Bound by Blood and Kreplach

My Rosh Hashanah Table

Jewish holidays with Maya have always been kind of challenging for us.  Leo and I are by no means religious people but one of the things I dreamed about when thinking of having children was to be able to pass on the Jewish traditions to them.

My parents and grandparents were not terribly religious either, although we did regularly attend Shabbat services and certainly spent the holidays in the synagogue.  My parents were active in the Jewish community.  My mom a Sisterhood President, active member of Hadassah, Principal of the Sunday School.  My dad was on the Board of the Synagogue and led the Israel Bonds drive in our congregation for several years.  Most of my parents friends were from the synagogue and I of course attended Sunday school.  As a kid the Jewish community was quite at the center of our lives.  And during the holidays we gathered always at my grandparents home and spent Rosh Hashanah's, Passover's and countless other holidays togehter.  My grandmother's house smelling like chicken soup and kreplach or kneidlach and tsimmes.  On Passover, we all whined with hunger until the Seder was finished and then we raced around the house to find the 7 different afikomen that my grandfather hid for each of us grandchildren to find so we could each reap the reward of finding the hidden matzot.  I so wanted Maya to bask in those same traditions.

Of course it is different.  The Jewish community in Amsterdam is not nearly as small and intimate as was the one in Washington, PA.  Our synagogue here is much bigger and after a few attempts to become active in the congregation here (in the beginning it was tough because I didn't speak the language, after I spoke the language I had too many other things occupying my time).  Still, I feel that now that my Dutch is good enough I should try to find some way in, especially for Maya.

When Maya was smaller Leo and I did make an effort to bring her to services at the synagogue on a regular basis, not so much for the religion but to be a part of the Jewish community and to sew those seeds of tradition.  As she got a bit older though that got tougher as she grew beyond the age that disrupting services migrated from adorable to the teach-your-kid-how-to-behave-looks and when hanging outside the sanctuary playing with the other kids led to older kids coming to get one of us every 10 minutes when Maya was either crying or making a nuisance to kids who were playing games or whatever.  After that we gave up.  And we haven't taken her for years.  It's no excuse but we are trying to balance two jobs, a household and our autistic daughter.  One less thing to navigate just was easier somehow.  As she has gotten older we have considered trying to enroll her in Sunday school but we just couldn't see our way clear to putting her in one more challenging environment where we would have to try to navigate her through.  So, we've stayed away.  

Still, despite the challenges it does make me sad that Maya has no real connection to her Judaism yet but trying to get her to understand Judaism just seems tough, even in an age appropriate way.  The activities of the synagogue are of course geared for mainstream children and as her mother I just feel the need to protect her from yet another environment where she will not be in step with the rest.  She has such a hard time fitting in and at the moment I find it more important to build her confidence and something about putting her in another struggle doesn't seem right to me, even though I desperately want it for her.  In the best-version-of-myself mode (which I am not sure truly exists outside of my own mind) I see myself trying to carve something out for her in the community, some non-linear way to bring her in,  to pave the way for others even, but after working a full time job, navigating Maya through special education, thinking and and over-thinking how to best help her, somehow I never get around to it.

And I can absolutely understand why synagogue is hard for her to get.  It's all language based and not very visual (except for the Torah of course), I am not even sure I get it a lot of the time.  I wonder if they have the Torah in pictograms (something I will Google).

I do read her books about the Jewish holidays and she enjoys the stories but very little of that sticks with her.  Yes, she loves Hanukkah but like most kids connects it with the gifts, but largely she just drifts through the holidays without much interest in them, too ensconced in her own world of Thomas the Train, panda bears, Australia or whatever seems to be the object of her oft-one-track-mind.  She joyfully participates but hasn't at least until now any view of the whole, that these are religious holidays and things we do every year.  I think for her if it is not part of her daily routine it is very difficult for her to grasp.

So I have stuck to the traditions of Judaism more than the actual formal religion of it all.  And in Judaism (and my family) that has a lot to do with food.  And again, I have another reason to be grateful to (especially) my mom and my grandmother as they made so many of the traditional Jewish foods.  We ate certain things at certain times of the year (potato latkes on Hannukkah, kreplach at Rosh Hashanah, hamentaschen on Purim, kneidelach on Pesach, tsimmes at any holiday, kuggle pretty much every week and so on).  I spent so many hours with both of them in the kitchen and now that they are gone, I lovingly prepare the dishes that I watched them make so many times (okay, they always bought the hamentaschen, but still).  And I learned to make a few dishes of my own -- Challah, which was always bought at the Jewish bakery in our family, I now make my own. Living in Europe means that Jewish bakeries are limited (there are a few in Amsterdam but with so few, everything flies off the shelves).  So, I learned how to do it myself (and it is pretty easy, thanks to my Kitchen Aid Mixer).  And Maya gleefully takes part in a lot of this, making challah is a particular favorite for her.

