Hello from the Food Conference!

I’ve just been to two sessions, and eaten so much amazing food, and tasted raw milk for the first time, and heard about the combination of different bacteria that are involved in making miso, in a process that takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 years.

And this only the first day!

It’s interesting, though, that the things that have grabbed me and pulled me out of my seat with “Wait! What about…!” thoughts are the same things that I’ve already heard about before, or ostensibly already studied, or were so ubiquitous to have never merited a second glance. The most recent session was about the Birkat Hamazon.

We learned (or realized again, upon closer consideration, with several “oh yeah”s) that the birkat hamazon mirrors the amidah in its sections: praise, thanks, petition. That it is, in that regard, actually a mini-service. That, even if we don’t say the amidah or any other regular prayer, the offering some kind of thanks after we eat is in fact praying three times a day.

And we talked about the words. What do you do with a pile of archaic Hebrew - whether it is sung to a singsong tune (which always gets stuck in my head) or mumbled, high speed? Do we prefer the newer ones, the ones that use words like ’spirit’ and ’sustainability’? Do we sort of like the newer ones in sentiment, but cling to the words and tunes we learned at Hebrew school? I kind of do - although we learned that before the printing press solidified the texts, the ‘harachaman’ section was in fact an ‘insert your prayers for the community here’. And interesting that these prayers are said in the plural, not the singular - we pray for what we hope for the community. Does that make it easier? Weirder to put into actual words? More universal?

I enjoyed realizing - again - that Oseh Shalom is part of the birkat as well. I knew this, I’ve sung it. But thinking about it again, inthe context of what’s going on in Iraq, and what’s going on in meatpacking houses and on the Mexican border, and all the other places of strive and violence in the world right now — the fact that a prayer for peace is integral not only to our whole tradition, but that we think to include it in our prayers after FOOD - every meal! That we’ve been saying Oseh Shalom as part of the Birkat for 2000 years. We’ve been praying for peace since we began praying. There has been a need to pray for peace since we began praying. And that Judaism is all about that…

I enjoyed that. Because you often don’t have to look very far to see something new or shocking. And I guess, starting with food (which we eat daily, automatically!) is a pretty good place to get these thoughts going…

– Anna