Tuv Ha’aretz Reflections on Parshat Ekev, by Rabbi Marc Soloway

The intuition to make some kind of blessing or prayer before eating, either traditional or spontaneous, transcends religions and cultures.  Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and probably every religion has its version of making a spiritual connection to the food we are about to eat, whether an established formula or a moment of meditation.  The Talmud has a strong statement that anyone enjoying the physical pleasures of this world without first saying a bracha, is like someone who steals from the Temple! (Berachot 35a).

There are so many traditional blessings for the world of our senses; eating and drinking; seeing mountains, rainbows, oceans; smelling spices or fragrant fruits; hearing thunder.  These blessings affirm the majesty of creation and our appreciation of the great gifts of nature, by reciting these brachot as we see or smell, or before we eat anything. Being part of our Jewish CSA, Tuv Ha’aretz along with its weekly offerings of delicious, local produce has certainly heightened our sense of appreciation for the fruit of the land.  For vegetables, the traditional bracha is baruch atah HaShem elohaynu melech haolam borei p’ri ha’adamah – blessed are You Eternal One, sovereign of the universe, creator of the earth’s fruit.  For fruit, we say p’ri ha’etz, the tree’s fruit.

Making a blessing after we have eaten seems to be less intuitive and, to my knowledge, does not play such a major part in many religions.  Jewish law makes a distinction between halachot (laws) that are d’Oraita – derived directly from the Torah, and d’Rabbanan – coming from rabbinic law.  Clearly a mitzvah that is seen to be from the Torah has more weight and authority than one that comes from the rabbis.  Interestingly, birkat hamazon, grace after meals, is seen as d’Oraita and the myriad blessings before food are d’Rabbanan.  The proof text for this is from this week’s parsha, Ekev, and is a verse, which is included in these after food blessings, “V’achalta v’savata u’verachta… – you will eat, you will be satisfied and then you will bless…” (Deuteronomy 8:10)  The order in the Torah suggests that from that place of satisfaction comes the obligation to offer blessings of appreciation.  When we are full and sated after a wonderful meal, our instinct may be to go to sleep or lounge around on the couch too full to be grateful, yet it is exactly in this state that the Torah asks us to be mindful of gratitude rather than victims of complacency.

Those of us who are more inclined to make a blessing before we eat and tend to forget the blessings afterwards, could try to remember that the gratitude that we express after we are satisfied, rather than before we have tasted what lies in front of us, has a greater force. So much of the Torah’s power comes precisely from the fact that it is often contrary to our impulses or intuitions, demanding consciousness in those moments when we feel unconscious.  This is how the Torah helps us to refine our characters and reminds us that we are just a little lower than the angels. Either way, it has been a source of great pleasure and satisfaction to receive our weekly yield from the farmers’ hands and they deserve our blessings of appreciation along with our own personal way of thanking the ultimate source with whom we are in partnership!

I eat in a pretty healthy manner. I cook most of my own meals, and even when I eat out or at other people’s homes I’m careful what and how much I eat. [I also keep kosher, so I guess by definition I think a lot about what I eat or don't eat, but it's rote by now--I've been doing it most of my life.]

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a host of food intolerances/allergies (still not sure which they are yet, still working on that part) and in addition to making sure I eat healthily, I also have to make sure I don’t eat things that make me sick.

I’ve gone through fits and spurts of eating organic, cage-free, preservative free, artificial flavors & ingredients free, home-grown…you get the idea. It’s not that I don’t care about environmental sustainability, or even the fact that organic, cage-free, or local produce is more expensive or not as accessible; honestly, for better or worse, it’s just not in my frame of reference. I buy things without thinking how far my bananas have traveled to get to me, or how the field workers who picked my grapes were treated.

Having food allergies has made me infinitely more mindful about what I’m putting in my body because of the ill effects certain things can have on me. But it has also made me think a lot more about food sustainability and food ethics in general, and how the choices I make about food impact others. Sure, I’m only one person, and what kind of environmental impact am I really having by buying bananas that have been shipped from Chile? What point does it make if I buy ethically raised meat? But if everyone thinks like that, then everyone is contributing to problems rather than helping to solve them.

