Earlier this month, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews waved live chickens over their heads in a ritual known as kapparot, or "atonements." They chanted solemnly:

"This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my expiation. This chicken shall go to its death and I shall proceed to a good long life and peace."

As the Orthodox Jews watched, each chicken was ritually slaughtered, then donated to the poor.

Kapparot is of questionable origin. There is no mention of kapparot in the Bible or in post-Biblical Jewish literature until the Middle Ages. And many great Jewish legal scholars, including Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law), believed it to be of pagan origin and forbid it. According to many rabbinic opinions, kapparot can be done with money. Chickens are not necessary. But kapparot was promoted by the Hasidic movement, which these days is primarily responsible for keeping kapparot, as opposed to kapparot chickens, alive.

If kapparot was done carefully and humanely, the only argument against it would be theological. But often kapparot are neither carefully run nor humane.

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what diet coke: taught me about food teshuvaI like Diet Coke. Okay, let’s be fair - I really like Diet Coke.

As my main source of caffeine, it was as much a part of my image in rabbinical school as the midrash books I schlepped around. When I got pregnant, the first question some of my friends asked was, “How are you going to go without Diet Coke for 9 months?” (Answer: I found an OB who let me drink it.) I can drink a 2 litre bottle at one sitting and I can tell the difference between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi blind. It’s well…I wouldn’t quite call it an addiction, but I’m definitely hooked.

However, when my brain is not addled with the need for a rush of Aspartame, I know that drinking Diet Coke—especially in such quantities—is a problem on all kinds of levels. In a way, Diet Coke is the ultimate symbol of our food system in crisis: water dyed with color, saturated with caffeine and an artificial sweetener, poured into plastic, and trucked thousands of miles to your home.

It’s only sustainable if what you are trying to sustain is corporate profits. And then there is the carbon footprint. As Grist wrote in response to the pleas of another environmentally tormented diet pop addict (apparently I am not alone), drinking several cans of soda a day for a year is equivalent to flying round-trip from New York to Cleveland. This summer, knowing that drinking Diet Coke does not fit in well with the rest of my sustainable, environmentally friendly food values, I tried to do teshuva (repentance); I tried to give up Diet Coke.

How have I done? I’m not sure. On the plus side, I stopped bringing it into the house. I invested in lovely fair trade loose tea (and learned the hard way that tea has a lot more caffeine than Diet Coke), which produced lovely biodegradable trash. I drank more water. I’ve saved money and had a lot less plastic recycling. But, Diet Coke remains the first thing I order when I go out to eat. And, absence truly makes the heart grow fonder—I can drink 3 cans in an afternoon at my parents’ house without even thinking about it.

What does it mean to do teshuva for the food we consume? Right now, we are in the Jewish month of Elul, the time of year when we are supposed to consider our actions, repent for what we have done, and make amends so that we can start over. The word teshuva means to return—to go back to the beginning to try again. The daily morning sound of the shofar this month is a constant reminder that each day we have a chance to change our lives just a little bit.

Where do sins of consumption fit it? The traditional confession on Yom Kippur includes one for sins of food and drink, but it doesn’t specify what that means. The rabbis of the Talmud also understood true teshuvah to mean repentance in which one doesn’t plan to commit the offensive action again. Of course, we don’t place unsustainable, mindless eating in the same category as stealing or cheating. Who does it hurt, after all, if I eat just one more fried, reconstituted chicken nugget? So, the incremental way many of us change our eating habits might simply not be fast enough to qualify as teshuva.

I think this is a false sense of security. What if every time we ate, we contemplated our impact on our world? What if we really believed that every bottle of Diet Coke was a type of sin? The rabbis categorized our wrongdoing as either between a person and God, or between fellow people. Food sins, rather than being benign, could be seen as both: wastes of the bounty of God’s creation and destructive to the fragile environment that we share with other.

Maybe that’s too much to think about with every drink, too much guilt in every meal - but if we did think that way, we’d eat differently. Maybe it is a change in mindset that is the real teshuva, a change that we can make with the clear desire to not repeat our mindless eating of the past. In the new year, we can learn to see our food as part of a broader way of life. It is not the food itself, after all, that is a sin (laws of kashrut aside): it is the mindless, wasteful way we consume it as though we were the only person in the world that matters. Our teshuva reminds us that we are not the center of the universe.

