Links 9/22/08
September 22, 2008
A website to visit to help your research in preparing a D’var Torah.
The URJ Torah Archives for further research.
Date Callout
September 19, 2008
Mishpatim 5770
To Live and Engage Jewish Tradition
September 16, 2008
The Samuel and Bernice Shapiro Religious School of Temple Emanu-El is dedicated to:
Preparing our students to live and engage Jewish tradition in an inclusive community of life-long learning.
What does a mission statement do? If it’s a good mission statement, it describes an institution’s reason for existing. It also serves as a compass, a touchstone against which decisions about everything from budget to programming to staffing to public relations might be measured. In each case a mission-driven organization should ask itself: does this project, this priority, fit our stated mission?
Last month I introduced the Religious School’s new mission statement, which was created as a labor of love and dedication by our thoughtful and committed Religious School committee. I began the task of unpacking the words and phrases, dense with meaning, that make up this expression of our mission.
We continue now:
to live…Jewish tradition. How does one “live” Jewish tradition? In the words of Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, by “speak[ing] of [Torah] in your home and on your way, when you lie down and when you rise up” (Dt. 6:7). Torah or, understood broadly, Jewish tradition, offers us wisdom that guides us at home and abroad, in our relations with family and friends as well as with strangers, in how we conduct our affairs both personal and public. It helps us to chart our future path and to understand where we came from. It teaches us what to say and do and ultimately how to focus our thoughts upon awakening in the morning and before falling asleep at night.
In other words, Jewish tradition is not a twice-a-year experience. It is not a once-a-week project reserved for religious school students. It is a culture and a practice and a way of life that can guide our every moment, from birth until death, bestowing the potential for deep meaning and even holiness upon all of our actions, all of our choices.
to engage Jewish tradition. Why engage? Engagement implies an active, interested relationship, one that encourages openness and inquiry and challenge and personal investment. The Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism adopted at the 1999 Pittsburgh Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis “invites all Reform Jews to engage in a dialogue with the sources of our tradition, responding out of our knowledge, our experience and our faith. Thus we hope to transform our lives through (kedushah), holiness.” Torah is not a one-way street. God expects—no, demands—that we talk back. The relationship that we want our students to have with their Judaism is very much like the one we might hope to cultivate with any life partner: one that is strong enough to handle all of their enthusiasms and their doubts, their certainties and their questions, the things that change and the things that stay the same.
Such is a precious kind of a relationship. As we embark upon a New Year, 5769, I hope that we all may find such openness and support—in the embrace of our friends, our loved ones, and our Jewish tradition.
Apple Butter and the Sabbath Spice
September 16, 2008
Many years ago there was a Roman emperor who loved to eat. The emperor was friendly with a rabbi who loved to cook. The rabbi invited the emperor to dinner on Shabbat (the Sabbath). They ate a splendid meal of soup and vegetables and fish. For dessert the rabbi served the most delicious pie the emperor had ever tasted. When the emperor was finished, he thanked the rabbi and asked for the recipes. The rabbi was happy to give them to him. During the week the emperor’s cook prepared all of the recipes, but the emperor was disappointed. He complained to the rabbi, “The food does not taste as good as it did in your house on Shabbat.” “Of course not,” replied the rabbi. “The food did not have the Sabbath spice.” “But what is this Sabbath spice?” asked the emperor. “Where can I buy it?” The rabbi replied, “My friend, you cannot buy it. The Sabbath spice comes from the special feeling of peace and rest on Shabbat which makes all food so much better!” [Based on Bereishit Rabbah 11:4, as told by Adam Fisher, My Jewish Year, Behrman House Inc, NJ: 1993, p. 61-62]
I want to let you in on one of my personal, rituals of autumn. I’m not speaking about High Holyday preparations or even research for my upcoming classes. Rather, every Fall I wait for that first rainy day Wednesday. After grousing a bit for having spoiled whatever plans I had for my one weekly day-off, I get set to work. For it takes most of the day by the time all is said and done for me to prepare, cook up and preserve an entire year’s worth of apple butter.
Even before I got into the canning of my own, homemade batches, serving apple butter at our family Shabbat and festival table had become a fast and fixed tradition. What is it about apple butter, you may wonder, that makes it a “Jewish” food fit for the Sabbath? First, it’s something special and sweet, and that alone makes it appropriate for the Sabbath table. And it is the perfect companion to fresh challah, adding to the taste and aroma that is unique to the celebratory meal.
Second, apple butter is a pareve spread, meaning that it can be served with either meat or milk dishes in a kosher home. In early times when resources were so much scarcer than today, serving meat or chicken on Shabbat added to the special majesty of the climactic meal of the week, and that tradition continues in a great many Jewish homes (including our own). Since spreading the challah with butter is not an option when meat dishes are being served for the meal, apple butter makes a wonderful change.
Finally, as an expression of our local, New England customs and cuisine, apple spreads, butters, ciders and pies are absolutely a part of the season of the Jewish New Year. As Jews have done throughout our history, adopting the native fare to fit our cherished traditions has been part of the Jewish strategy for survival. So it has been with the observance of Shabbat, that Jews have adapted the local cuisine to shape a unique menu for their own time and place. In keeping with longstanding Jewish custom, in our family apple butter is now considered a “Jewish food.”
And perhaps I should have let well enough alone, but at the urging of family and friends over the years, who have enjoyed my “Rainy Day Apple Butter” at the Sabbath meal, I decided to participate in another New England ritual, and entered a couple of jars into the annual Canning and Preserves competition at the Topsfield Fair. After dropping off the samples and the recipe at the Judges’ Booth, I began to wonder if perhaps there might have been a special “spice” that was missing – the “Sabbath Spice” as related in the story above. Would my apple butter taste the same without Marla’s homemade challah, and absent the sparkle of the wine and glow of the candles?
I’m certain that for the judges, something was probably missing. But still, if you go to our website (www.emanu-el.org), you can download the recipe and try it for yourself. There’s certain to be a rainy day ahead, and for most folks, it needn’t be a Wednesday! And if you come over to my house, I will proudly and with an absolute and total lack of modesty, I’ll show off my little Blue Ribbon from the Topsfield Fair, that hangs in my study as testimony to the creative spirit that keeps Judaism ever alive.
Rabbi Meyer’s “Rainy-Day” Apple Butter
- 12 lbs. Apples (mostly Jonathan’s and Macintosh, but with a few Braeburn and Golden Delicious for added complexity)
- 3 cups water
- 3 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons Chinese Five-Spice
Wash and quarter the apples, taking out the stems. Cover and cook in a nonaluminum pot along with the water until the apples are soft. Rub the apples through a sieve, discarding the seeds and peels. This produces about ten cups of pulp. Combine the sugar and the spices, and add to the pulp, stirring until the sugar is well dissolved. Return to heat and allow to gently simmer for about two hours, partially uncovered. Stir frequently and with some mild exertion. When it has thickened, pour immediately into sterilized jars and seal properly at once.
