This Article is Cross-Posted on KosherEye.com

As 5771 approaches, we look ahead with hope for a good and sweet year.  Honey has been part of tradition for thousands of years, as exemplified by the age-old custom of using a taste of honey to encourage and reward young children for learning.  What can be more delicious than dipping home-made breads, crackers or fruits into honey? And now honey has gotten even sweeter!

The Savannah Bee Company is redefining honey and educating the consumer as to the many ways to use and enjoy this golden nectar.  Just as there are numerous sources and types of coffee, Scotch and chocolate, raw honey, too, is sourced globally and is available in single varieties and blends, each with different characteristics, taste variations and flavors.

Here are some standouts as described by The Savannah Bee Company:

Tupelo is the “gold standard” by which all other honeys are measured. Harvested over two or three weeks in the early spring, Tupelo nectar is one of the rarest and most valuable liquid resources in the world…a thick, slow-moving river of liquid sunshine. Pour it into strong black tea, on to buttery toast, or over a piece of aged cheddar.

Acacia is known as “moonflower honey” and is produced in the Southern Italian Alps. This delicate organic honey has a clean, light vanilla taste.  It tastes delicious in coffee or tea or served drizzled over toast or over Parmigiana- Reggiano.  Elegant!

Winter White comes from the wildflowers of Lapland, Finland, near the North Pole. This exquisite honey has a creamy color and a smooth texture. Its pure, clean taste, with just a hint of fruit, is the ideal compliment to hot cocoa or warm scones.

Sourwood, an award-winning honey with hints of maple and spice, is made in small batches high in the southern Appalachians.

Raspberry is from the largest raspberry orchard in the U.S and is the purest raspberry honey on the market. This honey naturally crystallizes immediately after extracting it from the combs, making it the ideal dipping consistency. Spread on warm toast, biscuits, or scones.

Black Sage, a pale, cool, greenish-yellow honey rarely crystallizes, is extremely rare, and a treat on the palate. It is very different from any other American honey. The flavors are distinctive, with notes of apple, berry, and vanilla. Many prize this as a favorite with strong black tea.

Recently, Savannah Bee Company has introduced three new varietal honeys, specifically formulated for special uses:

Grill Honey—Pair with grilled foods and grilling marinades; this honey caramelizes well and makes your grill a BEE-B-QUE!

Cheese Honey—Drizzle on salty cheeses or sweeten a strong, creamy blue cheese.

Tea Honey—Stir effortlessly into teas, lemonades and, of course, mojitas

Products from Savannah Bee Company are KSA kosher certified.

Visit Savannah Bee Company to read about the ongoing endangerment of the honeybee population.

I love to host the holidays. Nothing gives me more pleasure than planning, marketing, preparing, and entertaining for these special times, and I have established a tradition of going a little over the top for the occasion.

I also loved the books Julie and Julia as well as My Life in France. Both inspired me to swipe my mom’s old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and happily start practicing. That was 2 or 3 years ago, and my appetite was rewet when I heard the film was coming out this summer. It inspired me to begin planning Le Marais, or an all Julia Child tribute to Rosh Hashanah.

In many ways the planning was consistent with other themes in my life. For example, we live in a very small place, so much so that for every item we bring in, another needs to move out. It’s a real house of cards and sometimes frustrates me to no end. But there is a wonderful economy that comes from living like this. We are bound by our limitations, and so when we go furniture shopping, we have to look high and low for something sized within reach. I can’t just purchase that cute little serving dish that caught my eye because there is no where to put it and I am not ready to sacrifice what I already have. It seems that having fewer options leads to better choices, as well as less wasted time spent searching. The entire Le Marais exercise echoed this bit of wisdom.

So now that you know I like to be challenged by boundaries, here were my self imposed rules:

1. We don’t keep kosher Per Se, but we do try to keep a Jewish home. I do not mix milk with meat, nor do I cook seafood or pork in my home.
2. The main dish would be meat and needed to have apples listed in the ingredients.
3. There had to be enough food for at least 6 – 8 people, with room for an additional 2 if necessary.
4. There had to be a kid friendly option on the table.
5. At least one baked desert was required, because I am a masochist mental case.
6. All food had to be based on Julia Child’s recipes.