So, as I head into the High Holidays, I hope to return to a new place, a more mindful place, grateful for the food I eat and determined to be more mindful of the impact of what I can consume. My food teshuvah begins with making certain items, like Diet Coke, more and more into occasional foods, aiming to eat in a more sustainable way, and not taking the food I eat for granted.

And maybe in 5769, I can break my Kraft dinner habit.
Shanah Tovah!

Out of curiosity, what would you describe as your “food sins?” And how might you plan to do food teshuva this year?

[Cross posted from The Jew & the Carrot]

Rubashkins: not winning any prizes anytime soonSince the raid on the Agriprocessors plant on May 12th, bashing the kosher meat giant has become something of a sport. Everyone from the New York Times to failed messiah to yours truly has taken a few shots (some cheap, some well-deserved) at the Rubashkin family and the business they run out of Postville, Iowa.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Rubashkin family. In fact, I called for a boycott of their meat in January, months before Uri L’Tzedek was on the case. But I’m getting a little frustrated with the way the scandal is being dealt with by liberal-minded people like me.

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Enjoying The Moment: while thinking aheadIt might seem a little premature to start planning for next Passover when we’re still in the throes of the great matzo shortage of 2008, but if anything, this should be a lesson to plan for the future. Instead of winging it every year, buying random boxes of whatever sketchy, prepared-for-Passover foods happen to be on sale at the supermarket, here are some strategies to ensure that Passover goes more smoothly next year. These five easy steps will save major time in 2009.

1. Lists, Not Listless: Document everything you bought this year. If you hosted a seder or another big meal, keep a copy of the menu. Save receipts, too--but what you really want is a list of how many boxes of farfel you needed, and how many jars of pickles you went through. If you’re hardcore, you can even use a spreadsheet.
2. Waste Not, Want Not: At the end of the holiday go through everything and see what you have left. If you bought five boxes of matzah but only ate two boxes, there’s no reason to buy another five boxes next year. Add a column to your list or spreadsheet, keeping track of what you actually used. This is a nice and easy way to integrate Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin’s philosophy of “enoughness” into Passover.
3. Roger, Copy That: Instead of sifting through the glut of random kosher for Passover recipes, save the ones you loved, make copies of them, and put them all in one binder together. Next year: Voila!
4. Eyes On Supplies: Label all new utensils, pots, and pans that you buy clearly. If there are any that are on their last legs, toss them and add them to your shopping list for next year, so that you're not short a serving dish or spatula in the midst of next year's prep.
5. Taste Test: While people are still finishing up leftovers, ask friends if you can sample some of their more successful recipes. That way, you don’t have to take their word for it that their lemon matzah kugel was great—you can taste it and decide for yourself if you want to make it.
   

These easy steps will make next year’s preparations simpler, faster, and more economical.

Related: Jewcy's Guide to Passover

Pope Benedict Says: "Can I get some Jewish pizza with this wine?" The relationship between Pope Benedict and the Jews has been tumultuous, to say the least. Luckily, recent evidence shows that Pope Benedict has discovered his own personal affinity for the Jewish people, thanks to their pastries.

Wilma Limentani, owner of a kosher bakery near the Vatican, has received a thank you note from Catholicism’s highest authorities, informing her that Joey Ratz himself is a huge fan of her biscotti and her nut-and-raisin concoction called “Jewish pizza.”

Just don’t tell him it’s made with the blood of Christian babies – kidding! His Holiness was introduced to Limentani's delectable confections by his nice Jewish doctor.

Related: Arabs Hot for Israeli Porn

The Naked Chef: not a fan of shechitaNaked Chef Jamie Oliver is working on some PETA style exposes that would condemn shechita, the kosher slaughtering process, and the Jewish community in Britain is freaking out. I've received this email from a number of friends at home and abroad in the past few days:

It has become apparent that Jamie Oliver and Channel Four are in the process of filming a new series about food production. This time, Jamie will be focussing on ritual animal slaughter.

