SPECIAL HIGH HOLIDAY EDITION - 5767
NEW YEAR REFLECTIONS
Fasting Has a Way of Humbling the Self
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In my faith of Judaism, we are commanded to fast specifically on Yom Hakippurim, which is coming this year on Sunday evening, the first of October. And we are directed in the Torah to fast from sundown of the ninth day of the seventh month until sundown of the tenth day of that same month.
The fasting, for me, on a very personal level, has always been a way for me to open myself up to see things clearer, to be drawn closer in my relationship to the God of Israel. Fasting has a way of humbling the self. We are told in the Book of Isaiah that when we fast, we should be fasting to make our voices heard on high.
So fasting helps to elevate the prayers that we offer to God. And it has always been a retreat for me. When I need to rejuvenate myself spiritually, I will fast for a 24-hour period, and as much as a 72-hour period. Whenever you’re fasting, you always will be tempted. All foods begin to smell better. You can smell a cookie from a mile away.
So what one has to do, I believe, is to meditate in conjunction to fasting. So you can’t put yourself in a position where, for instance, if you’re fasting and watching television and you see commercials. So when I fast, the television is off, the radio is off, and I’m in solitude in thought and meditation. And this then keeps all of these other things from entering into the mind and pulling my strength down.
I think that for black Americans and for all people, all people are the same once we get past pigmentation. And I believe sincerely that fasting is a way for any soul, any person, to be drawn closer to whatever their faith communities belief is... the God of their faith. I believe that fasting is given to mankind to help us to reflect on what we have, and to realize that the strength and the vigor of our bodies is just not something that is automatic. That it does come from a source that is higher than we are.
And that source is, in the Jewish tradition, Hashem, the God of Israel. But ultimately, the fast of any faith community is to draw the soul of the faster closer to that entity that we define as God.
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Rabbi Capers Funnye is spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, Chicago and Senior Research Associate of Institute for Jewish & Community Research.
Re-kindling the Flame of New Year: Recounting a Lemba Tradition
The coming of the New Year remains an important event in the Lemba community. One cannot ignore the influence of the advent and imposition of the Gregorian calendar new year. It is common knowledge that like many other sacred times, new year also suffered usurpation with the coming of the hegemony of Christianity as a state religion in central and southern Africa. With the Gregorian calendar introduced, many Lemba people abandoned observing the details of their new year and succumbed to ‘the official’ demands of the new civilization. The new civilization took control of various aspects of indigenous populations including that of the Lemba people. Both active and passive participators in the colonial cultural civilization were indiscriminately affected. But there are still some pockets of traditional practices that give hope to the Lemba people. The traditional Lemba calendar is based on the solar-lunar system. The rising and setting of the sun set the length of the day. The phases of the moon set the number of days in a month. The number of the coming and going of the new moon leads to a new year – that used to be celebrated in the month of Aviv (now Nissan (March-April).
In some quarters of the diversified Jewish community, there is a view that the Jewish calendar comprises of two beginnings, namely, the one that begins in Nissan (traditionally, Aviv) (March-April), and the other that begins in Tishrei (September-October). Rabbi Meryam Hodayah points out that if one counts the months of the Jewish calendar following the infinity symbol ∞, starting at the centre counting from Nissan onwards, the two months Nissan and Tishri will cross each other. For Hodayah this helps us to understand the Jewish concept of two beginnings in the calendar. Thus although a year begins in Nissan (Aviv), it is celebrated in Tishri (September or October) – depending with the phases of the moon.
The first beginning is announced in Exodus 12:2 where Moses and Aaron were told, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months for you”. The month of the exodus became the first month of the year. Leviticus 23:23ff points the beginning of the year in the month of Abib (March-April) now called Nissan. The second beginning is in the month of Tishri (September-October period). The traditional Lemba community understood the September-October period as another moment in time which was very important because it was a time for seed-ingathering in preparation for the ploughing season with anticipation for the rains. However, later in the history of Judaism, the period became the New Year celebration time.
In the traditional Lemba practice, during the March-April period of the year, people used to collect the first fruits of their farming produce and give them to their respective leaders of the area. The leaders in turn took them to the chief’s courtyard. While the first fruits were being brought to the chief, at the same time the council of elders would also gather at the chief’s place to prepare for the celebrations of the New Year. Their assembly would be followed by all heads of families – thus men of the community.
After receiving the first fruits, the chief would invite the elders of the Bakari clan to bless the first fruits. After the blessings, then the men from this clan would blow the horn or shofar to announce the end of the year and beginning of another new year. This horn was supposed to be that of an eland or antelope. The blowing of the shofar would also be an announcement to the people that they were free to eat the produce of their fields. After the blowing of the shofar, the men at the chief’s place would break into song and dance. There would be a great feast of eating and drinking.