Now, all of those rules are daunting to even the most fearless cook, but by far the most challenging was number one. JC is all about dairy. To wit, I usually make challah bread once a week using a stand by recipe that has worked for years. Like most challah recipes, it has only parve (not dairy, not meat) ingredients like eggs, oil, and flour. Julia Child has a lovely challah recipe from in Baking with Julia, but it calls for unsalted butter, more unsalted butter, whole milk, and cream. ‘Can’t she just call it a brioche and a ^&$&% day’, I muttered under my breath as I tried to reconcile with my rules. I reread the recipe, and while I could not use it verbatim, I was able to glean from her Method and improve the challah, especially by double egg washing the loaves while baking. And so I learned how to make a better bread, as well as manage the rules of the game.

After the bread planning, I decided to start by searching for a main dish recipe that met my requirements, knowing I would pair everything else accordingly. Rule 1 eliminated more than 90% of the recipes in Mastering The Art of French Cooking (MtAoFC) volumes I and II. Rule 2 left me with a single wonderful option from MtAoFC vol I (p 275), Caneton Roti a l’Alsacienne or Roast Duck with sausage and apple stuffing. I had made the master recipe before with great success, but the apple and sausage stuffing were just over the top. I used a chicken and apple sausage that beautifully complimented the apples, sage, cognac, and port. Two ducks took under two hours, made a wonderful main dish, and my house smell like heaven on earth.

Once I had nailed down the main event, I tackled the next challenge…stuffed cabbage. Now stuffed cabbage is a Rosh Hashanah tradition that goes back to my grand-mother Esther Steinberg-Levy, who handed me her recipe when I was in high school and went to her grave trying to help me get it right. She made it sweet and sour with apples and lemons, and it is a family favorite. Julia Child has an eight page recipe for Chou Farci in MtAoFC vol II (p 379), complete with sausage and ham for the stuffing and several methods. The gist of the primary approach is to dismember an entire cabbage, reconstruct it in a pan with layers of stuffing, and present it ‘whole’ for family and friends. Unfortunately, this requires the dish to be served as soon as it is cooked, eliminating the convenience of cooking the cabbage in advance. I get crazy right an hour or two before the guests arrive; the last thing I needed is some last minute cabbage debacle to unhinge me completely. Therefore I stuck to Nana’s recipe, but used Julia’s alternative method. First of all, I am always getting a savoy cabbage from now on..what a difference. Never again will I boil a whole head of domestic cabbage and burn my first three layers of skin while peeling it. Also, her wrapping technique which is beautifully illustrated, made for a much tighter roll. Maybe next year I will try the mold.

To satisfy rule four, there was apple and honey on the table, as well as her Risotto/Pilaf/Pilau recipe (MtAoFC vol I, p 532). Substituting oil for butter did not detract from the wonderful taste, and to boot I molded it into a rice ring per her suggestion. To serve, I placed the stuffing from the duck on the center and garnished with parsley – fabulous, and my daughter ate it with gusto.

Petites Oignons Aigre-Doux/Sweet and Sour Onions Braised with Raisins from MtAoFC vol II (p 410) paired beautifully with the duck and met my unspoken rule of making little pearl onions that my husband loves so much. The flavor of the vegetable is enhanced by dry mustard, white wine vinegar, tomato, thyme, and bay leaf. And I knocked out rule 5 with a gem from MtAoFC vol I (p 671), Gateau a l’Orange/Orange Sponge Cake. A very simple dessert that has NO DAIRY whatsoever – no substitutions required. I topped it with JC’s apricot glaze, and then rounded it out with almond bits on the side. I could have put it in a box and sold it at Carlo’s Bakery for twenty bucks.

It was a wonderful dinner, with great food and company. Everyone, including me, was impressed with the fare. At one point though, one of my guests remarked about how time consuming it was to cook JC’s recipes, how complicated they were. Hilda is my sister in law’s grand-mother, a shrewd woman with a terrific sense of humor. We love having her in the family, and she always brings something to the table. When she heard about the menu she told us a story about her JC experience.