Jamie Oliver's next series is set to be an examination of shechita, the method of ritual slaughter used by Jews and Muslims. Reports suggest that Oliver will condemn the practice as barbaric, and argue that animal rights must take precedence over religious sensibilities. It is thought that the programme will show animals being slaughtered under Jewish and Muslim auspices, with footage showing great pain and suffering, rather than it being a painless method, as its supporters have claimed.

Although all the details are not yet clear, it appears that Oliver will actually be undergoing full training to become a Shochet, or Kosher slaughterer. Channel Four then intend to show in graphic detail the slaughter of a cow involving Oliver cutting through the jugular vein. Obviously, the spilled blood will make the practice appear cruel and inhumane without taking into account the skill and precise work of a real Shochet.

If shown, the programme will be a shocking attack on religious freedom in Britain, and an example of gross anti-Semitism. Shechita is a humane method of slaughter, and, more importantly, the Jewish community has the right to continue to practice its ancient traditions. If the idea of banning shechita gains popular approval (and Oliver certainly has the capacity to do this, following his recent campaign on the welfare of battery hens) other Jewish practices such as circumcision are sure to soon be under threat. We have to mobilise now, to prevent this programme from being aired, and safeguard religious freedom in the UK.

Signing this petition will send a clear message to Channel Four – together we can stop this show and preserve our rights.
Sign the online petition

The tone of this email is a bit more hysterical than I think it needs to be. If shechita really looks awful, can’t we consider the possibility that it is awful? And though I would never condone anything that could have detrimental effects on the UK's Jewish community, it sounds like Oliver is going to do his best to portray things as accurately as he can. If it really isn’t inhumane, then the Jewish community needs to figure out a way to make that clear. And if shechita is being carried out in an inhumane fashion, then the community needs to put a stop to it.

If you've ever been in the care of a Jewish mother--whether yours or someone else's--then surely you're familiar with the words "eat something!" Often delivered with commentary about how you're "too skinny," they're spoken with a salty-sweet mix of love and reproach. It's no secret that Jews love to feed and be fed. My most profound experience with this old phenomenon occurred during a backpacking trek across Russia and Europe, when I dropped in on my sister's friend's grandmother in St. Petersburg. Despite the fact that she didn't know me from Adam (or Eve, for that matter), despite the fact that I didn't speak a word of Russian and she didn't speak a word of English, and despite the fact that her Soviet-era kitchen wasn't much bigger than a port-a-potty, she sat me down at her teeny tiny table and fed me until I nearly exploded. How she did it, I'll never know. It was as if she was pulling food out of thin air. Salads, meats, cheeses, breads, tea, and cake. There had to have been a secret door that I never saw her go through.

In any case, our enduring feeding frenzy has led to some deep culinary thoughts. Here, then, are my top 5 Jewish food wisdoms. Have one of your own? Post it in comments. Oh, yes--and ess gezunterhait, kids. Eat in good health.

	That's the way the cookie crumbles. In other words, that's life, folks. Hey, have some fun with phonics! Say it in Yiddish: "Azoy tsebrecht zich dos kichel."
	Eat like a bird, shit like a horse. Isn't that lovely? When I ran this one by my aunt, she laughed and said, "That's so Jewish." I can't purport to know what it actually means, but I'm sure it's steeped in profundity. Say it in Yiddish: "Ess vie ein foygl sheise vie ein feirt."
	If you're going to eat pork... This saying has a number of different endings, but they all mean the same thing: If you're going to sin, do it right. Enjoy it. Otherwise, what's the point? So, if you're going to eat pork: "...eat the best kind," "...get it all over your beard," "...enjoy it so much that the pork fat drips off your chin."
	In a restaurant, choose a table near a waiter. This little nugget is attributed to the legendary Henny Youngman, who is said to have walked into the Friars Club every day for 50 years and asked for "a table near a waiter."
	Love is sweet but it's nice to have bread with it. Ain't that the cold, hard truth?

It's getting hot in here: The kitchen in actionIt’s only 7:30, and already we have 170 reservations on the books. There’s a bunch of old Jewish ladies huddled by the host stand, a line of drunken Brits at coat-check, and just enough room for me to squeeze by when Elise, the maître d', hands me a soignée, a card that tells the restaurant to give special treatment to a table, and says “Tell Chef how many menus are on the tables and pass this out to the server.”