At this point in my life (and budget), I can’t commit to completely changing the way I shop and eat; I know it wouldn’t stick. But I’m taking small steps to buy more local produce, ethically raised meat, and free trade items, and hope to incrementally adapt my habits in the long term.

Food allergies have made my life complicated, but they’ve also opened my eyes to how the choices I make about food can have a significant impact on more than just me. Silver lining, I guess?

Do you have food allergies or intolerances? How have they impacted your life?

Gluten or dairy free? Check out my food blog for some recipes!

�I�m so glad you are here today,� the woman said to Pandora at her Weight Watchers meeting today. �Because you were the crazy lady.�

The woman speaking had just made her lifetime goal, and she was speaking in front of the whole group about her success. She took the opportunity to single out my wife for honorable mention.

�I always thought of you as the crazy lady,� she continued. �because nothing you said made sense to me. You were in a completely different place. But now that I�ve been following the program, everything you said when I first started fits together.�

Another woman looked at the speaker and said �Well, just so you know, *you* are*my* crazy lady.�

I guess that�s how it works sometimes. We come together as a community and share our experiences. Some things resonate, others challenge our way of thinking � only to come back later and make sense.

And if we are lucky, there is someone there for us to model � someone who we can look to as an example of �how it works� and more importantly, �how I could make it work for me�.

Adopting a new habit or behavior or observance doesn�t require that we become *just like* another person. But it does mean we have to be able to see which elements in our life we would need to change, and also that we have a sense that such change is possible without losing ourselves in the process.

Listen to our new PODCAST, Episode 5 by clicking here!

Co-Founder Julie Wolk sits down with me on the latest Hazon Podcast. Listen to what Wilderness Torah is doing to revitalize the American Jewish Community. Also, don’t forget you can subscribe on iTunes by searching “Hazon”.

Also, don’t forget that it is Earth Day this week, so check out all the options going on in your area. For a good listing, check this website out

They have a map where you can choose where you live and find out what is going on near you!

And finally, for those in the New York area, come see “Tapped: The Movie,” a documentary about water usage and safety in America. It is screening at 5 pm at the Cowin Center at Columbia University (between 120 and 121 streets on Broadway). If you are one of the first 100 people to arrive at 4 pm, you can exchange a plastic bottle for a FREE Klean Kanteen! So look into your recycling bin and grab a plastic bottle. If you come after the first 100 people, you will get a great discount on Klean Kanteen.

Life in general distracts me. It’s true no matter what I’m doing or where I am. If I go into the food co-op for bread and peanut butter, I’ll carry out shampoo and trail mix; when I resolve to run twelve times around the track, I lose count after the third loop. Even when I get through a task, I often neglect to follow up or look back to consider its lessons. By the time I’m halfway through, my mind is already whirring off in another direction.

So I was a little concerned when I signed up for a 21-day “spring rejuvenation cleanse” and learned that it would involve focus. In multiple ways. But this also got to the heart of why I wanted to purify in the first place.

To get the most out of this food-based detoxifying experience, the approximately 50 participants are supposed to eat certain foods, avoid others, prepare detoxifying recipes, breathe deeply, take long walks, and journal about the whole thing each day. On top of all that, our guide encourages us to “eat mindfully”. I figured if I could do all of that, I might have a fighting chance of getting my attention deficit into the black.

Just before the cleanse’s official start date of April 5, I realized I already had an advantage when it came to mindful eating. To get started, I headed to my bookshelf.

Of course, it took me a few minutes of looking at other books and trying to remember why I was there, but soon I was leafing through my copy of Food for Thought, Hazon’s curriculum on Jews, food, and contemporary life. I turned to chapter 2, “Gratitude, Mindfulness, and Blessing our Food”, and started to get reacquainted with the berachot for the things I eat every day.

Usually, I only remember to say blessings over food or beverages on special occasions – at a Shabbat dinner, or during a Pesach Seder. I can count on one hand the number of times a year I say the Birkat Hamazon, or bensch, after a meal. During the 21 days of the cleanse, I decided, I would finally corral my attention and make it happen.