“I remember it took all day to make those recipes.” she told us in her thick Germanic accent, “When it was done, it was delicious. And I thought ‘Never again’! ”

This is one of the few times where Hilda and I will disagree; while it was time consuming, I cooked 5 recipes in a single day and everything came out wonderfully. This is in part attributable to my wonderful husband, a quiet hero who who took charge of cleaning and watching the kids while I focussed on the food. But help aside, I was able to do a lot in a limited period of time, and for that I thank the author. I love the simplicity of Julia Child, especially compared to her more contemporary peers. There are no excessive ingredients or mysterious techniques; everything is laid out in a way so that the cook feels confident, like Julia is rooting for you. I understand why Julie Powell was so taken by her, and how the entire world loved her so very much. My guests should expect more events like this, and I suspect that they will happily come back for more. Next time I will wear my pearls.

Note:  This piece was originally posted on my blog at cheznoonie.blogspot.com

The Jew & The Carrot partnered with Chow.com to come up with some yummy holiday recipes for this season of Yuntif meal after Yuntif meal…

Thanks to our contributors Jeannette, Rhea and Rachel for sharing these ideas! You can see the whole slideshow on Chow.com‘s website by clicking here.

• Slow-Cooked Stuffed Cabbage with Beef and Rice – by Jeannette Hartman.
• Kale and Pepper Fritatta (contains dairy – good for a veggie meal!) – by Rhea Yablon Kennedy

Rachel Harkham shared the following three recipes with us:

• Apples & Honey Vinaigrette Salad with Spicy Pecans
• Honey-Mustard Baked Chicken
• Fall Spiced Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake (pareve)

Shana tova! and I hope you’ll be sharing many delicious meals with family and friends in these next couple weeks.

photo credit due to the Chow.com test kitchen

Thanks to Rabbi Dara Frimmer, of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles,  for sharing this sermon with us. Each of the four clergy gave a mini-sermon on a place in the house (“home” is their theme this year) and Dara says “not surprisingly I chose the kitchen.” This piece, Dara says, was in part inspired by her work on the Hazon Food Conference executive committee and the work she’s been doing to create a healthier and more sustainable world for all. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own kitchen memories below.

Growing up, our kitchen was the room of gathering. It did not have the most comfortable chairs. No fine artwork decorated the walls. And yet, something about the kitchen drew people in and kept them together. As it turns out, some of my best learning took place in the kitchen.

The kitchen was a place to test out authority, to challenge tradition, to practice assertiveness:

Why do we keep 2 sets of dishes, but we eat Chinese food on paper plates? How come Laura, my babysitter, can have a glass of milk with dinner, but I can’t? If we eat crab cakes in Cape Cod, what’s the point of keeping a Kosher home? “We’re doing it for your Bubbe and Zaide in Brooklyn,” said my mother. “So they feel comfortable when they come to visit.” “We’re doing it because I said so,” replied my father. “When you’re older, you can make your own decisions.”

And so I did. I entered Stanford University with a strong critique of my Jewish identity: It felt hypocritical, fractured, non-responsive to questions of relevance, justice and inclusivity. For years, I studied other religions, in awe of their ability to reinterpret and reframe ancient traditions. And then someone taught me about eco-kashrut, a language that united food, justice and holiness. Eco-Kashrut suggests that the health and wages of farmers, day-laborers, and restaurant employees should be factored into the kosher-certification process. Environmental impact matters. Treatment of animals matter. Amidst these debates of tradition and innovation, I felt as though I was back in my childhood kitchen: Questioning. Curious. Engaged.

The kitchen taught me about my parents:

It was clear that my mother and father had very different ways of handling food. My mother followed recipes. Line by Line. All ingredients were placed on the counter ahead of time. Measuring spoons and cups close at hand. Timer ready. Kitchen sink clear. She was deliberate. Cautious. Ritualistic. She was loyal to her favorite recipes: for kugel, for fish, for matzo ball soup. She made notes in the margins of cookbooks: “Serves 8 not 10!” and “Perfect for Passover!” Seated around the kitchen table, she would ask, “How was your day?”– an addition she included every night as if it was the final line of the recipe.

My father, my his memory be a blessing, was her foil. He would commandeer the kitchen on special occasions. He’d tear recipes out of the New York Times. Sometimes a few lines would be missing. The flame would be heating up the pan of oil, as he rustled through the cabinets looking for ingredients. Spices were measured by pouring them into his hand and then emptying them into the pot. Food was tasted and sampled and adjusted along the way. Sauces spattered across the stovetop and tiles. Culinary magic and mystery came at the cost of a few mistakes. Sometimes we ended up at a restaurant for dinner. Failure was simply a part of the process.