The server on the soignée is Selena, table 40. Where is she?

I charge through the main dining room, the alcove, and the back dining room--no Selena. I nearly collide into one of the bus boys, his hands full of dirty coffee cups and half-eaten desserts. I step aside and thank God that I am not wearing a pumpkin sundae. As the waiters, bus boys, food runners, and managers scramble past me, I go to the kitchen to see if Selena is there. Then Chef, a small, angry man with a Napoleon complex, yells “Hey! Are you looking for some leftovers or are you going to give me a menu count?”

Shit. Chef is the last person I want to rip me a new asshole.

As I walk out I see Selena and hand her the soignée. “Table 40 is VIP," I tell her as I scan the restaurant. How many menus are on the tables?

27. Chef is going to love this. I walk back into the kitchen. “Menu count 27, VIP on 40.” I try to sneak out of the veal broth sauna heard but unnoticed.

“Is that on top of the 17 you gave me last time?”

I nod.

“Fire it up guys!” he yells at the line cooks.

I make my way back to the host stand, relieved that I don’t work in the kitchen. Elise smiles at me, big this time, and I can tell that whoever I am about to seat is a real pain in the ass. Elise has the sophistication of a good maître d'. Her smiles indicate just how terrible a customer is. “Isabelle, please take these gentlemen to the private party downstairs.”

I look up and see twenty brawny, outrageously tall business men, all in suits two sizes too big for them.

“Are you going to be my date?” one of them asks me, staring at my tits while the guys behind him laugh.

“Right this way gentlemen.” I reply. Objectification is an old game, and I am weary of it. I walk them to the stairs, and while I know that I should walk them to the actual room, I don’t feel like it after that remark. I know Elise needs me more than they do, anyway, so I say “Down the stairs, enjoy your evening.” As I walk away, I consider slamming my shoulder into the gentleman's jaw, but I think better of it and make my way back to the host stand.

Finally Elise is alone. No one is crowding her, yelling at her, or insisting on being sat at one of the reserved tables as a walk-in. “We just had a little rush.” she says.

I nod. “How many did we do?”

“Two Hundred, chica.”

Two hundred customers on a Wednesday night? At our restaurant, that's unheard of. While I don’t feel a sweeping, overwhelming sense of accomplishment, I know that we’ve made it and that we’ve survived.

“What does Saturday look like?” I ask. Two hundred and twenty on the books. The shit-show has only just begun.

Ah, Christmas: The world’s most commercially viable pseudo-holiday. Full of enduringly confusing symbolism, the celebration drives millions of people (especially American people) insane each year, inspiring them to spend their hard-earned money on crap they (and their loved ones) don’t need. Though it's based loosely on the birth of Jesus, the festival is really the remains of the pagan winter solstice, and proves that from the beginning, the Christian church has enjoyed the savviest marketing and PR. Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of modern, secular Christianity, is that most Jews view Christmas and all of its glittering, flashing, toe-tapping accoutrements as religious, while many Christians do not! How ironical! Whatever lens through which you view the hullabaloo of Christmas, it can be a quiet, lonely day for les Jews, but the following five pastimes have provided solace for decades.

	Jews and Chinese food go together like...well, Jews and Chinese food. Legend has it that my father actually indulged in two--that's right, two--Chinese meals while my mother was in labor with me. I wasn't born on Christmas, but Jesus! In any case, many Chinese people don't take part in Christmas celebrations, and their restaurants offer safe and satisfying haven to hungry Jews.
	Celebrating Christmas simply isn't kosher, but taking in a double feature at your local cinema is fine and good. Extra large popcorn? Check. Extra large pop? Check. Clear conscience? Check, check, check.
	Matzo Ball. Not the soup, but the partay. Not on Christmas day, but on Christmas eve. Hit the ball hard enough, and your hangover will keep you occupied through Dec. 26. Let My People Go throws balls in NYC, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. The Society of Young Jewish Professionals throws balls in Boca Raton, Boston, New York, Miami, Washington D.C., and Chicago. Even Heeb gets in on the party planning action. Don't say I never took you nowhere.
	It's a mitzvah and a great way to use the time you don't spend eating a goose or a ham and opening presents around a tree decorated with chotchkies. Volunteer to serve Christmas dinner to the homeless and hungry in your town. Lord knows (ha ha, get it? Lord?) there's a local shelter, church, or temple who needs you.
	Christmas day is a great opportunity for Jews to bond with family. You've all got the day off, anyway. Get together and revel in a paid holiday.