Food for Thought lists not two or three, but six blessings over noshes and meals (it’s the same list available from online resources like My Jewish Learning and Chabad). This demands even more attention.

First of all, I can’t start shoveling the morning’s oatmeal (pictured above) into my mouth while I iron my pants. No. I have to pause. Then I have to quiet my mind enough to consider: Is this food primarily made of grains? Or animal products? If it is a fruit or vegetable, does it come from a tree or the ground? The second step is to remember the last phrase after the standard preamble blessing God, ruler of the universe. Is it He who creates varieties of nourishment? (for foods made of grains that are not bread), or He who creates the fruit of the tree? The third step is to say it. Then, of course, you can dig in.

Throughout the first days, I kept severing my string of consciousness. On the first night, I even determined, as I fussed with my salad in the kitchen, that I should say “borei p’ri ha’adamah.” One step down! I thought. This’ll be a cinch. But by the time I brought everything to the table, I forgot and just started eating.

When I did remember that night, I decided to do it anyway. So I stopped. I put down my fork and I looked up from the book I was reading. I held the bowl in my hands, looking down at the mix of green in the lettuces and examining the shades of orange and ivory in the other vegetables. Then I said the blessing aloud.

Next, I turned to my salmon. I said the blessing I had been trying to learn for the past day, the one that applies to fish, dairy, candy, and other miscellaneous foods–a collection of things that reminded me a lot of the sundry thoughts jumbling through my head most of the time. I stumbled a little, but finally remembered the words: “shehakol niyah bidvar”–”at whose word all came to be.”

Then I picked up my fork and started over.

Stop and think; choose a blessing and bless; eat.

It seems a simple line of thought, and one that I can eventually complete. Maybe by the time I’m eating bread again, I’ll even make it to bensching.

Note: The Hebrew translations above are actually from My Jewish Learning, not Food for Thought. I noticed differences in each source I consulted. If you have thoughts on why that might be, feel free to comment!

The month Nisan begins tonight and with it, so many associations. Last year, I wrote about the practice of refraining from eating Matzah from Rosh Hodesh Nisan (i.e. tonight) until Passover. Most people make, if any, the association of dreaded Pesach cleaning and preparation. I’ll be writing some about that in a few days or next week, God willing, but for now, let’s stick to things connected specifically to Rosh Hodesh Nisan.

One association fewer people make is that Birkat haIlanot, the blessing over blooming trees, is typically said in the month of Nisan:

ברוך אתה ה” אלוהינו מלך העולם שלא חיסר בעולמו כלום וברא בו בריות טובות ואילנות טובות ליהנות בהם בני אדם

Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheynu Melekh haOlam, sh’lo hisar b’Olamo kloom, uvara vo b’riyot tovot v’eelanot tovot lehanot ba-hem b’ney adahm

Blessed are you, Hashem our God, King of the universe, for nothing is lacking in His universe, and He created good creatures and good trees in it so that people can enjoy them.

( * There are a few variations of the blessing. This is the way it appears in the Shulhan Arukh. I suppose if you’re learning this for the first time, you’re learning it from me; say it the way you were taught it.)

The occurrence and wording of the blessing make sense: we tend to bless God for those things that benefit us and happen at specific times (think holidays.) We also make blessings on anything enjoyable (Birkhot haNehenin.) But there is more to this practice than simply making the blessing. First, you have to see the tree. It is not enough to know that this is when it will happen or to hear that someone else saw it. Second, it is the blossom or flower of the tree that you must see. Third, we say the blessing only when we see this happen to/on a tree that produces edible fruit. Finally, each person says this blessing only once per year, upon seeing such a bloom for the first time.

Among the purpose of blessings is to compel us to see the beautiful in the ordinary and in the extraordinary and to appreciate these as gifts from God. Birkat haIlanot has a particularly beautiful way of doing this. “One who goes out,” says the Shulhan Arukh, “in the days of Nisan and sees trees from which a flower is blossoming, says [the above blessing.]” (OH 226:1) Truthfully, the later scholars tell us, the blessing is not connected only to this month, but that this is the time when trees typically bloom in warmer countries (the Shulhan Arukh was probably compiled in Tz’fat and was based on material “the Mehaber” previously compiled there and in Adrianople, Turkey.)

