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Reading Between the Lines:
The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen
July 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
Last week, we received a copy of The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen by Joan
Nathan. I've been excited about the arrival of this book. I love to cook, my kids
love to help in the kitchen, and our whole family loves to eat Jewish food. With
Shabbat approaching, I immediately opened the book and scanned the Friday
night menus for a recipe to try. Pot Roast? Nope, we don't eat red meat. Matzoh
Ball soup? It's June. Who eats soup in June? So, how about the challah? After all,
I'm very attached to the concept of baking our own.
Granted, thinking about baking challah happens a lot more often than the actual
act of baking. But when we do, I adore watching my three and five year old
daughters wrestling mightily with the dough, sneaking bites when I've turned
my watchful eye, or pretended to. (Did anyone know about the dangers of eating
raw egg when we were kids? I'm sure I ate at least two complete birthday cakes'
worth of batter in my childhood.) I love teaching them how to braid, and their
gasps of wonder each time the yeast does its magical thing. But, I already have a
challah recipe, handwritten in faded pencil on the back of a yellowing cookbook
that lost its cover years ago. Why try another? I consider the fact that Joan
Nathan has won both the James Beard Cookbook award and the Julia Child
award. I further consider the fact that whenever we bake with my recipe my
husband asks why the challah tastes funny this week. This one's bound to be an
improvement.
So, I scanned the list of ingredients. Immediately, my inner Ruth Reichl launched
into her critique. "There's honey in it?" I snarled (to the extent that it's possible to
snarl to one's self). "We never put honey in our challah. And a half cup of oil?
Way too much!" Apparently just reading another recipe was about all of the
culinary innovation I could handle for the day. I reached for my old cookbook.
Perhaps it's not fantastic, but it's the way we do it around here, thank you very
much.
By the way, don't mess with my hamentashen recipe (prune filling only, please)
either. Or my matzoh charlotte recipe, or my chicken soup recipe. Because all of
them were handed down to me by my mother. And isn't that the way Jewish
food is supposed to be made? The way our mothers made it. Which is the way
their mothers made it. Which is the way their mothers made it. Because I rely on
my mother's recipes, every Jewish holiday is preceded by at least one phone call.
It used to be that I was always the one calling. Now, as my mother prepares to
move to a new apartment, sometimes she calls me. "Do you have my recipe? I
can't find it." Whether we are celebrating together or apart, I know our tables
will share at least one dish, and it feels as if we are close enough to share a plate.
So who needs a Jewish cookbook, anyway? Well, for one thing, some of our
mothers weren't Jewish. Some of our mothers didn't cook. Some of our mothers
were terrible cooks. And some of our mothers left our lives before they had a
chance to pass on their delicious recipes. In every case, and even in none of those
cases, Joan Nathan enables us to create new culinary traditions for our families.
While she's at it, she's also taught us how to include our kids in the process, so
that these recipes become theirs even earlier.
A few years ago, I was looking through my mother's cookbooks. I found an old
and obviously well-used copy of The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook. It starts
with an introduction by Molly herself, sounding every bit the 1955 Jewish
mother. "So, how did I come to write a cookbook? To make a long story....if you
lived next door, you could come and yoo-hoo me a question". And inside the
cookbook, I found our family's secret recipe for Matzoh Charlotte - an orange
flavored, very sweet, kosher for Passover pudding, that appears at every Meltzer
seder. "OK," I reasoned. "Maybe it didn't come from my bubbe. But at least it
came from someone's bubbe." However, upon reading the endnotes I discovered
that in fact, there was no Molly Goldberg. She was fictional character on a radio
show. Suddenly, our family Matzoh Charlotte recipe felt about as authentic as an
enchilada recipe from the Dora the Explorer website.
But you know what? By now, that recipe is ours. I've been eating it for almost 40
years. I hope my children will eat it for at least another 40. It turns out, it doesn't
take so long for a recipe to seem like it's been handed down for generations. So
thanks, Joan. While I don't think I'll replace our challah recipe, my daughters
may lay claim to your Easy Pear Strudel as an old Meltzer-Lepine family
tradition.
Reading Between the Lines:
Snow in Jerusalem
May 2008, PJ Library Newsletter & modernjewishmom.com
Today we sat down
to read Snow In Jerusalem by
Deborah da Costa. It's a story about two boys, one Jewish, and one Muslim, who
fight over the same white cat. After an unexpected snowstorm, the boys conclude
that they must share the cat and (spoiler alert!) her newborn kittens. Why?
Because no one can prove who saw her first, and, as the Muslim boy declares, "She wants peace." (Hmmmm.... do I detect a metaphor, perhaps?)
I was curious about
how Ella would react to the story, since we haven't spoken much about Israel or
Jerusalem, and certainly not about the turmoil in the region.
"Did you like it?"
I asked.
"Mmmm-hmmmm. A
lot."
I decided to probe
a little. "What do you think the boys were fighting about?"
"A cat."
"Yup, they were
fighting about a cat. But do you think they were fighting about anything else?"
"Yes. They were
fighting over who would get to keep the cat."
"Anything else?"
Ella looked at me
blankly. "The kittens?"
