Sukkot and Thanksgiving September 29, 2007

On Wednesday evening the last fesitval in this month’s cycle of Jewish holidays started: Sukkot. During the festival of booths Jewish families build little huts in their gardens or on their balconies in which they eat their meals. Some family members even sleep in these huts. The children decorate the walls with artwork they made in school.

The basis of this festival can be found in the Torah. During the 40 years the Jews spent in the desert, they lived in little huts that could be easily assembled and rebuilt when they moved on and settled in a new place. The roof of the huts consisted of palm leaves. To memorize this period, the huts, or sukkot, that we build nowadays still need to have a roof made out of palm leaves, branches or plants, with enough space in between to see the stars.

Because we don’t have a garden, and not even a balcony large enough to build a sukka, we were invited to eat our meals with friends who did have one. It was nice to sit and eat together. Despite the rain that has been pouring down for days, it didn’t rain at mealtime. We could hear the wind whisteling outside while we enjoyed our soup.

The interesting thing is that there are many similarities between Sukkot and Thanksgiving. Both festivals are fall festivals. Traditionally, people celebrated the fall harvest and prepared meals from the foods they just gathered in from the fields. It has always been a custom to share the food with as many people as possible.

Both festivals are also centered around a feeling of gratitude: gratitude for the new harvest, and gratitude for Divine protection. The reason Jewish families enter their huts on Sukkot is not just to commemorate the way their ancestors lived in the desert, but also to express the idea that it is not the strong walls of their homes that protect them from bad weather and other disasters, but G’d. The pilgrims and their offspring did the same. Quoting the same verses from their bible, they used to celebrate Thanksgiving in huts outside in the fields.

This year’s sukkot was a great way to get school off my mind. A great way to think about our priorities in life, that tend to be forgotten in the daily routine of teaching, grading and preparing lessons.

Portugese Jews in their sukka in Amsterdam, early 17th century

Cinnamon September 23, 2007

I love how the time of the year can be defined by a certain spice. Friday, cinnamon season started. Saturday was Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the jewish year. We spent the entire day in shul, reflecting on everything we did wrong the past year, and taking upon ourselves the promise of being better people this coming year. I love the sacred atmosphere in shul, when all men are dressed in white and cover their heads with their talles.

Ofcourse, not eating and drinking for 25 hours is a challenge… When we came home Saturday night, I served freshly brewed coffee with a dash of cinnamon. It’s a traditional drink that is served after Yom Kippur and I love the spicy flavour. While I was sipping my cinnamon drink, I remembered the great dialogue on cinnamon from the Seinfeld episode the Dinner Party.

Today is the last sunny day, but there is a spicy scent in the air and the colour of the leaves slowly changes. The fall season can be very inspiring. I made a reading list of primary sources to spice up my lessons this period. I want to inspire my students and have them read primary sources in stead of just getting their information from the textbook. So I payed a visit to a site that has been online as long as I can remember, and offers the best collection of online sources from ancient history ’til modern times.

We already read George Kennan’s Long Telegram, Churchill’s Fulton speech, and the Truman doctrine. I want to do the same in 11th grade and go over the autobiography of Bismarck and a speech of emperor Wilhelm II. For my freshmen I started preparing a unit on Egyptian mythes. They love stories, and I am now reading into them in order to be able to tell them in class.

Happy new year! September 15, 2007

These past days we celebrated Rosh haShana, the Jewish New Year. Rosh hashana is a serious time of soul-searching and introspection, but at the same time it is a very happy holiday on which we welcome the new year with a strong belief that it will be a blessed one. Special dishes are prepared to underline this double character of the holiday. We eat pommegranate, uttering the wish that in this coming year our good deeds will be as plenty as the seeds of this beautiful fruit. We also eat apple dipped in honey, to symbolize our wish that the upcoming year will be a sweet and happy one. Some families prepare a dish called ‘tzimmes’, which is a dish made of carrots, prunes, raisins and honey. The Yiddish word for carrots is mehren, which also means ‘more’, thus expressing the wish that our good deeds will multiply this coming year.

I want to share two of the dishes I prepared this year. They are extremely easy to make (I had no time for extensive haute-cuisine ) and very tasty, plus they add a nice sweet flavour to the new year (without adding too many pounds I guess this will be my submission for the next teachers’ potluck carnival.

Coming up tomorrow: the latest from the educational battlefield!

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Apple betty pie

Ingredients

4 cups peeled and sliced apples

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup margarine

Preheat oven to 375F. Put apples into greased 9-inch pie plate. Sprinkle with orange juice. For the crumb topping, combine salt, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cut in margarine. Mix until mixture is crumbly. Cover apples with crumb topping. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool.

I slightly adapted the recipe. I used only half of the ingredients, and put them in a prepared graham-cracker-pie crust.