Towards the end of the celebrations, a ceremonial fire would be made. All participants would be given a piece of firewood from the ceremonial fireplace to go and kindle at their own places. Members of the community who did not attend the New Year’s celebrations are required to go to their neighbours who attended the men’s celebrations and get a piece of firewood from the neighbour’s fireplace.
At the end of presenting of the first fruits to the royal courtyard, after all is said and done, and the men’s meeting is over, the horn was blown to tell the people enjoy the new year’s harvest. Then children were brought together and they were told, “These are the fruits of the New Year, enjoy”. This is because people were not allowed to eat the first fruits of their crops before they were presented to the community’s leadership. Some people would feel that they were being delayed to enjoy fruits of the new year then they would break the law and start eating secretly before time. Such an act was punishable by paying a beast to the community leadership who would ask the priest to help the offender by cleansing him/her.
The new year in traditional Lemba community had a lot meaning to their daily lives. Firstly it had a religious meaning in that it was a beginning of newness in general. It was a time those who have committed crimes and other forms of wrongs were declared forgiven after the cleansing during the fasting period. Repayment of debts or relieving of debts was also considered during this time after the encouragement by the chief to do so. It was a time of efforts to bring about peace and harmony in the community. Each year as they rekindled the big flame, share the fire at the end of the meeting, sang and danced in unison, they grew from strength to strength in unity as a nation.
Rabson Wuriga is a Be’chol Lashon Research Fellow of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research.
Here's Just the Ticket for Observing High Holy Days
This week, Jews around the world are observing the High Holy Days. "Observing' is preferred over "celebrating,' because the period culminates with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It's fine to wish Jewish friends a Happy New Year but, unless they're masochists, not a Happy Yom Kippur, which is a fast day. Happy Yom Kippur is preferable, however, to a question about Passover once posed to me by a co-worker: "Is that the holiday when you Jewish people pig out?'
In my interracial, interreligious family on Chicago's Near North Side, I did not have a particularly religious childhood. Yet it was a Jewish one. There were few Jews in our immediate area and no synagogues, so on holidays my mother would take us to the end of the line of the El to a synagogue near the high school where she taught. As testament of the city's deliberate segregation of schools, she was assigned to a predominantly Jewish high school and, when that neighborhood changed, a school in a different Jewish area.
Though she knew the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel, I doubt we ever formally joined the congregation. But because we were only going to children's services, who cared?
We went less frequently as my brother and I approached our teens. Neither of us had a bar mitzvah on our 13th birthdays, and by the time I was in high school, we stopped going altogether. Still, we observed the holidays on our own. At school, I was even the self-appointed Passover Policeman who'd reprimand other Jewish kids for eating a hamburger with a bun during the eight-day holiday when leavened bread isn't allowed.
So was my Jewish life when, in late summer 1973, I got a job as an usher at the Carnegie Theater on tony Rush Street. The manager, Jose, ran a very tight ship. The fall came and he scheduled me to work on Rosh Hashanah.
"But I'm Jewish,' I protested.
"Too bad,' I recall his response.
I don't know if Jose knew it when he scheduled me, but on Rosh Hashanah, the theater owner had rented out the space to Central Synagogue -- South Side Hebrew Congregation. The synagogue needed the theater for its well-attended High Holy Day services.
Rosh Hashanah came and I stood at the theater entrance to take tickets. The congregation president, a jovial middle-aged man in a blue suit whose name I think was Manny, arrived to give me instructions.
"All we need you to do,' I recall him explaining, "is to take the tickets and tear them in half, and put them in the box.' (Pre-paid tickets are traditional at many synagogues because money is forbidden on holy days.)
I looked at him and said nothing. He repeated the instructions, adding, "We need you to do this because we can't tear paper' -- a form of work also forbidden -- "because we're Jewish.'
"I can't either,' I replied.
"Why not?' he said.
"Because I'm Jewish, too.'
As an African American Jew, you get used to the incredulous looks, or worse, the "how-can-you-be-Jewish?' question. Even at 16, I knew to pre-empt it with "My mother's Jewish,' which is the most universally accepted standard on the who-is-a-Jew issue.
When it sank in, Manny asked, "Why are you working?' I pointed to Jose, who was sulking in his office.
"Oh,' Manny said. This was a problem: The congregation needed the tickets collected, but they couldn't ask another Jew, subject to the same restrictions they were, to collect them. Manny caucused with a few congregation leaders, and me. I was suddenly one of the gang -- of 50-year-old Jewish men!