When we eat Shabbat or holiday meals in our dining room beneath the gazes of my parents and grandparents photos which adorn the wall next to our dining room table.  In a strange way I feel as if I am connecting Maya to them in some unspoken way that, even though they are not a present part of her life, she is connected to them by living the same traditions as I did with my parents and grandparents as a girl.  I know it sounds silly but Maya eating and loving the kreplach I make which I prepare the same exact way I watched my grandmother do so many times gives me the sense that she is herself connecting to all those wonderful times I spent with my family during the Jewish holidays.  We are bound by blood and kreplach.   

This year though, starting in the spring with Pesach though I noticed the first glimmer of understanding from Maya about the holidays.  Maya remembered the Seder and when she ate her matzo with charoseth this spring I explained to her that the charoseth represented the mortar the ancient Israelites used and I told her that mortar was a kind of cement she said, "Mommy, this isn't cement, this is apples," the concept of symbolic food just didn't land on her.  This year for Rosh Hashanah I prepared her, we read stories about it and talked about it for a couple of weeks.  She of course remembered dipping apples in honey but the concept of the new year is hard for her to get her mind around.  

Then all of a sudden on Tuesday evening I showed her this video and I could see a little light went on.  Enchanted by the colors, the singing and dancing and the sights of it all, she asked me to play it over and over and started singing along with it.  Then last night, right after we made kiddush (the blessing of the wine) and wished each other Shana Tova (a happy new year), Maya turned to me and said, "mommy, it's a new year, a time to start over, be happy!" And of course my apples and honey were salty with my tears, the sweetest tears ever.

And then another thought came to me.  Sure, at 8 I knew what Rosh Hashanah was, but what I understood about it were two things:  apples and honey and a day off from school.  And this fantastic insight came after years of going to synagogue with my parents and at least 3 years of Sunday school.

So, putting things into perspective Maya is doing pretty well.  My school of Jewish cookery and storybooks ain't half bad!

And tonight I introduced Maya to another very important Jewish food tradition -- Chinese food.

The Holiday Superfecta

Tonight's challah, gefilte fish and horseradish

This week is Rosh Hashanah, which is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, one of the most important holy days of the year.  Over the years many people ask if Rosh Hashanah is like New Year's Eve with parties, etc.  While it is certainly festive, it is still a holiday which carries a lot of religious significance.  Simply speaking we Jews read out of the Torah on every Sabbath and Rosh Hashanah signifies when you start again from the beginning.  The more complicated explanation is that Rosh Hashanah is the day in which you reflect back on the previous year, think about  your mistakes and how you could have done things differently.  A week later you later you ask G-d to forgive you for your sins on Yom Kippur followed 5 days later by  Sukkot which lasts 8 days and in simple terms is a holiday celebrating the harvest.  Following this is Simchat Torah, which is a celebration commemorating the reading of another complete cycle of the Torah and one of 2 Jewish holidays where it is a mitzvah (good deed) to get drunk.  In other words Rosh Hashanah kicks off what I call the Holiday Superfecta. 


These holidays can fall anywhere from the beginning of September until mid-October.  The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, so they occur on different days of the year with a lot of variation.  In Israel though, there is about a four week period which is peppered with holidays and where many people don't work, or work only half days and of course there is no school.  The school year in Israel usually starts around the beginning of September, and if Rosh Hashanah falls the next week, then kids usually have a 3 week vacation right after the start of school.  It's strange but after living in Israel for my first year, many strange things started to seem normal. 


Certainly Jewish culture revolves around a lot of things, but food is extremely important in our rituals.  Many Jews during the holidays eat traditional food which has been eaten by their families for generations.  Depending on where your family's origin is, can mean that traditional Jewish foods are different, or have a lot of different variations.  Jews, in their thousands of years of wandering also absorbed many local traditions and those also influence Jewish cooking and cuisine. One of the most interesting holidays I ever spent was one Sukkot in Israel.  I went with my cousin to the family of her cleaning woman and her Yemenite family to have lunch one day during Sukkot.  Besides eating outside in the sukkah, nothing else about the meal was at all familiar.  But I enjoyed every second of it and there is something very beautiful that within the world of Judaism there are many different customs, practices all rooted in the same religion.