Don't get me wrong: a bagel with cream cheese is one of the most perfect foods. But sometimes I just want something more...substantial. Sometimes I feel like getting creative, and there's nothing wrong with a little experimentation! So if you're sick of lox on your bagel, or whitefish is wearing you down, try one of these alternative bagel toppings you certainly won't find on Bubbe's brunch platter.

	The Breakfast Bagel – This one's a no-brainer and my number one go-to hangover food. I actually prefer it open-faced in order to get the perfect ratio of cheese to egg to bagel in one bite. Toast the bagel, and when it's nearly done, lay a slice of American cheese on each half. Continue toasting until cheese is just melted. Meanwhile, scramble two eggs with butter. Top cheesy bagel halves with eggs (if you're feeling up to it, insert sausage patties or bacon on top of the cheese), and you've got yourself the perfect breakfast.
	The Pizza Bagel – What genius thought to combine New York's two great culinary claims to fame? And we can give a shout-out to Chicago while we're at it since a pizza bagel is offically deep dish. Toast your bagel, top with marinara and mozzarella, toast some more to melt the cheese. This one can be as simple or fancy as you want it: add some fresh parmigiano-reggiano, asiago, fontina, or any other cheese you like. Basil, oregano, anchovies, pineapple: the possibilities are endless.
	The Elvis Bagel – There's something magical about peanut butter and banana. Sometimes I sit with a banana and a jar of chunky peanut butter and enact my very own spread, bite, spread, bite, spread, bite ritual. Put it on a bagel, and you've got a meal. Toast your bagel, let it cool a little (you don't want your pb melting), spread with the pb and top with banana slices. If you're feeling a little crazy, sprinkle on some bacon bits, as the King himself sometimes did. Try cashew or almond butter for a twist.
	The Nutella Bagel – Simple, but oh so good. The first time I had Nutella, back in the sixth grade, it was so exotic. I had a friend who went to Holland frequently, and she'd always bring back jars of the stuff. Now, this chocolate-hazelnut spread is everywhere, including my pantry. Try it on top of a chocolate-chip or cinnamon bagel for an extra sweet treat.
	The Cinnamon-Sugar Bagel – I must admit, this one's a bit nostalgic. When I was growing up, we always had a little Tupperware container of cinnamon-sugar mixture in the pantry, at the ready for my dad's perfect cinnamon toast. It transfers quite nicely to a bagel: Spread each bagel half with a generous amount of butter. Top with cinnamon-sugar mixture (about two parts sugar to one part cinnamon), toast until the topping gets bubbly and crunchy. Enjoy!

Xusa: The '80s. A more hopeful, pinker time.

Homer: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Lisa, honey, are saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!
Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Some Jews, it is said, are fixated on blonds, like the dark haired South American's fascination with children's TV host Xuxa. Others wonder about Jesus--or perhaps just about people who wear Jews for Jesus T-shirts above their fanny packs. As for me, my fascination with the non-kashrut goes back to my childhood. Perhaps it's my German ancestry, perhaps it was my father's choice in sandwiches, but I revel in the wonder of a food that can have so many names.

Ham can be from a place: Virginia, Irish, Scotch, Canadian (and how many foods are Canadian?), and even Bayonne (France, not New Jersey, but who's really to say?)

It can be on a lark: Country or Picnic. Out on the town: City or Smoked. Old or young. Ready to eat or just pickled for whatever you want, whenever you want it.

In short, the ham is a seductress. The Xuxa of the deli. At one moment, entertaining us in our childhoods, the next, discarding her pink helicopter and taking it all off for '90s Playboy (you find the link) and reducing us to tears. (Or was that just me?)

Regardless, I end with a very short story I wrote in the 1980s. And tomorrow, I promise, no more traif.