This blessing fits into a category known as Birkhot haRe’iyah, blessings of seeing, made when seeing things: rainbows, lightning, certain people, oceans and, of course, trees in bloom. Sometimes it is hard to look at something in nature and see a spark of God in it, have a spiritual experience from it. How much harder it is to look at people, especially the ones you don’t like, and see God in them. All the soft-spoken rabbi talk about “the image of God” in the world won’t make that easy. These blessings help. Notice that the rule isn’t that one should go out looking for such a tree. When you go out, starting around now, it says, you have to observe everything around you; don’t necessarily look for a tree, but when you spot one–which means you have to observe everything around you–say this blessing.

Of course, the timing of the blessing makes sense because people mark Rosh Hodesh Nisan and it’s around now that trees start to bloom in many parts of the world (at least in the northern hemisphere.) But I posit that there is another reason. We start paying attention to blossoming trees tomorrow because in a certain way, that’s what tomorrow is all about. Rosh Hodesh Nisan is a time to remember that redemption is on its way. Just as we must do with trees, beginning tomorrow, if not all the time, we have to start looking around. Miracles can (Nisan from Nes, miracle) happen at any time anywhere. Maimonides even defines a miracle this way: when something unusual but within the limits of the natural order happens at precisely the right time. Usually we don’t notice miracles until after they’ve happened. Most scholars hold that you can’t say Birkat haIlanot after the actual fruit comes out; the whole point of the blessing is to thank God for potential. Right now (Rosh Hodesh begins in a few minutes here on the East Coast) is a particularly auspicious time to be thinking about potential. Our redemption as a people and as individuals is as close and as evident as the blossoming trees. Only by remembering to bless it will we remember–and merit–to see it.

Hodesh Tov!

***********************

Judaism divides the calendar into regular days,  (like Purim and Rosh Hashanah) and festivals (like Passover and Sukkot). As American Jews my family adds to that secular holidays – some which we embrace wholeheartedly (Independence Day, Thanksgiving), some which we wrestle with (Halloween, Sweetest Day) and those that we dismiss out of hand (Valentine’s Day. And thank you Rabbi Joe Black for giving us a song for that very dilemma!)

In our house, however, our children have forced us to recognize a super-set of holidays, something that transcends religious and secular boundaries. That, of course, would be “dessert days”.

When our first child, Heather, was little, we were the typical neurotic first-time parents. We closely monitored anything she ate, purchased only orthopedic-ally-certified little booties to ensure proper foot development, and dutifully sterilized everything that might come into contact with her mouth (including the cat).

Even so, we realized by the time she was 4 or 5 that dessert in our house had gotten out of control. It was a standard part of our dinner routine, and was become the primary reason (in Heather’s view) to eat dinner at all.

Debbie and I decided to scale back, but we knew we had to go about it creatively. You can’t just yank the dessert rug out from under a toddler – there’s no telling what might happen. It’s a little known fact that the last words Lizzy Borden’s parents said to her before that fateful night were “You didn’t eat your broccoli, so no cheesecake tonight”.

We knew we had to move carefully to avoid a Toddler Typhoon. So we pinned it on God (hey, don’t knock it. If you are looking for someone who has broad shoulders, you can’t get much broader than that!). We sat her down with appropriately somber expressions and laid it out the situation:

“We were talking with the Rabbi, and we just found out that God said the only dessert day is Shabbat. All the other days are not dessert days. We’re so disappointed! But we don’t think that we want God to be angry with us for not listening. What do you think?”

Heather put on her best “don’t like it but going to try to make the best of it” expression and said “I guess we gotta then.” (pause) “How ’bout just snacks? How ’bout birthdays?”

We promised to check back with the Rabbi.

From that point on, when there was a question about dessert, we invoked the mantra: “Is it Shabbat?” which was enough to close the discussion.

Then we discovered that the problem with sending your kids to school – especially religious school – is that sometimes they pay attention.

One Sunday sometime during first grade, Heather came home flush with the excitement of discovery and revelation:

“wejustlearnedaboutanotherholidayanditcomeseveryweekbutitsnotshabbatandiknowtheteachersaiditwasA DESSERT HOLIDAY TOO!!”