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Batata kugel (sweet potato bread)

Ingredients

1/2 cup margarine, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

3 tbsp. orange juice

1,5 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

4 big sweet potatoes (batata’s), cooked and mashed

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream softened margarine with sugar in a large bowl. Add egg, juice, and dry ingredients. Add mashed potatoes and mix well. Place in a greased loaf pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

This is actually a carrot-loaf recipe, but I adapted it slightly and used sweet potatoes instead. Because of their sweet taste, you could even cut back on the sugar, making it a delicious recipe without too many calories.

Tisha be’Av July 25, 2007

Yesterday was Tisha be’Av, the ninth day of the jewish month of Av. It is a national day of mourning, fasting and introspection. According to the jewish tradition both the first and second temple were destroyed on this day. The gemara teaches that the reason for this destruction was sinat chinam: senseless hatred between the jews. One of the issues to focus on on Tisha be’Av therefore is how to be a better person, neighbour, wife, friend. I always find it hard to truly feel sad about the loss of the temple. How can one sincerely mourn the loss of something one has never seen? The sages say that this absence of feelings itself is a reason to cry, and I guess this is very true.

After the destruction of the temple, Tisha be’Av remained a national disaster day. Many of the bad things that befell the jewish people occurred on Tisha be’Av. On this day the first crusade was declared in 1095. The jews were expelled from Great Britain in 1290, and from Spain in 1492. It was the date on which the First World War began. On this day in 1941 Adolf Eichmann presented his plan for the destruction of European jewry.

Focussing on these events helped me make Tisha be’Av more meaningful. We spent the day listening to online classes of the Orthodox Union and Yeshiva University.

17 Tammuz July 3, 2007

Today is the 17th of the jewish month of Tammuz. A fastday, on which we remember the events that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem. Aish.com made a beautiful one minute movie for this occassion.

Yom haZikaron & Yom HaAtzmaut April 23, 2007

Today and tomorrow are two special days for Israel and jews around the world. Today the soldiers are remembered that have fallen in the various wars that were fought for Israel’s existence. Tomorrow the independence of Israel will be celebrated.

Although many Israelis and jews are desillusioned abtou the current state of political affairs in Israel, for different reasons, I believe these days are important for all of us. Israel is important as a save haven for jews from countries in which they are persecuted, and it is an important centre for jewish learning and jewish culture. Let’s not take it for granted.

More Pesach cleaning March 26, 2007

Although I am not sure whether taking apart the entire wall of bookcases in the week before Pesach was such a good idea, because it took me quite a lot of time and of course there was no chometz inside, I am thrilled with the result.

I took out all the books that we never read and even managed to create some empty shelves for nice vases and other items.

The ugly table and computer are now finally gone too, which creates a lot of space and makes the room much more a living room in stead of a messy office.

In stead, I put a little table with a nice plant and lamp.

Finally I also want to post a pic of the nice little banana bread cranberry chocolate chip muffins I made last week for the rosh chodesh party.

Both the recipe and the ingredients were donated by Lime and they were amazing. I just put them in the oven too long (as can be seen in pic), so they had a cookie-texture in stead of a muffin texture, but the flavour was just great.

Tadaa! March 19, 2007

Great, the pantry is finished. I put away the kitniot products that we can keep in the house but not eat during pesach, and put all the grain products in a separate box. I even have some products for Pesach already.

After checking the Celestial Seasonings labels I found out that 3 teas actually contain grains (!!!): Gingerbread, Almond sunset, and English toffee. A great excuse to indulge myself with my favorite teas every day until Pesach.

To get rid of the pile of chometz, I wil be posting some get-rid-of-chometz recipes these days.

Pantry explosion March 18, 2007

So, I started cleaning out the pantry for Pesach. I took a carton box to throw in all the chometz products that have to be finished or thrown out before Pesach (flour, pasta, cookies, etc). Almost finished bottles and packages were thrown out immediately, leaving the huge pile that is still on the kitchen floor while I am writing this.

Indeed, another case of procastrination. Does anyone know if Celestial Seasonings teas contain wheat?

Gut woch! January 13, 2007

We just made havdala, the ceremony that marks the end of shabbat and the beginning of the new week. The ceremony involves a blessing over a full cup of wine, the light of a braided candle and a box of spices. What do the different parts of the havdala ceremony symbolize?

The cup of wine is so full that the wine spills over the rim. This is a an unspoken wish for the coming week to be a week full of abundance.

The braided candle is braided out of at least two candles. This symbolizes the ways the weeks are interconnected. At the end of the week, a new one immediately begins, full of opportunities.

The spice box is meant to hold on to the peaceful atmosphere of shabbat, so that the inspiration of shabbat will be taken along into the new week. Any spice can be used. Many people use cloves or cinnamon. We like using freshly ground coffee

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and may the coming week be a wonderful, inspirational one!