One of the group went off a little ways and came back.
"OK,' he said. "I just talked to God. He says you can tear the tickets.'
The others didn't agree and with the congregants beginning to show up, we all took turns taking, and tearing, tickets. It wasn't ideal but at least we all were sinning together.
Finally, Manny went over to Jose and pleaded with him to call in someone else -- who wasn't Jewish. Jose complied and 15 minutes later Siddiqi arrived.
I was invited to join the services and called my mother to join me. By Yom Kippur the next week, I was practically a senior member of the congregation. I remember Manny greeting me -- for services this time, not work -- smiling with his tongue hanging out, like Einstein.
The service was moving but long. I'm sure I dozed a little. As we walked out, the bemusing transition from usher to Jew-distraught-over-ritual to fasting and atonement of Yom Kippur seemed a significant journey -- until I noticed the newspaper box on the street. The headline blared that war between Israel and her neighbors had begun.
Our ticket dilemma didn't seem very important any more.
New Year, New Dumpling
Tradition has it that there is a dumpling for every Jewish holiday: kreplach, the Jewish tortellini, for the meal before Yom Kippur; dough pockets filled with cottage cheese for Shavuot; and matzo balls for Passover.
But Jewish food has become so diverse, how about a taste of another kind of tradition for Rosh Hashana on Friday night? A new dumpling for the holiday.
I first found gundi, a cardamom-flavored chickpea and chicken dumpling, 15 years ago when I met Azizeh Koshki, who had just emigrated from Iran.
She plopped herself on the floor of her townhouse in Rockville, Md., where she turned on her newly acquired American food processor to grind chicken and onions. Next, she added chickpea flour and cardamom to the mixture, molding the dumplings by hand and simmering them in a soupy chicken stew spiced with turmeric. As I watched her, I wondered whether her ingredients and technique -- other than the food processor -- went back to the Babylonian captivity or even earlier.
Mrs. Koshki told me, through a translator, that her family ate gundi, with a sip of the spirit arrack, each Friday night after they walked home from synagogue. The gundi were always garnished with spring onions, basil, parsley, cilantro, radish and mint and served with a piece of lavash or other flat bread.
From years of living in Israel, I came to adore kubbeh, soup with dumplings made from semolina and bulgur, filled with meat. They would float in soupy stews made of chicken broth, sometimes flavored with pumpkin, dried limes, tomatoes or okra. I would eat them in tiny restaurants run by Kurdish or Iraqi Jews and, on the Sabbath, in their homes. Most Israeli supermarkets stock frozen kubbeh -- always the sign of a food becoming part of the common culture.
Kibbe, made throughout in the Middle East in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Kurdistan, is bulgur and lamb served raw, baked or fried, stuffed with rice and spices. Kubbeh, the Jewish dumpling for soup, is borrowed from these cultures.
Kubbeh has become a holiday food, with the sauces or soups changing with the season. Pnina Lahav, a professor of law at Boston University and an avid cook, whose mother was considered a kubbeh queen in Tel Aviv, occasionally makes her mother's semolina dumplings in a soupy sauce of beets, plums and celery.
''In the Middle East they say that the thinner the dough of the kubbeh, the better the cook,'' she said. ''A good kubbeh is the sign of a good wife.'' But, she added: ''Kubbeh is not for working women. In our world today it is inconceivable that you would make it every Friday night.''
Matzo balls seem like a universal Jewish icon, but that wasn't true until the B. Manischewitz Company produced the first commercial matzo at the turn of the last century and then began promoting its matzo and, later, its matzo meal and matzo ball mix, said Jonathan D. Sarna, author of ''American Judaism: A History'' (Yale University Press, 2004).
Until then, matzo balls were strictly a Passover dish, and dumplings -- called knoedel, also known as kneidlach in Yiddish or kleis in German -- made with breadcrumbs, bread or flour, filled their role at others times of the year.
''Manischewitz was in the business of finding ways of making people use their machine-made matzo products all year round,'' Dr. Sarna said.
In 1930, Manischewitz's ''Tempting Kosher Dishes'' cookbook called matzo balls made with prepared matzo meal ''feather balls, Alsatian style.''
Rabbi Everett Gendler acknowledged that ''feather'' was not an image that came to mind in describing his first efforts to make whole wheat matzo balls. Rabbi Gendler, a retired chaplain of Phillips Academy Andover now living in Great Barrington, Mass., said that before whole-wheat matzo meal came on the market, he would either grind whole-wheat matzos or bake his own with soft winter wheat ground with an old hand peanut grinder.