I absolutely loved the holidays in Israel.  For the few days before everyone acts totally insane and buys enough food to feed a small country for a month.  Although you want to kill someone while you are in the supermarket, it is actually quite comical.  Through it all Israelis still have a strong sense of family.  While divorce rates are also on the rise, still family holds a very important place for most Israelis.   Many grown Israelis that I know who have familes of their own still spend Friday evening together with their parents, brothers, sisters, etc.  At holidays whole families (and friends) come together for a lot of food, laughter, very lively discussions, singing, etc.  It really is beautiful.  I really enjoyed the many kind friends and their families who adopted me so many times during holidays in Israel. 


As a kid, we spent most of the Jewish holidays at my grandparents.  Thanksgiving was at our house when I was a kid and when I got a little older, my aunt always had Thanksgiving, but Rosh Hashanah was nearly always at my grandmother's house.  It was always a lot of fun.  My family was not religious, although we did go to synagogue I think more for the social interaction than for spirituality.  My grandmother's house was a fun place on holidays (actually on any day).  Our family was pretty small, it was my grandparents, my parents and brothers and my aunt uncle and 4 cousins.  We saw a lot of each other (living a block away from each other as youngsters) and often spending Sundays at my grandparents.  We did what I think a lot of o ther Jewish families do on holidays, we ate a lot, hung out, talked and debated different things (sports, politics).  They were good times, although the holidays weren't all that much different than our usual Sundays together.  The only difference was the food my grandmother served.  On Sundays she almost always made steak (how she broiled delmonico steaks 14 people which were eaten at the same time, I'll never know.  On holidays she always made chicken soup, on Rosh Hashanah with kreplach and on Passover with matzo balls.  She also usually made a brisket (and I must say her brisket was awful, my mom's brisket was moist and tender and Meme's was dry like shoe leather) but she always made kugel and tzimmes so by the time you ate your gelfite fish, loaded up on kreplach and challah, you could skip right over the brisket onto kugel and not even care.  Skipping over brisket was like some intricate culinary game of hopscotch.  And although we never talked about it as kids, a couple of years ago I was together with my cousins and one of them brought up Meme's leather brisket and we all nearly peed our pants laughing, maybe because my aunt reproduced it at that particular get together, but just like riding a bike, my cousins brother and I played hopscotch then like we never stopped playing it. 


Anyone who knows me knows that I really love to cook.  I would not call myself a great cook, but I am solid. I can make a non leather brisket, so that's something, right?  As a child I spent many of those Sundays and holidays perched on my grandmother's royal blue stepstool in her pink kitchen (and I mean PINK, pink cabinet, pink stove top, pink oven, pink refrigerator), watching her as she made her food.  When I wasn't at my grandmother's house, I did the same in our own kitchen watching my mom cook.  My mom and grandmother did not write down recipes.  My grandma would say, you have to do it and not write it down, so I never wrote down any of her recipes.  However, when I grew up and started cooking, I really did know how to make most of the things she made.  Anyway, I think one of the reasons I really love to cook is that cooking connects me very closely with that time in my life.  Some of my warmest memories were spent in the kitchen.  I spent so much time talking to my grandma when I was there watching her cook.  She talked to me about her life, her parents, about music and dance, about life.  My grandmother was the warmest and kindest person I knew and I just loved being with her there, while she cooked for the family that she loved.  So, when I am cooking, particularly when the smells of what I am cooking are wafting through the house I feel that close connection toward my grandma.  I really do think that is why I really love to cook so much. 


And my holiday dinners largely resemble hers.  I use her silverware.  I make a lot of the same food and fuss over the table the same way.  When I am putting away her silverware, I can almost transport myself back to her pink kitchen, drying the silverware with her dish towels and putting them back in the same holder that she had. 

Maya, right before dinner asking me to 'bless the bread' already!

Our crowd at holidays vary.  Sometimes it is just us together with my inlaws, sometimes Leo's brother and sister are in with their families, sometimes friends are in.  Last year we had about 20 people, and tonight it was just us and tomorrow night it is us, with Leo's parents and a friend.  Small or large though I really love doing it.
In the earlier part of the week when I was making my soup and kreplach, I posted a little bit on facebook and many friends and family asked me for recipes and what I was making, I was honestly flattered that people wanted my recipes and wanted to know what I was cooking.


Tonight's Menu


Apples with Honey
Gefilte Fish with horseradish


Orange Chicken with Honey
Wild Rice
French cut green beans
Baby green salad with vinaigrette
Challah
Apple Crisp


Tomorrow Night's Menu


Apples with Honey
Gefilte Fish with Horseradish
Chicken soup with kreplach
Cucumber salad
Brisket with shoestring carrots and sauce of sherry and figs
Mashed Potato puree with spring onions
Hericot Verts
Green salad with dijon vinaigrette
Challah
And some kind of dessert (not sure yet which)