayne Marks and illustrated by Annie Wilkinson, in which “Grandma Jacobs teaches Shoshana how to make traditional papercuts,” and readers also learn to make a papercut. For anyone interested, there are various websites that have papercutting tutorials for kids and adults alike.
Chag sameach!
Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.
Families on 23rd Avenue in Vancouver found an innovative way to celebrate Passover. Each family brought their own meal and, while there was no sharing of dishes, everyone participated in reciting the blessings, reading from the Haggadah and singing together. The gathering was organized by Talia and Josh Bender, top left with their children, and Elana and Brian Jacobson, top right with their children.
The grave of an unknown soldier on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
As of Israel Independence Day last year, 23,741 Israeli soldiers had died during their service. The country has come to memorialize its fallen soldiers in one of three ways: 1) most commonly, it provides a grave and a headstone in a military cemetery, with information provided on the soldier, 2) when there is no official grave (that is, when no one really knows where the body of the deceased is), it inscribes the name either on a memorial wall or marker, and 3) it furnishes a grave and a headstone, but little or no information about the deceased is engraved on the stone.
Today, when a soldier dies, the following identification is to be established: the name of the soldier, their army identification number, national civilian identification number, army rank and army unit, as well as their job in the army. When they are buried, the headstone notes the full name of the deceased, their parents’ first names, country of birth (if outside of Israel), date of birth (according to both the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars), aliyah date, date and place of death and age at the time of death. The stone also contains the emblem of the Israel Defence Forces. In a military cemetery, the tombstone’s content reflects a high degree of uniformity. One monument pretty much contains the same details as the next one.
In pre-state Israel and in the War of Independence in 1948, these practices were not yet in place. Young men and women – many of whom had just survived the Holocaust – fought to establish the state. They (and all other soldiers) had little military training. They might not have known Hebrew very well. Not uncommonly, they were the only survivor of their families.
Times were tense, at times verging on the chaotic. The fighting left limited time for socializing, for establishing relationships. So, if a soldier died, it was not surprising to have known them only by their first name. Under the circumstances, most fellow fighters would not have been acquainted with the soldier’s parents, would not have even known their names.
At the end of the War of Independence, about 1,000 of the 4,500 fallen were considered missing. It was the chief rabbi of the IDF, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who initiated an intensive project of identifying the dead. The establishment of military cemeteries helped the identification process move forward, but, even after that, there remained anonymous soldiers, and headstones with missing information.
Recognizing this situation, Dorit Perry and Uri Sagi started Giving a Face to the Fallen. The organization has been in existence fewer than 10 years. Its team of some 52 volunteer investigators and activists comes from a variety of backgrounds. It includes bereaved family members, friends of fallen soldiers, judges, former career army officers and others. As the organization’s website states, all volunteers believe there is “a duty to remember and, in so doing, to … repay the debt we owe to those who gave their lives for the establishment of the state of Israel.”
All of the volunteers are in a race against time, trying to piece together information on 500 soldiers who fell fighting either in pre-state Israel or in the War of Independence. They ask the following questions: Did you (or maybe your grandfather or an older neighbour) know the fighter we are researching? Maybe you fought with such person either before the creation of the state or in the War of Independence? Maybe you still have pictures of your fighting unit?
The volunteers also try to fill in blanks by asking to see old photos of youth movement activities, aliyah preparation groups (aliyah registration cards have provided investigators with correct birth dates and with the names of relatives, see blog.nli.org.il/en/baumgarten) and family albums. Some soldiers do not even have a photo on file.
Besides trying to find people still alive who were acquainted with these fallen soldiers, volunteers search archives. It is real detective work. When successful, there is the rededication of a tombstone with the added information. To date, out of the more than 800 “untraceable” soldiers, they have pieced together the missing information for 120 of them.
The stories of the fallen soldiers of this period are poignant. Take the example of Tobias Marmolstein, who came from Bitshekov, Czechoslovakia. His father had died in Tobias’s arms at Mauthausen concentration camp. Twenty-year-old Tobias was killed as his Haganah unit fought to open the road to Jerusalem. He had been in Israel for just nine days. He is buried on Mt. Herzl.
Each life story has its twists and turns. For instance, over two decades passed before Shaul Yekutiel Urbach came to be buried in Israel. He arrived in Palestine in 1939 to visit Tel Aviv relatives. When the Second World War broke out, he was unable to return to his large family in Kielce, Poland, so he volunteered to fight for the British. The British sent him to fight in Greece. There, the Germans took him prisoner. The Nazis sent him to do hard labour in Schlesien, Germany. In a revolt against a Nazi camp officer, Shaul was wounded, and he died in a German hospital. After the war, his only surviving brother, Raphael Fishel – the rest of the family had been murdered at Treblinka – tried to have Shaul’s remains brought to Israel. For 22 years, the British stalled in releasing his body from their military cemetery. Finally, in 1967, Shaul was reinterred, on Mt. Herzl.
Uri Sagi has maintained that a blank headstone or one that is missing information makes the soldier invisible. A fallen soldier, Sagi said, should not be invisible.
As time passes, it becomes harder and harder to find acquaintances and family who can fill in the blanks with firsthand testimony. For more information on Giving a Face to the Fallen, visit latetpanim.org.il.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
As I always do in anticipation of needing an image for the Jewish Independent’s Passover issue, I started with an internet search. This Passover, I was led to creativejewishmom.com, which features creative projects parents can do with their kids. The Crossing the Red Sea Kid’s Craft captured my imagination. Not one to let the lack of children in my immediate vicinity stop me, I collected the materials necessary and learned to use a glue gun. Through the generosity of a few friends, I didn’t have to buy anything to make the diorama on this issue’s cover.
To capture the notion that, in every generation, we are to regard ourselves as if we personally left Egypt, I created a variety of Israelites, from Moses, Miriam and Aaron leading the group, to a Middle Eastern family from an indeterminate era to a 1920s dandy, a Mary Poppins-inspired woman in a fancy black hat and a Chassid. A teen wears headphones, a toddler wears a mouse-ear raincoat and a girl in a wheelchair negotiates the streambed with the help of a Beatnik.
Early stages: Cut cardboard waves and fish. Prepare the toilet paper rolls (before the COVID-19-induced shortage) and corks that will become the Israelites.
Intermediary stages: Make the Israelites and tissue paper the waves. Make a “staircase” so that all the Israelites can be seen in the photo.
Final stages: Have JI logo join the exodus to freedom, but scrap the idea because many in the “focus group” interpret the falling letters to symbolize the world falling apart, given COVID-19.
The project took hours. The logistics of taking a photo that would fit within the parameters of the newspaper’s cover took almost as long to figure out as did the creation of the 29 Israelites, two load-carrying camels, two carts full of supplies, six waves and one streambed “staircase.” The wooden donkey near the back of the image is the only figure I did not make – JI production manager Josie Tonio McCarthy donated it to the effort; she bought the carving on a trip to Israel and we both thought it was appropriate to include, as the travelers’ destination is, of course, the Promised Land.
Wishes for a healthy and meaningful Passover, and a chag sameach.
Just a reminder: The Jewish Independent is now on a publishing hiatus. Our next issue will be April 24 or May 1, depending on the COVID-19 situation. Email [email protected] with story ideas and [email protected] for ad bookings.