My kitchen teaches me about myself:

Today, I line my kitchen counter with glass jelly jars, filled with beans and barley and quinoa and peas. They stand in a row, in perfect order. Recipes are clipped by magnet onto the fridge. Sometimes I follow them. Sometimes not. I measure in cups and spoons, and in-between pinched fingers and open palms. I try to remember that the experience of cooking – all of the smells, the textures, the shapes, the colors – the experience is as important as the final product. I try to take a moment before the first bite to bless the food that sits before me, the friends who have joined me, and the life that has carried me up until this moment.

Back in the days of the Temple, our ancestors would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem 3 times a year. 3000 years later, many of us find ourselves in a similar pattern. We visit our Temple a few times a year, seeking connection, a spark of holiness, a glimpse of the Divine. After the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the next generation of leaders called rabbis reinvented Judaism to survive without the central site of worship. Each home became a Temple. Each table became an altar. Each person became a priest. Our daily prayers served in place of sacrifices. Our braided challah on Friday nights became the sacred Sabbath offering.

We do not have to wait for our yearly pilgrimages to experience a spark of holiness. Invite over some family or friends and share some food…and some company…and some creativity…and some stories. Sit around the kitchen table and share some wisdom. Some of my best learning took place in the kitchen – what about you?

About three weeks ago I became a tourist in Jerusalem. My family packed up our home in the States, stuffed things in storage, and after one stop-over found ourselves in Ben Gurion Airport. The shiny polished floors of the airport were soon a dim memory as we tried to trespass the littered streets of Jerusalem in the oppressive heat. I kept trying to think up reasons for why the Holy Land seemed dirtier then mid-town Manhattan but those justifications didn’t lift my spirits. It was only when my young children began pointing out the pomegranate trees that were also littered all around my neighborhood that I began to feel a bit better. They are beautiful trees with small green leaves and winding branches. The pomegranates seem like such an obvious object to inspire art, literature, and cooking and not surprisingly, they have done so for centuries.

The pomegranates weren’t the only eatables that got me through the high temperatures, long lines, and jet lag. Pretty much anything wrapped in puff pastry or stuffed in a pita seemed to do the trick.
The first few days were something of an Olympic tryout for me. With my shopping basket in hand I would select dozens of cheeses and yogurts dash to the checkout and make it home at top speed to sample them. The comfort I found in the quality and availability of the delicious Israeli foods made up for some of the less than optimal things I was experiencing in other aspects of my life.

Rosh Hashana is upon us and much like Passover and Tu Bishvat we foodies have an incredible opportunity to serve a side of symbolism along with our main courses. Inspired by a family friend who I watched cook for Rosh Hashana, I plan on serving carrots and pumpkins along with apples dipped in honey as  symbols to encourage a sweet new year filled with an abundance of good deeds. While there won’t be the head of a fish at my table (I’m vegetarian) signifying  the head of the new year, I will have a head of celery.  Perhaps much like the falafel sandwhiches  I can so easily gobble down to make my stay here more than tolerable, these colorful siymanim or symbols will make entering these yamim noraim or high holy days a bit smoother and easier to digest.

The Jewish New Year holidays are a time marked by eating (Rosh Hashanah), not eating (Tzom Gedaliah, the day after Rosh Hashanah), big-time not eating (Yom Kippur), and more big-time eating (Sukkot through Simhat Torah). How should we understand this series of ritual oppositions connected with food? What is the significance of eating and not eating, each in relation to and in contrast with the other?

Since all rituals are best understood—at least to begin with—by considering what makes them different from the ordinary (“Why is this night different from all other nights?”), to understand the meaning of eating and not-eating rituals, it is essential to begin by asking how, what and when people do or do not ordinarily eat. Since eating in the ancient world was very different from eating in our world, the meaning of eating or fasting will be very different in our world than it was for our ancestors in the past.

Eating was generally far more modest and infrequent for our ancestors than it is for us. To begin with, food was far harder to come by. Drought and famine were far more common than they are for us, and they had greater difficulty adapting to these conditions than we do. Since all of our ancestors were “locovores”—that is, they all ate what was available in their immediate environments—when the local environment failed them, they had to fall back on whatever might have been stored. When their stores ran out (as they quickly would have, as their storage capacities were technologically limited) they would have had to fall back upon alcohol (an excellent way to store calories long-term!) or hunger. And hunger was a regular part of the experience of common people.