That one boy spoke
Hebrew and one spoke Arabic; that one lived in the Jewish quarter and one lived
in the Muslim quarter; that one boy wore a kippah and one boy's mother wore a
hijab; these points were completely lost on Ella. I hesitated. Should I say
more? Is it okay to let this be just a
sweet story about a cat, much in the same way that to Ella, the song "Sixteen
Going on Seventeen" is about counting, not flirting with a Nazi?
I thought back to
my own childhood and what I learned about Israel. We collected coins in little
blue boxes to buy trees and forests in the names of our loved ones. We sang
Hatikvah and danced the hora and collected shelves full of olive wood souvenirs brought back by
grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. We knew Israel was surrounded by
enemies, but if there was a conflict brewing inside her borders, we never heard
about it, and we certainly never talked about it. The world has changed a lot
in the thirty years since I went to Hebrew school. For most of us, now the
question isn't do we mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to our
children, but when, and of course, how.
Consequently, the
first time I read Snow In Jerusalem,
I admit to being a little dissatisfied. I thought it didn't go far enough, even
for my precious almost-5 year old who, I'm grateful, doesn't know what the word "war" means. I tried to come up with some simple way to explain to her why the
boys were really fighting - why their graceful solution was in fact, so highly
improbable. But each time I opened my
mouth, I was at an utter and total loss for words. Really, what could I
possibly say?
And that was when I
appreciated the beauty of this little book. I realized that by simply creating
two characters, one Jewish and one Muslim, each with his own home, his own
family, and his own voice, Da Costa has opened up a world to Ella that I never
knew existed. Of course, five is too young to talk about the devastating
headlines that rise out of the Middle East. (Sometimes I'm convinced that 40 is
too young.) But it's not too young to talk about conflict and competing
narratives. And perhaps a cat and her kittens is a perfect way to start the
conversation.
Reading Between the Lines:
Let My People Go
April 2008, PJ Library Newsletter & modernjewishmom.com
When Let My People Go, a retelling of the 10 plagues,
arrived at our house, I wanted some time to preview it before reading it aloud
to my daughter, Ella. Still working on a narrative of Purim that would gloss lightly
over assassination plots, gallows and edicts to kill the Jews, I wasn't quite
ready to explain the next "They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat" holiday.
So the book sat around, untouched, for several days - unusual for any book in
our house, and especially a PJ book. But once Ella spotted the cover, festooned
with wacky Egyptians and acrobatic frogs, she wanted to hear it immediately.
"Not yet. I want to read it first," I replied.
"Well, why do you want to read it first?" she asked.
"I want to make sure it's not too scary."
Ella thumbed through the book, assessing the colorful
cartoon pictures. "I KNOW it's not too scary." she announced.
I complied, and thus began her introduction to the 10
plagues. Ella laughed as the Egyptians held their noses around the "red" water
(I may have read the word bloody just a tiny bit more softly than the
rest of the text on the page) and as the hailstones bounced off Pharoah's head.
She was more interested in the fancy outfits of the women in the illustrations
than the insects swarming thickly around their heads, and didn't seem to notice
the retching donkey or the sheep, legs splayed heavenward, in various states of
rigor mortis. But, having chanted the plagues twice a year, every year, for
almost 40 years, I knew that I wasn't quite ready to share the final plague
with my first-born child. So after the plague of darkness, when the remarkably
obtuse Pharoah once again refused to let the Israelites free, I paused. "Look
what time it is!" I exclaimed. "Let's make lunch."
Two grilled cheese sandwiches later, Ella wanted to hear the
end of the story. You know, the part when God decides to kill every first born
Egyptian son. Not exactly Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus material. Unprepared
to field any questions that might arise, (Oh Readers' Guide, how could you
leave me on my own with the Angel of Death?) I read fast. Really fast. "Thisplaugeisbadbeyondcompare / deathtoeveryfirstbornson / fromroyalborntopoorestone,"
and turned the page before pausing to take a breath. "Hey, look at all those
people following Moses!" I gasped. Ella promptly turned back to page I had just
zipped through.
"What happened in this part?" she asked, understandably confused.
I paused. "Well, it says that the first born Egyptian boys
would - well, something bad would happen to them."
"What?" she persisted.
I paused again. "They would die." I answered grimly. Ella
looked puzzled. "But I don't really believe that happened," I added quickly. "I
think it's just a story."
"Me neither," Ella laughed. "That would never happen!"
So, it turned out she was right. The book wasn't too scary
for her. And I suspect that this had less to do with the absurd way I read it
to her, and more to do with the way she heard it. Perhaps, as psychologist Bruno
Bettelheim argued about fairy tales in The Uses of Enchantment, children
hear the stories of the Torah differently from adults. While the tales might
seem scary, politically incorrect, or inappropriate in a myriad of ways to us
as parents, maybe children hear something else. Maybe they discover fundamental
truths about themselves and the world. (Or maybe not. After all, Bettelheim
also blamed childhood autism on cold, distant mothers.) Alternatively, perhaps they
take in the parts they are ready for, and discard the rest as only that much more
inscrutable blather from grownups.