''The first couple of years I did it, it was advisable to wear steel-tipped work boots in case I dropped one of the balls on my foot,'' he said. ''After a few years they lightened up. Because I have gotten the feel of it, I don't squeeze them so tightly. Now I treat them like matzo balls, not like Play-Doh.'' A vegetarian, Rabbi Gendler incorporates spirituality and organic gardening into his cooking.
''I start my soup from the garden, which is 42 by 72 feet, because in Jewish mystical tradition, there is a 42- and a 72-letter name of God,'' Rabbi Gendler said. ''Rosh Hashana celebrates the birthday of the world. A garden well tended is a small example of perpetual reunion.''
Whole-Wheat Matzo Balls
Adapted from Rabbi Everett Gendler
Time: 55 minutes plus 1 hour for chilling
3 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup stock
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt
3 or more tablespoons minced fresh dill
1 cup whole-wheat matzo meal, or as needed
2 to 3 quarts vegetable or chicken soup, for serving.
1. In a medium bowl, combine egg yolks, stock, oil, pepper and 2 teaspoons salt; mix well. Gradually add dill and 1 cup of matzo meal, stirring with a fork.
2. Whisk egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gently fold into matzo batter. Cover and refrigerate until batter is well chilled, at least 1 hour.
3. Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a gentle boil. Wet hands with cold water and shape some of batter into a walnut-size ball. Drop it into pot. If it starts to fall apart, add a little more matzo meal to remaining batter. If it holds its shape, roll remaining batter into balls and add to pot.
4. Simmer matzo balls, covered, for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat soup until simmering. When matzo balls are ready, use a slotted spoon to transfer them from water to soup. Serve hot.
Yield: About 12 matzo balls.
Persian Chickpea and Chicken Dumplings
Adapted from Azizeh Koshki
Time: 1 hour plus 3 hours' refrigeration
4 medium onions, peeled and quartered
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast
8 ounces (about 2 1/4 cups) chickpea flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cardamom, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin
4 quarts chicken soup
Handful each of finely chopped basil, parsley, mint and cilantro.
1. Using a food processor with a steel blade, pulse onions until finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. Pulse chicken until it has the consistency of ground meat.
2. Combine onions and chickpea flour in a bowl and mix well with hands. Add chicken, oil, salt, pepper, turmeric, cardamom and cumin. Mix well, adding a bit of water if needed, to make a dough about the consistency of meatballs. Refrigerate until well-chilled, about 3 hours.
3. Dip hands in cold water and divide mixture into 16 portions. Shape into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Bring soup to boil. Gently add dumplings one at a time and simmer, covered, for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, toss together basil, parsley, mint and cilantro.
4. Ladle soup and dumplings into serving bowls, and sprinkle with mixed herbs.
Yield: 8 servings.
Iranian Beet, Plum and Celery Soup with Kubbeh (Meat Dumplings)
Adapted from Pnina Lahav
Time: 2 hours
2 cups semolina or farina
2 1/4teaspoons salt
4 small onions, peeled
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or olive oil
5 garlic cloves, peeled and diced
1/4 cup diced celery root
1 pound (about 3) beets, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
6 small red plums or apricots, pitted and diced
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, or as needed
1 teaspoon sugar, or as needed
2 tablespoons chopped celery leaves
1 cup chopped Italian parsley or cilantro
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves.
1. Mix semolina or farina and 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt in a bowl. Gradually add about 1 cup hot water, mixing with a fork until the consistency of Play-Doh. If necessary add a bit more water. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes.
2. Dice one onion. In large pot, heat oil and add diced onion and garlic. Sauté until golden. Add celery root, beets and plums or apricots. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Add 6 cups of water, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to low. Simmer until beets are tender, about 15 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon sugar.
3. In food processor, combine remaining onions, celery leaves and parsley or cilantro. Pulse until finely chopped but not puréed and transfer to a large bowl. Add beef, black pepper and remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Mix well with fingers.
4. Remove dough from refrigerator and knead again until pliable. With wet hands, take a walnut-size portion of dough and flatten it as thinly as possible in your palm. Place 1 heaping teaspoon of meat mixture in center. Completely enclose meat in dough and roll it into a ball between your hands to seal. Keeping your hands wet, repeat with remaining dough and filling.
5. Bring soup to a boil and gently add dumplings. They will sink. Cover and simmer gently until cooked through, about 30 minutes, adding water if soup becomes too thick. Add more lemon juice and sugar if needed. Ladle into bowls, garnish with mint, and serve.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
Note: Soup may be prepared up to one day ahead of time and refrigerated. Dumplings may be frozen on baking sheets. Do not thaw before placing in simmering soup.