Upon further investigation, this additional weekly dessert holiday was called “Havdalah” and Heather knew all about it – enough to guide us through the particulars, which included a significant discussion on what kinds of desserts were acceptable. Havdalah also had something to do with candles, grapejuice and “stuff that smells”, as Heather so delicately put it, along with a song that had a lot of lai lais in it.

Readers of The Edible Torah may remember that I was somewhat conflicted about celebrating Havdalah without knowing precisely what I was doing. With Heather as my enthusiastic cheerleader, I found myself *strongly* encouraged to let go of those concerns and go with the flow.

I also found a reason to stop using my concerns as an excuse not to find out more. What’s more, I am blessed to be able to say that this was not the last time my kids pushed me to grow Jewishly.

12 years and 3 children later we still only eat dessert on Shabbat. And Havdallah. And the Jewish holidays. And Birthdays. And sometimes on secular holidays too. My kids seem pretty happy with the arrangement.

But I’m looking for a good Jewish diet book.

When Job reflected upon the wisdom of God’s creation “Truly the ear tests words as the palate tastes food” (12:11), could he have been alluding to the remarkable evolutionary development of the bones in our middle ear?  According to Natalie Angier in her article in the Science Times section of the New York Times today,

“Imagine what a dinner conversation would be like if you had decent table manners, but the ears of a lizard.  Not only would you have to stop eating whenever you wanted to speak, but, because parts of your ears are now attached to your jaw, you’d have to stop eating whenever you wanted to hear anybody else….Sometimes its the little things in life that make all the difference – in this case, the three littlest bones in the human body.  Tucked in our auditory canal, just on the inner side of the eardrum, are the musically named malleus, incus, and stapes, each minibone, each ossicle, about the size of a small freshwater pearl  and jointly the basis of one of evolution’s greatest inventions, the mammalian middle ear.  The middle ear gives us our sound bite, our capacity to masticate without being forced to turn a momentary deaf ear to the world, as most vertebrates are.   Who can say whether we humans would have become so voraciously verbal if not for the practice our ancestors had of jawboning around the wildebeest spit.”

Without this development, we’d have no Passover or Tu Bishvat seders, no motzi or kiddush, no singing or word games with friends over dessert in the sukkah.  The convivial conversations that turn mere eating into the pleasures of dining, the “words of torah over the table” (m.Avot 3:3) that make Jewish meals Jewish meals would be impossible.  In this fall season, surrounded by the beauty of the changing leaves, the bounty of the harvest on our tables, and the words to describe them and share with good company, I feel such gratitude.  “Blessed are you God, ruler of the world, oseh ma’aseh bereshit -who crafts the work of creation.”

An August garden is pregnant with expectations.

The garden I share with my friends, Karen and Kate, has a tomato jungle. The three plants have over run three concentric layers of “cages.” They’re now trying to colonize the carrots.

Unrelenting weeks of sun and heat have battered our 10 by 14 foot plot in Karen’s backyard. LA’s water rationing has taken its toll as well. No matter. The tomatoes seem to ripen from pearl green to bloody red as you watch.

We know that soon – very soon – we’ll be overrun with ripe tomatoes. We wait. We watch. We talk about canning, tomato sauce, salsa and ratatouille.

Impatient for the harvest, we’ve been experimenting with fried green tomatoes.  It’s a preview of what’s to come. It’s a wonderful summer supper. And it’s a delicious way to thin the vines for better growth.

The following recipe is “faux fried” because it’s baked. The oil in frying can overpower the delicate flavor of baby tomatoes. I refer to coral tomatoes because their cooked flavor will send you to a siddur for a blessing that might go like “Thank you, Shekinah, for allowing me to savor your greatness, to celebrate my senses and to wonder at the beauty of your creations. Bless me with the ability to reflect all that you have given me in this moment back into the world. Amen.”

Any tomato up to a ripe one can be fried (or faux fried). We searched out sister tomatoes in clusters that had an almost ripe tomato. Despite my elegy to coral tomatoes, don’t pass up on the green ones.