It was also true, in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, at least, that some Jews (we cannot know what number or proportion) fasted with some regularity. Fasts were called for in response to drought or famine, for example. They were also prescribed in the aftermath of bad dreams. And some Jews took upon themselves the discipline of fasting every Monday and Thursday. All-in-all, hunger, and even fasting, was a much more common experience for them than it was for us, and it against this experience that we must interpret their fasting ritual during the New Year season.

So what did it mean to fast when hunger and even fasting were a more common experience? It meant, first of all, that a fast-day was not all that shocking, as the experience that defined it was not as different from the ordinary as we might imagine. Yes, strict, absolute fasting rendered Yom Kippur different, but not radically so. Ironically, it was the other restrictions of Yom Kippur—the prohibitions pertaining to washing, anointing, wearing shoes, and sex—that set it apart. If anything, the self-imposed hunger of Yom Kippur took a relatively common experience—hunger—and made it sacred. In other words, rather than being an experience of common deprivation, it became an experience of dedication to God. By experiencing what we often experienced, though now in response to divine command, we re-entered relationship with God, a God who, on account of our undertaking, was bound to forgive us our transgressions (or so the tradition promised).

But what about fasting today? We, in the developed Western world, live in a world of caloric abundance. Even the poor among us are often overweight because cheap calories are so readily available- this is why thin is beautiful in our culture. In the world of the Talmudic rabbis, fat was beautiful because the poor were thin by virtue of near starvation. Most people in our societies never deny themselves all food and drink for more than twenty-four hours. So when we do this, we do something radically different. To begin with, when we fast, we are radically different from our neighbors, most of whom never fast (in the pre-modern world, virtually everyone experienced hunger, so Jews fasting on Yom Kippur were not all that different from their neighbors). We are also radically different from our normal, well-fed and sated selves. On Yom Kippur, many of us genuinely suffer—in ways that are different from our normal experience. As a consequence, Yom Kippur is, for us, set apart by that hunger, by that suffering. Yom Kippur is a day of affliction, but in a way different from what it was for our ancestors.

What difference does this difference make? The rabbis of old designated Yom Kippur as one of the most joyous days of the year. But, we say to ourselves, how could that be? How could a day of hunger and self-affliction be a day of joy? When hunger and affliction are unique to a day, then it will be difficult to make it a day of joy. But when hunger is a more common experience, transforming that hunger into a fulfillment of God’s command will be, for the religious person, a source of joy. Taking the common and making it holy—now that’s a reason to rejoice.

The same considerations pertain to our eating during the holidays. When meals were small and hunger a known experience, abundant eating distinguished an occasion as truly special. But today, when even over-eating is common, abundant eating is par for the course. We, therefore, have to work hard to make our festival meals special, to find foods or preparations that mark this day off as being different from any normal day.  When our ancestors ate like kings and queens, they quickly knew that the day was set apart. We eat like royalty all the time. The challenge for us, therefore, will be to create meals that are fit for these days and no others.

Shanah Tovah From JTS! Visit our High Holiday website

Recently, Michael Pollan linked the reduction of medical costs to the even more controversial reformation of the food industry, what he calls the elephant in the national debate about the health care crisis. While Washington dukes out the legislative challenges to securing a healthier national environment, the country’s children have already returned to another school year and the Jewish New Year is upon us. Can we really wait for all this legislation to be enacted? Not me. I’m joining others who believe that change begins at the kitchen table. This year we are going to do a family food tashlich and symbolically cast away the elephants in our own refrigerators, the habitual bad food practices of everyday life.

1) Casting away disembodied eating

We’ll be taking more family expeditions to Farmer’s Markets or the local produce section of the grocery store. We’ll be talking to the kids about how food is grown and introducing them to more farmers who make cheese, grow food and milk cows or goats. Our most recent hero is the cheese guy from Olde Oak Farm in Orono Maine. Teaching children about food’s origins will help them respect eating it. It will also signal to our kids how much we care about them. Active concern about what goes into your kids’ bodies and foods sacred relationship to the earth, teaches them that their body really is a temple. A healthy regard for the physical self reflected by parental behavior helps children establish good personal boundaries. Good personal boundaries are the foundation of healthy eating and respect for limitations.

