On Shavuot, when we celebrate receiving the Torah, we also celebrate the offering of the first fruits in the Temple, the bikurim.
The offering was a supremely humble gesture: the fruits which form first on a tree are often smaller, less perfect, only hinting at the abundance to follow. In ancient Israel, these offerings were gussied up, surrounded by the more beautiful fruit which grew later, brought sometimes in gold baskets, accompanied by flutes, processions. All the trappings of art and wealth were used to beautify the offering. Yet without the small, perhaps wrinkled fruit of the bikurim, there could be no offering.
It was at this moment of offering that the Torah teaches us to recite the story of redemption, the same one we now read in our Passover haggadah. The story was also a garland, as it were, for the bikurim offering, connecting our history to the very physical redemption of another spring and another growing season.
AJWS is accepting applications to the Dvar Tzedek Lisa Goldberg Memorial Writers’ Fellowship for 5770 / 2009-2010. The deadline is June 1.
AJWS Dvar Tzedek Fellows receive a modest stipend and write weekly Torah commentaries relating to the Jewish imperative for social justice. We invite you to apply for the fellowship and to circulate information about the fellowship to anyone you think would be interested.
To download the application for the fellowship, please click here. For more information, please contact Lisa Exler at lexler@ajws.org.
AJWS is pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for the Dvar Tzedek Lisa Goldberg Memorial Writers’ Fellowship for 5770 / 2009-2010. AJWS Dvar Tzedek Fellows receive a modest stipend and write weekly Torah commentaries relating to the Jewish imperative for social justice. The Dvar Tzedek currently reaches over 4,000 people a week over e-mail.
To see examples of the work of this year’s Dvar Tzedek Fellows, and to download the application for the fellowship, please click here.
We invite you to apply for the fellowship and to circulate information about the fellowship to anyone else you think would be interested. For more information, please contact Lisa Exler at lexler@ajws.org
Judith came in from the fields where it appeared as though the whole community was out harvesting the new grain crop. The rains had ceased and the ground had dried enough to enable them to walk through the plants and collect the ripened sheaves. The stone house still felt damp from the winter and she helped her mother empty the storage urns of the remainder of the previous year’s grains.
Pesach is known biblically as “The festival of Matzo,” so let’s face it, matzo is intrinsically connected with the festival, love it or hate it. Much debate exists among rabbinic scholars as to whether the obligation to partake in matzo is unique to the sedarim or to the entire festival. There a number of positions on this idea throughout the lay community as well, some of us eating matzo for the whole time, others eating it while they partake in other forms of hametz, and others who rid themselves of matzo following the seder altogether.
For the past couple of days I’ve heard and been wished an interesting little quip in relation to Pesach, “Have a great holiday, don’t eat too much matzo!” Each time I hear this I cannot help but to get into a ten-minute debate with myself over the “ok-ness” of the idea of “not eating too much matzo.” Can one really eat too much matzo on a holiday that revolves around it? Can we have Hannukah without a menorah? Yom Kippor without fasting? The simple answer, of course, is no. And when thinking about how valuable and important this strange unleavened bread has been to the Jewish people for millennia, that “no” has an even greater resonance.
At Pesach we drink a lot of wine. Why is it called the symbol of our joy?
In an arid environment, wine can be seen a method of preservation. If you do not live or work near a well or a spring or some other source of fresh water you need to have something else to drink during the day.
- Milk does not last without refrigeration; actually we can think of cheese as a form of dried milk (that is a form of preserving milk).
- Crushing olives obtains oil, which while highly useful, does not quench thirst.
- Squashing pomegranates produces a very tart juice, but it doesn’t last long at room temperature.
- Squeezing dates creates a very sweet paste our ancestors called “dvash“.
- And figs don’t produce much in the manner of a drinkable juice either.
The Grape
But, that other fruit mentioned among the seven species, the grape, undergoes an amazing transformation when it is crushed, squashed and squeezed. With just the right amount of exposure to oxygen it becomes a drink that, like a good person, becomes more distinguished as it ages.
On the web this week are two intriguing articles. The first is an amusing and irreverent comment from Nextbook on this week’s parashah, by Liel Leibovitz who writes:
This week’s parasha is all about the business of animal sacrifice. It’s long, detailed and extremely technical, describing the occasions and procedures for the various kinds of ritual slaughter. In short, not stuff any of us lay people could understand. Luckily though, a couple of Israelites were there to gather their colleagues’ opinions and give us a collective view of the spiritual meaning of chow. Their names? Tim and Nina Ben-Zagat.
