Alef: The NEXT Conversation
The Hostest With The Mostest (Hummus)
There’re few things that make Alef happier than good food. That’s why we were pretty bummed we weren’t invited to this NEXT Shabbat meal in LA. While we’re not sure the hostess’ estimate of “85 tons of pita” is a totally trustworthy description of her Shabbat menu, our mouths were watering at the rest of her Shabbat spread. Don’t believe us? Tuck in your bib, this Shabbat meal is drool-worthy:
The Hostess With the Mostest (Hummus)
I like having guests over. Blame it on my mother – after all, she is Martha Jewart. Ever since I was a kid I was raised knowing that there are very specific ways to throw a party. She has very strict rules about how dishes are arranged, what we’re allowed to serve, how food is displayed, etc. When I was little I thought that was ridiculous. “Show me the guest who gives a shit if I put the ketchup bottle on the table without first scooping it into a crystal bowl!” I would scream.
Of course, now I’ve inherited that behavior. So when it came time to throw a special Shabbat dinner for a group of my friends last weekend, you know I went to town…
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Click here to read more from our “Why I Eat What I Eat” series.
Cartoons for Shabbat
By Dan Abrams
Ask any ten-year old, and they’ll tell you – weekday cartoons are fine, but if you want the good stuff, you’ve gotta get up on Saturday morning, and start flippin’ channels. And so, growing up, I found myself in the same fight with my parents every Saturday:
Them: Get dressed. We’re going to Synagogue.
Me: First Ninja Turtles, then Muppet Babies, Then Captain N: The Game Master, then Synagogue.
Them: You have ten seconds, or we’re throwing the TV away. Here are your pants.
Me: ….
Next thing you know I’m in pants and on my way to Synagogue. And, believe me, I’m not happy about it.
I don’t tell this story to demonstrate how much of a brat I was (And when it came to the Ninja Turtles, believe me, I was) but rather to explain how important Saturday morning cartoons were for me when I was younger. For a ten-year-old, it’s a no brainer – why would I go to Synagogue, when I could stay home with cartoons instead? My parents, on the other hand, didn’t see things quite the same way. And so, for years, I sat in my Synagogue’s youth services, bitter at missing the animated adventures most of my friends were enjoying from the comfort of their sofas.
To this day, Saturday-morning cartoons hold a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s a symptom of arrested development, but the idea of watching hours of cartoons on end, with no one telling me otherwise, is still a pretty powerful reason to get out of bed on a Saturday morning. Synagogue, not so much. So, when I saw these Shabbat cartoon dolls in my NEXT Shabbat Shabbox, I was pleasantly surprised; now my inner-child could be the one dictating who wears what pants for Shabbat. And, sure, they’re not the Ninja Turtles, but a cartoon is a cartoon, and as such, is inherently better than a not-cartoon.
Who woulda thought? 16 years later, after countless Saturday morning arguments, I’d get cartoons on Shabbat after all.
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Download your own Cartoon Shabbat Dolls here
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Read more from Issue 17: People of the (comic)Book.
The Best Year
By Emily Comisar
It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself telling someone: “My best Jewish year was 2006.” In 1999 I joined a synagogue, in 2003 I learned how to bake challah, in 2004 I attended Kabbalat Shabbat services every Friday night, and in 2009 I was hired to work at a Jewish organization. Yet 2006, the year that I stopped going to Hillel every Friday night and made the evening my own, remains my best Jewish year.
I don’t even remember what prompted the decision – maybe it was my return from a conference at Camp Ramah Darom in Georgia, or maybe it was just that my New York Times Jewish Cookbook had caught my friend Ian’s eye – but somehow the idea of hosting our own Shabbat dinner wormed its way into the backs of our heads and wouldn’t go away until we did something about it.
Our first Shabbat dinner was intended to be a one-time event. Ian played the role of welcoming host because his kitchen was better than mine. He prepared the dining room and did most of the cooking — I can’t take credit for much more than drinking wine, telling jokes, and maybe chopping a few vegetables. Little did he know that his home was about to become a Friday night revolving door as we quickly realized that the food and the adoptive family were too good to not replicate.
That was how the tradition began. The company constantly changed; significant others came and went, friends popped in and out. Some days we served a table of ten; one time the two of us dipped our bite-size chunks of challah into a giant bowl of guacamole and called it a meal. The only constant was that one thing to which you can never put a name. It was the thing that made you forget all your stress from the week behind and the hectic schedule of the coming weekend. It was that feeling that you were exactly where you were supposed to be. I cannot count how many Shabbat dinners we cooked that year – there were so many.
Upon my college graduation some months later, I relocated to Florence, Italy – a foreign town where I had no Jewish friends and couldn’t buy a challah in the supermercato. The dinners stopped and Friday night became just like any other night of the week. There was studying and celebrating, drinking and eating, sure. I chalked up my lack of that nameless something special to my immersion in a brand new culture. It wasn’t until I returned to the United States that I felt the big, gaping whole in my week.
Now I find myself in a city full to the brim with Jewish people where you can find challah in every supermarket. You can find Hebrew classes, JCCs, synagogues, temples, kosher restaurants, and Jewish colleges. I’ve tried a few of these things on for size, but they all fit a little long in the arm and short in the leg. All that I’m craving now is a home-cooked meal with a few of my friends. I think what I really need, again, is to reclaim my Shabbat.
Read more posts from Issue 18: Friday Night Lights.
Photo by roland, licensed under Creative Commons.
To Fit In, In Two Worlds
by Arden Joy
It’s March of this year and I’m standing at the El Al ticket counter.
“And what did you do at Passover?”