Jewish Group Helps Moms Outside Faith
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Suzette Cohen shows the non-Jewish members of Mothers Circle how to prepare for Rosh Hashana. |
On a recent night in Alpharetta, a group of non-Jewish women gathered at the Cohen Home, a senior living center, to prepare for Rosh Hashana, the High Holiday that begins at sundown today and marks a process of repentance and renewal for the Jewish new year.
The mothers observed the dipping of apples in honey to symbolize hope for a sweet year. They heard the shofar, a ram's horn sounded on the High Holidays to elicit a spiritual "wake-up call." And they discussed asking forgiveness from God, family, friends and others to become spiritually clean for the new year.
Rosh Hashana is like "Jewish group therapy," explained Mitch Cohen, a Jewish educator whose wife, Suzette, is the Georgia coordinator for the Mothers Circle, a support group for non-Jewish women raising Jewish children. Many of the women's husbands were not particularly religious, but they still deeply identified with their ethnic group. And in marrying the Jewish men, these women agreed to raise their children in the faith.
It's a tough challenge for many, and Atlanta is a hot spot for intermarriage, or Jews marrying outside the faith. The Mothers Circle, now a national organization, got its start here.
The Mothers Circle teaches women, often for the first time, about Judaism the religion — which stresses family, community and deeds over faith.
Susan Shields finished a Mothers Circle course in May. She says raising her 2-year-old daughter as a Jew does not conflict with her own commitment to the Methodist church.
"I'm providing her with morals and values that I believe in," says Shields, who met her husband, William, when they were students at the University of Georgia.
"I truly feel in my heart that if she is a good person and if she is kind to other people, that's what's most important," Shields says. "The God that I believe in is a loving God and would see that."
In an age of skyrocketing intermarriage, the Mothers Circle offers a schoolyear program of learning and support.
"Women by and large are still responsible for the religious education for the children," says national coordinator Sonja Spear.
Many interfaith couples find their home in the more liberal Reform movement. Conservative and Orthodox movements maintain that Judaism is passed on through mothers and would require the conversion of a child of a non-Jewish woman. Most Reform synagogues, however, consider the child of a Jewish father to also be Jewish, so long as the child is being raised Jewish.
"There's nothing to say that if included and welcomed that they can't also strengthen the Jewish community," said Rabbi Ron Segal of Temple Sinai, a Reform synagogue in Sandy Springs.
The Jewish community traditionally has viewed intermarriage as a sign of its looming extinction.
The Mothers Circle is one example of the Reform movement reaching out. Now in seven U.S. cities, the group has plans to open 10 more across the country and also offers programs for the general interfaith community. Funded locally by the Marcus Foundation, the program is a project of the New York-based Jewish Outreach Institute, which provides the curriculum.
To many Jews, Judaism is more than a religion. They consider themselves part of an ethnic group with shared heritage and experience. The multiple dimensions can be confusing for non-Jewish spouses to grasp.
The key challenge for Jeanine Schmid, 37, is "understanding Judaism and having the resources available to learn it."
Schmid grew up Catholic on Long Island, N.Y., in a densely Jewish neighborhood. But studying the religion, she has found a spiritual connection to Judaism and plans to convert. The Mothers Circle is explicitly not meant to convert participants, but to offer guidance and support.
Some of the questions are basic. "Is there any way to know" when to stand during services, asked Abi Auer, 33, of Buckhead, who was raised Catholic, referring to the see-saw effect of rising and sitting in prayer. Schmid interjected with her husband's advice, "just look around to see what everyone else is doing."
In a High Holiday sermon about sacrifice last year, Segal thanked non-Jewish spouses for raising Jewish children.
"That's a beautiful gift," Segal said. "They are helping ensure that our numbers continue to grow and that our people are stronger."
DID YOU KNOW?
• 67 percent of Atlanta Jews who married since 1990 wed outside the faith.
JEWISH INTERMARRIAGE
• U.S. Jewish population: more than 6 million.
• The intermarriage rate between Jews and non-Jews in 1950 was less than 5 percent. By 1970 that grew to 22 percent. From 1996 to 2001, it was 47 percent.
• Today, between 30 and 40 percent of intermarried couples raise their children exclusively Jewish.
Source: National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01. Gary Tobin, San Francisco Jewish demographer.
ATLANTA
• Jewish population: 120,000
• The intermarriage rate in 1996 was 37 percent. It rose to 50 percent by 2006. But 67 percent of couples married since 1990, wed outside the faith.
• Nearly 40 percent of children are being raised exclusively Jewish.
Source: The Jewish Community Centennial Study of Greater Atlanta, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta
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