There is a deep yearning within me and within so many souls to reconnect with the very fabric of creation. We hear the call and many of us are taking steps to move closer to her. We see this in the Jewish back-to-the-land movement, manifest in a growing number of Jewish farm education projects, in the New Jewish Food Movement fueled by Hazon, and in the blossoming of a Jewish consciousness seeking to rediscover the ancient earth-based roots of our tradition. With the world moving through a period of deep economic transformation and environmental uncertainty, now is the time for us to respond to this yearning.
The 14th of Nisan 5769 (Wednesday April 8th, 2009) is a profoundly auspicious moment to heed this call. Sunrise on the 14th of Nisan is Birkhat HaChama, the Blessing of the Sun, the once-in-a-generation opportunity to celebrate the birthday of the sun and the birthday of all of creation. As the Babylonian Talmud instructs, each person who witnesses the sun “in its season” – meaning when the sun arrives at the place where it was at the beginning of creation – shall bless Hashem, “Blessed is the Maker of Creation.” (Babylon Talmud, Berakhot 59b). Birkat HaChama is not simply a rare moment to celebrate creation, however. It is the deepest moment of renewal, rebirth, and new beginning for our generation.
Being vegan made me feel focused, healthy, and proactive. That is except during Passover. I was neither focused nor relaxed on this holiday because I was hungry a lot of the time. Preparation is key for those of you who are about to celebrate the coming holiday and plan not to eat any animals or animal bi-products. On a normal day as a vegan I nourished myself with bean spreads, peanut butter, and an array of soy products. These are excellent everyday foods but all of these things include kitniyot which is a category of food not consumed by most Ashkenazi Jews during Passover. It is commonly understood that the avoidance of kitniyot is a stringency we place on ourselves to better shield us from mistakenly bringing home chametz. Examples of common kitniyot items are corn, rice, peas, beans and peanuts—i.e. major sources of protein for vegans. These foods have the potential to be ground up and made into a substance resembling flour.
“They were to observe them as days of feasting and merrymaking (y’mei mishteh v’simha) and as an occasion for sending gifts to one another and presents to the poor.”
-Esther 9:22
Other than reading and/or hearing the Megillah, every mitzvah of Purim is mentioned in this one verse. Each of them is centered on food in some way, as it is a Jewish holiday, and the verse could arguably be the basis for the joke that every Jewish holiday can be summed up by the phrase, “they tried to kill us, God saved us, let’s eat.” What the Jews of Shushan did, however, was more than just eat.
Purim is a pretty strange holiday. The text we read, Megillat Esther, isn’t a typical biblical book; it makes no mention of the big guy upstairs. Its heroine, a nice Jewish girl bunking with her uncle, ends up in the arms of the non-Jewish king (oh gosh!), and exchanges certain things, namely her wedding vows, in order to save her people. The story ends with the Jews going out on a revenge spree, killing thousands. And how do we celebrate this event every year? By dressing up in costumes, making lots of noise, gorging on delicacies and getting drunk out of our minds ad d’lo yada. Pretty strange in comparison to, let’s say, Yom Kippur, where we don’t eat or drink, instead spending the day in deep and contemplative prayer. What’s even stranger is that we’re taught that Purim is an even “higher” holiday than Yom Kippur. In fact, the rabbis teach that during the Messianic Era, Purim will be the only festival that we observe.
Many thanks to Richard Lederman for this guest post. Dr. Lederman studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Bible, but has spent the last 30 years in Jewish communal service. His latest position was as Director of Public Policy and Social Action for United Synagogue and also worked with Hekhsher Tzedek. Dr. Lederman is currently working as an independent consultant and educator. He has been thinking for some time about the connection between the mitzvot pertaining to the production, consumption and distribution of food, as well as the ownership and distribution of land and how these relate to the contemporary movement for ethical and sustainable processes for food production and distribution.
Who would have thought 100 years ago, 50 years ago, that early 21st century Jews would be joining an organization focused in part on the mitzvah of shmita, a mitzvah that technically only applies to the land of Israel, where the most urgent topic of discussion is discovering the possible loopholes around it.
Rabbi Julian Sinclair didn’t lose a minute at the Hazon Food Conference in December. Not only did he speak on Rav Kook’s vision of kashrut and vegetarianism, mediate the latke hammentashen debate and lead a Food for Thought discussion group on bensching after meals, he also
participated in the turkey schechting on the day before the conference began, where 18 turkeys were slaughtered for Friday night dinner.