2) Casting away processed foods

When we journey to the river’s edge this Rosh HaShannah, we’ll take a pinch of processed food. This is to establish that sound eating is a spiritual goal as well as a health one. When healthy eating is only about rules it robs nutrition of its aesthetic merits. Eating healthy expresses a love for self, other, nature, pleasure, and, by extension, that which we know as God.  While banning processed foods, we’ll be emphasizing  sugar as a spare pleasure by home-baking with whole grains, unprocessed sugars, and sweetener substitutes like agave nectar.

3) Casting away disconnection

Not only are we going to eat together we are going to prepare meals together.   Shabbat dinner is a great opportunity for this but not the only one. Even school lunches can become a fun family activity.   Cooking with kids teaches responsibility, self-reliance and collaborative thinking. Dining together promotes relatedness and non-verbal emotional synergy. Eating healthy  food together is almost countercultural, a shared family brand that can help your children stand up to the pressure of consumerist messaging.

There is no reason to wait for Washington to do something about our country’s health and food crisis. As Michael Pollan says, changed consumer patterns brought on by transformed eating patterns will send a message to congress, not to mention the food industry. Yet, I wonder. When the year heats up with everyone’s dreams, goals, beloved passions, do you think we can keep up our taslich (think cold nights in February when the kids are exhausted, the parents have work piled high and even the family pets are dragging)?   Any other thoughts about how individuals and families can bring on Michael Pollan’s food revolution in the year to come? Maybe bread baking?

Date Honey from the Galilee

Here in the Galilee, a modest but auspicious ease in the heat is rousing us out of our summer torpor.  That and the impending preparations for Rosh Hashana – with the questions that are on everyone’s lips: who is eating where and preparing what?

Our holiday table, like most, will be graced with a plate of sliced apples, and a bowl of honey to dip them in – to remind our tongues and the pleasure centers of our brains how sweet life can and hopefully will be in the coming year. This year, however, the honey we’ll be dipping into will have a darker hue and more complex flavor than usual.

The research I’ve been doing on the origins and history of the seven species of the Land of Israel (wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates, olives and honey) has changed the way I understand this last and sweetest of the seven.

Nogah Reuveni, one of the pioneering scholars of Israel’s biblical agricultural landscape, astutely observed that, of all the seven species, there is only one which is not a plant or plant product (guess which).  While today, we think of honey as what comes out of a beehive, in ancient times, it referred to any sweet syrup made out of boiled-down fruit.

Reuveni, like the Talmudic sages, was convinced that the seventh specimen had to be honey made from dates – that would make it consistent with the rest of the list, with pollination by wind being the common denominator.   Makes sense, no?

And by the way, the expanded notion of honey isn’t just an antique culinary curiosity – there are Palestinians here in the Galilee who still produce “dibis” or honey made out of carob or grapes (note the linguistic similarity between “dibis” and “dvash” – Hebrew for honey).

So, if you want to add an authentic flavor to that which makes life sweet, this holiday, try honey made from dates – in stores here in Israel, it’s marketed as “Silan”.

When Rosh Hashana rolled around last year, it was beyond my imagination that I’d spend Rosh Hashana this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But The White House Organic Farm Project, aka TheWhoFarm, brought me there.

A local resident named Wade Patterson had heard TheWhoFarm was coming to town. He emailed me a very spirited note, respectfully requesting that we join the Carnuel Road Parade in downtown Albuquerque, organized by Harwood Arts Center, where Wade works. We’d never been in a parade, the Harwood Arts Center is involved in some quite compelling urban renewal projects that involve community gardens, and the request had obviously come from Wade’s heart – so there was really no way, or no reason, to decline the request.

When Wade and I spoke on the phone in advance of our arrival, he mentioned that he’d like to have us over for dinner, but that he’d have to ask his wife first. And then he emailed again to invite me to a Rosh Hashana dinner. He explained that his wife was Jewish, but that he was not Jewish, and that there would be other non-Jews there. A sort of ecumenical New Year’s. Without even knowing I was Jewish, he’d invited me to a his Rosh Hashana table! In New Mexico! How often does that happen?