Faux Fried Coral Tomatoes

4 to 6 green to coral tomatoes, cut into ¼-inch thick slices

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup evaporated milk

1/3 cup water

Salt and pepper

1.5 cups Panko flakes (These are Japanese-style bread crumbs made of wheat flour and soybeans, among other things. They don’t carry a hechsher. Corn meal is traditional for breading fried green tomatoes. Matzoh meal could be used as could seasoned bread crumbs or corn flake crumbs mixed with a little Parmesan.)

Sprinkle the tomato slices with salt and pepper on each side.  Grease a large shallow baking pan or cooking sheet. Turn the oven on to 400 degrees.

Mix the beaten eggs, milk and water in a shallow bowl. Put the Panko flakes (or cornmeal, matzoh meal or flour) in another shallow dish.  Dip each slice into the liquid, then coat on both sides with crumbs. (For a thicker coating, do this step twice for each slice.) Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer in the prepared pan.  The slices should not touch.  Bake 10 minutes. Turn each slice over. Bake another 10 minutes. Serve.

Yesterday was the first day (finally!) of my local farmers’ market here in NJ, and I’ll admit I went a bit fruit happy, coming home loaded with local blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. It took some detective work to figure out what things were not local–the farmer may be Pennsylvania Dutch but those sure aren’t local peaches, not yet. I’m much stricter about eating fruit locally and seasonally than I am vegetables. I can go months without fresh berries or stone fruit, hoping that it counts towards my balanced diet if I eat many servings of fruit in the summer and far fewer in the winter. Sure, there are days towards late February when I am sick of citrus fruit, grapes, and bananas, and look longingly towards the plums flown in from California. But in my heart, I know they will disappoint me.

(As an aside, the Toronto Star had an article last week about the ubiquitous California strawberry, tracing it from laboratory to the store. The comments on the article are an interesting cross section of conflicting consumer values )

Today, choosing to eat seasonally is a values choice. In my brain, I hear two conversations from the days before I had my daughter. One parent explained to me that parenting compromise, and that meant buying those strawberries in December if your kid just had to have them. Another told me how for her growing up, eating cherries was special, because you only got them for part of the year, and how she wanted her son to know that feeling of specialness when he eat cherries. I understand the first parent (we’ve all been there) but I want to be the second. Just because we can have something all the time doesn’t mean we should. We risk having the sacred and special become mundane.

Seasonal eating keeps us rooted in changes of every year, and that is what makes it such a Jewish value for me. Jewish time is agricultural, with the Pilgrimage festivals linked to the harvests of the year. The reason we have Jewish leap years is to prevent the holidays from coming unglued to the season: Passover can’t be in the middle of the winter and Sukkot can’t be in the summer. The rituals we associate with the festivals are also connected to the seasons: the spring greens on the seder plate, the first fruits of Shavuot, and the harvest decorations of Sukkot. There is some disconnection in the timeliness of it all for those of us who don’t live in Israel: every year, my father reminds us that the reason we eat potato at seder for our “spring greens” for karpas is that it was still winter in April in Poland. Our rootedness in the land is for a land far away, as we see when we pray for rain based on Israel’s climate calendar. And yet Jews all over have also adapted to the land they find themselves in, incorporating the seasonal produce of their new homes into their holiday meals.

Living according to the passage of the seasons also reminds us that we can’t have what we want all the time. I’m sure many kids would love it if every day were another night of Hanukah. But if we lit the candles all year, they would lose their meaning. They wouldn’t be special any more.

One of my teachers taught me that living on Jewish time means living on a separate clock and calendar than the rest of the world. To me, part of that means eating by the real calendar, not the artificial abundance created by technology and our ability to use fossil fuels to transport food. Food is a gift from God, and the more we take it’s permanence for granted, the more mundane we risk it becoming.

One of the traditional uses for the shehechiyanu blessing is the the first time you eat a fruit in a given season (or since Rosh Hashanah). Wouldn’t it be sad if we never had the chance to say it because our food was no longer linked to the seasons? As we head towards a beautiful summer of harvests, I hope we all have a chance to experience foods that are special.

Photo courtesy of State Symbols USA.