An intimidating man, the one I had specifically picked out and prayed would not question me, is doing just that before I pass through the gates to join my fellow Birthrighters.
Oh my God! I’m thinking They’re going to send me home because I’m not Jewish enough!
“We…” I stutter, trying to remember back to my childhood, trying to grab on to something especially convincing. “We…ate gefilte fish?”
No, wait, let’s go back further.
It’s a cold winter day in January, 1983, and I am born.
There we go.
I am born to a Jewish father and a German (with a little English and Irish) mother. At 8 months old, my parents divorce and I go to live with my Mother. My Mom has always been proud of my Jewish heritage and encouraged me to be too. But she is also fiercely Christian and from a proud German family so instead of Shabbat service and Hebrew school, my weekends as a child were filled with Sunday services at our church and German lessons at the Danke House. December brought with it a big German Christmas. Judaism was looked at from a Christian perspective (i.e. Mom bought me tape of Messianic Jewish music). When I turned 4, my Mom remarried. Her new husband was a 6’7’’ man of Czechoslovakian and Swedish descent. But mostly, his roots were “suburban.”
Occasionally, I would see the Jewish side of my family. Each time, it was almost like entering a mystical portal into a new world. I’d watch my Bubby kiss her mezuzah and then, when no one was looking, I’d stand on my tippy toes to try and reach it so I could copy her. Whenever we visited, I’d walk away with a Tupperware full of matzo ball soup. Whenever I’d leave, someone would “tuh tuh!” in my face to keep away the evil eye. And oh…Passover. Opening the Haggadah was like opening the Never Ending Story (quite literally, at some points…). The whole Passover experience would come alive in my mind, as I imagined the spectacle of frogs and flies and darkness. Listening to my uncle, my father, and my aunt fly through the blessings in Hebrew was enchanting – what were they saying and how did they know what to do?
It wasn’t all sweetness and light, of course, but even the problems we had with that side of the family were mysterious to me. This Jewish side of the family was, for lack of a better word, passionate. There was fighting and yelling (yelling! can you imagine? Growing up in a WASPy home, I certainly could not). Eventually the fighting and yelling got so bad that before I even reached my teenage years, that side of the family was out of my life.
And so I returned to a full-time Christian, European world, and Jewish Arden ceased to exist.
Almost.
Because here’s the thing: even though I did my best to fit in (and God knows, as a teenager, that’s all you want to do), I never did. I’d look at my petite, blond best friend and then look at myself, course brown hair and big nose, and wonder why I looked so wrong. I’d sit at a family function and think…why don’t I act like any of these people? Although I was never made to feel ashamed of my Jewish heritage, no one ever talked about it other than my mom and me.
The older I got, the more distance I felt between the Anglo-Saxon community I was a part of and myself. I found myself beginning to cling to my Jewish identity. I didn’t even know what that meant. Of course, as a teenager attending a Christian high school, I didn’t have a lot of options, but I bought myself a t-shirt that said “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl,” told people I wanted to get married under a chuppa, and set Hava Nagila as my ringtone. Nobody really knew what to make of it and they never asked me about it, which relieved me greatly since I wouldn’t have had any answers for them.
Ok, now let’s fast forward, all the way past El Al interrogations (which I passed, by the way) to Jerusalem. I’m sitting inside the Jewish Quarter on a Friday night, just around the corner from the Kotel. Our group leader is standing in front of us, saying “You may be the first one in your family to return to this place in 2,000 years…”
At that very moment, the pieces start to fall into place. That feeling I’ve had all my life? That’s thousands of years of history and tradition that I’m a part of. Yes, I’m a little German and a little English and even a tiny bit Irish and I’m proud of all of those things. But I’ve been to those places, I’ve studied their history and goodness, I’ve been steeped in their culture since birth. For the first time, I feel inspired – no – I feel driven to find out what it really means to be Jewish.
Since I’ve been home, I’ve done just that. I still don’t know what exactly it means to be German, English, Irish, and Jewish, but I’m learning. Along the way, I’m doing something crazy – I’m inviting that same white Anglo-Saxon Protestant community to join me in my traditions. Just last week, I had my first Shabbat meal with my family. I had no idea what I was doing (I pulled out my little Shabbox and did the best that I could), my step-dad kept saying “oy vey!”, my brother announced the kugel was “gross” and getting a picture for the NEXT Shabbat folks with all of us in it was nearly impossible. But in the end we still had a wonderful time together, enjoyed everyone’s company and even learned a little bit about each other. And later, I thought…maybe that is exactly what it’s all about.
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Photo provided by the author.
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Read more posts from Issue #16: Jewish Diversity.
Jews Love Wine
Most of us learned how to drink during freshman year of college. But, while keg stands may have gotten you some action in the dorms, the sad truth is that there aren’t many post-college Shabbat dinners that incorporate beer bongs into the meal (although, there’s a great idea in there, somewhere…)
Instead, in homes around the world, Friday night means bottles of wine are uncorked and tipped back, as they have for centuries on Shabbat.  And, while knowing your Grasă de Cotnari from your Oeil de Perdrix might be a little more advanced than most amateur sommeliers are used to, it’s never too late to familiarize yourselves with a few wine basics. Who knows? Maybe next time you’re asked to bring a bottle to a friend’s for Shabbat dinner, you won’t end up having to explain why “MD 20/20 seems as good as anything else, right?” (Editor’s note- this has happened to members of the Alef staff.)
And so, in the interest of saving our readers from both ridicule and hangovers, we present:Â
The NEXT Shabbat Essentials: Wine Tasting – A Beginner’s Guide
This guide is part of the NEXT Shabbat Essentials, so keep a copy in your wine cooler for any time you pull out the cork!
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