To be honest, I had no plans to do anything to honor the New Year. Pomegrantes were in season in Southern California, a prior stop on TheWhoFarm’s tour, and so I ate one and probably had some subconscious thoughts about Rosh Hashanah. Perhaps I would have found myself an apple and some honey. (After all, apples have more or less defined my existence of late. And as vegan as I’ve tried to be, honey has been my Achilles.) Instead, I was going to dinner to be with other people celebrating the renewal that a new year brings.

The dinner had everything a Rosh Hashana meal ought to. Round raisin challah, homemade of course. Sweet potato and carrot tzimmis. Kugel. Shecheyanu blessings. And lots of kids running around the dining room.

These traditions got me thinking about TheWhoFarm’s connection to Rosh Hashana. In one word: Renewal.

TheWhoFarm is on tour, promoting our petition to our next President, whoever that may be, to plant an organic farm on the lawn of The White House.

Why the President? And why at The White House? We need our next leader to be a healthy eater, and lead by example. And there is probably no better address for America’s leader to showcase healthy eating than at his own home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the petition’s recipe, we specifically request that public school kids help farm the land. We need a renewed interest in and understanding of where our food originates. The foundations of that understanding come by working the land. We need a President who sees,with his own eyes, on a regular basis, the beauty of the knowledge and skills derived on the land.

Of course, seeds themselves bring a great historical context that needs renewal now. Thomas Jefferson was a formitable farmer, the man responsible for introducing eggplant and brussel sprouts to America. Seeds sowed by President Jefferson have been carefully saved and passed down. We intend to honor the office of the Presency by planting some of the Jefferson seeds at The White House. And then there are seeds of the American people. We are calling on the President to invite community gardeners and farmers from across the nation to deliver their seeds to Washington, DC.

On our tour, TheWhoFarm has met some people who tell us that The White House is too sacred a place to deface with a farm. But in fact, not so long ago, The White House inspired the nation towards food self-sufficiency. During World War I, our government set up the National War Garden Commission. “The sole aim of the National War Garden Commission was to arouse the patriots of America to the importance of putting all idle land to work, to teach them how to do it, and to educate them to conserve by canning and drying all food they could not use while fresh.” A simple Google book search will lead you a nice official booklet published by the Commission.

During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden at the White House, which inspired nearly 20 million Americans to grow their own food at or close to home. Many schools planted Victory Gardens, including some in New York City.

We invite you to sign our petition here. If you want to help even more, you can download a print petition form here and send it to friends. We wish you a happy new year, and hope that at some point this year, we will all witness seeds of change being sown at 1600 Pennyslvania Avenue.

In a season filled with symbolic meanings, the question of whether to eat nuts during these days of repentence has advocates for the yeah and the ney. There are those who definitely avoid nuts of all shapes and sizes during these ten days. For some there is a deep symbolic meaning, as I mentioned in my Rosh Hashana post, as the Hebrew word egoz has a numeric value 17 (when you add up the value of each letter) [thanks to Devo for the correction] that is equal to that of the Hebrew word of sin (het) and as sin should be avoided so too should nuts.

I don’t personally find this to be the most persuasive argument against nuts, as I suspect that if I looked long and hard I might be able to find other foods whose value was similarly negatively associated. But there is another school of thought that suggests that nuts should be avoided in this particular season because they can have a negative effect on our ability to sing.  (Their husks and meats have a tendency to get caught in or dry up throats and so they are to be avoided in this season when our need to raise our voices to God is so essential.)

Looking into this matter, I came across some wonderful rabbinic teachings about nuts.

Riffing off of the verse in Song of Songs 6:11 “I went down into the garden of nuts” the rabbis writing in Song of Songs Rabbah suggest that the nut is like the people of Israel coming before God on Yom Kippur. The nut in its shell, they explain, may fall into the mud but it can be picked up wiped, washed and returned to a form suitable for eating. Similarly with the people of Israel fall into trouble throughout the year but come Yom Kippur, they are washed clean and restored to a pure condition. In my reading this midrash reminds us that no matter how sullied we may seem on the inside there is an inner core that is pure.

Furthermore, the almond whose nut can be a bit bitter at times, is the first tree to flower in the Israeli spring and as a result is a sign of hope and rebirth. It is a reminder to all of us that even our hidden bitter bits can flourish into the possibilities of tomorrow.

So I’ll take my chances with my singing voice and serve almonds and other nuts tomorrow before the fast.