As a parent, I struggle with how to handle some of the grim
and morbid stories in our tradition, which, unfortunately, are mighty
prevalent. Ella is swiftly outgrowing the ignore-the-uncomfortable-parts
approach. A book like Let My People Go offers another possible approach
- make it silly. The popularity of plague bags leads me to believe that this strategy
works for lots of parents. I happen to find the idea of tossing plush boils
around the table to be in poor taste, to put it mildly. But more importantly, I don't like the idea
of my children laughing at someone else's suffering, even if they don't realize
that's what they are doing. I think it's far more appropriate to spill out 10
drops of sweet juice than to engage in "Family Fun with the 10 Plagues!" (one
of the first hits I found on Google while researching this piece.)
Maybe I'm being far too analytical. Ella loved the book. Nevertheless
I'm struggling with the urge to hide it. Yesterday I found her at the kitchen
table, poring over the last picture. She gestured towards the blood dripping
off the Israelites' doorposts.
"What do you think that is?" she asked.
"I don't know," I answered. Which meant, of course, I don't
know what to tell you. I don't know whether to shelter you from everything
that's hard in the world. I don't know how much longer I can put off answering
all of these difficult questions. But maybe, just maybe, one more year?
Reading Between the Lines:
Five Little Gefiltes
March 2008, PJ Library Newsletter
by Amy Meltzer
In our house, we do not serve gefilte fish. I can't stand the smell, and like many hyper-vigilant moms, I try to limit our family's fish consumption to wild, low-mercury varieties. And honestly, who isn't creeped out by the mysterious gel it floats in? So when I sat down to read Five Little Gefiltes to my children, it's not surprising that they were puzzled by the opening line - "What's a Gefilte?"
"Well, it's fish." I began. "But it's not a fish. Not like they have at the pet store." Blank stares. "Someone takes a few fish and mixes them together." A look of horror spreads over my four year old Ella's face. "No," I quickly interject. "Not living fish." I stop. Have I ever actually mentioned that the lovely pink salmon we eat so often is, well - dead? "Let's keep on reading!" I say, a little too cheerfully.
The girls love the book. We read it four times in a row and twice more later in the day. Both Ella and Zoe, Ella's two year old sister, chime in OY VEY at all the appropriate moments (and a few extra, for good measure). And really, is there anything cuter than hearing a child speak Yiddish? Once, when Ella was three, she called me in distress, unable to identify a mysterious spot on her shirt. After a moment of deep scrutiny, she looked up with a serious look on her face and proclaimed: "It's shmutz." I beamed. (Or should I say, kvelled?)
When I was 8, I begged my grandmother to teach me how to speak Yiddish. After hours of practice, I could recite to anyone who would listen, "Es vet helfen vi a toiten bahnkes." This translates as "It would do as much good as cupping a corpse" (Cupping, a traditional folk remedy, has dubious therapeutic value for the living, but even its practitioners agree that it's pretty much wasted on the dead.) Not a phrase likely to appear in most travel dictionaries, but unfortunately that and "go poo in the ocean" are the only two complete sentences in my Yiddish repertoire.
Still, I've had enough exposure to Ashkenazi culture to catch, and enjoy, all of the clever references tucked into the illustrations of Five Little Gefiltes. (My personal favorite: Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuches.) But I don't speak Yiddish. My mother doesn't speak Yiddish. My husband and his parents, who are French Canadian, certainly don't speak Yiddish. . My grandparents, who spoke Yiddish, died long before my children were born. Sure, I drop the occasional oy, and ukh. (Is that actually Yiddish? It sure sounds it.) Like any former New Yorker, I shlep my bags rather than carry them. But overall, very little has trickled into my daily vocabulary, a mere two generations after my grandfather arrived at Ellis Island. So what chance is there that my own children will even recognize, much less speak, any Yiddish?
When I grew up, I chose to make my home an hour from the nearest kosher deli, three hours from the everyone-speaks-Yiddish-even-if they're-not-Jewish island of Manhattan, and a world away from the very Jewish suburbs where I was raised. I did this because I prefer farmland to malls, prefer tofu to roast beef, prefer my synagogue where everyone looks different to the many shuls I've visited where everyone seems to look the same. But is there a trade-off? My children will grow up learning Hebrew, celebrating Shabbat, and keeping kosher. But I want more. I want them to laugh during Hannah and Her Sisters when Woody Allen returns home from his conversion to Catholicism with a loaf of white bread and a jar of mayonnaise. I want them to smile with warm familiarity when they hear a Borscht Belt accent. I want them to gently admonish their own children to stop kvetching. To me, that's "real" Jewish.
How can I accomplish this with the life I've chosen? Should I self consciously insert my limited Yiddish (well, not all of my limited Yiddish) into daily conversation, just to make sure it gets heard? Do I force my children to watch Mel Brooks movies (ok, not Men in Tights: that would be child abuse)? Must I serve (shudder) gefilte fish?
Or, can I embrace the fact that the Jewish culture my grandchildren inherit will be different from the culture of my bubbe and zayde. Not something less, but something very, very different.
And as I ponder this, I'm grateful for the PJ books we're receiving which keep this older culture alive, at least for a few sweet moments at bedtime.
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