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The Ultimate Cold Cut: Spiced Ham (The Real Stuff, not SPAM)My late father had been raised in an orthodox house, but his favorite foods, which he could make on his own without my mother's help were:

1. A BLT.
2. A grilled cheese sandwich with bacon a tomato.
3. A spiced ham sandwich (not SPAM!) with raw onions on white bread.
4. A kosher hot dog grilled on wax paper with cold sauerkraut (has to be cold).
5. Bananas and sour cream. Really.

3 out of 5, clearly not kosher. 2 just weird. So how come I felt guilty when I first was given a bagel with cream cheese and bacon by a friend? Because the friend was Christian. That's why.

On the car ride today back from my cousin's funeral, stuck on the LIE, we had the following discussion about kosher, my father and pork, and what to put on pastrami:

My sister: I once decorated this bar mitzvah party at the W Hotel in Union Square. The theme was "Sushi." They had these giant cakes made to look like pieces of raw fish on rice.

Me: Doesn't sound very kosher.

My sister: I think they only had cakes that looked like sushi. No actual sushi.

Me (considering this): Come to think of it, where did Dad get his love of pork products?

Uncle H: Not at our mother's house, that's for sure.

My sister: He did really love his pork products.

Uncle H: You know, your father was the first person to make me a BLT. I'd never seen such a thing.

Aunt G (known for her love of lobster): And where did he make it?

Uncle H: At my mother's house.

All of us: While she was a alive?

Uncle H: No, after she had passed away. Although, if she'd been alive, I'm sure seeing your father making a BLT would have killed her.

Me: And he had the nerve to criticizes me for putting mayo on pastrami.

Uncle H: Oh, I wouldn't have put up with that either.

So does anyone else put mayonnaise on pastrami? Bacon on their cream cheese? What is going to become of us? And lastly, can you believe that there's a website for a kosher seasoning to make everything taste like bacon? Really.

Listen closely: You can hear the stomachs rumblingI decided that I wanted a bat mitzvah when I was 20. I had been living in South Africa and spending a lot of time with Jews whose lives seemed enriched by their faith. Though I had not been raised religious and wasn’t looking for a holy-roller conversion, I wanted to do something to mark my Jewishness. The plan dissipated upon my return to the States, but my desire to participate in some of Judaism’s more meaningful rituals—an excuse to celebrate with people I love—did not. I have not lived up to my plan.

When a friend invited me to her break-fast this year, I made up my mind not to fast unless I had a good reason. Taking a random sampling of Jewish friends, I found that most observed because of their parents, because that’s what you do on Yom Kippur. But we’d never done the High Holidays in my home, so the tradition was really mine to take or leave.

Consulting Rabbi Leonard Gordon about the fast’s biblical roots was informative, but predictable. I knew I’d need to find a more tangible reason than souls and spirits. I liked the drama inherent in Rabbi Alan Flam’s description of the fast as a “structured encounter with death,” and I was drawn to the possible peace of mind that I imagined confronting mortality might bring, but I worried that I’d be too self-conscious trying to achieve this state. I did not want the pressure of trying to feel something as massive as death. I wanted a reason that wasn’t shrouded in religion.

Dr. Myron Yaster insisted both to my relief and disappointment that so long as you have a functional metabolism, your body will be fine. Where I had thought that the fast was something to struggle through, Dr. Yaster made it sound like half of America is fasting. (Which of course they are.)

Help yourself: Is Yom Kippur really about body issues?Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair suggested that rather than being an excuse not to eat, Yom Kippur can be used as a way to forgo body issues for a little while. This self-help-y language, while perfect for a self-help column, was not entirely convincing.

It was Wendy Shanker, a regular (and insightful) Jewish girl, who finally convinced me I should fast. For Shanker, a day shouldn’t require deprivation to be holy, but it does require doing things outside the norm: not checking email, not putting on makeup, not having sex, and yes, not eating. It means going to synagogue and being reminded of family and thinking about what is important in the coming year.

I have decided to fast on Yom Kippur because I want to be with a community of people who are also trying to feel something. I know I won’t be the only person in the congregation who is perplexed by why it’s important to spend the day starving. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to “check in” or “turn inward,” or even keep quiet during shul, but I will make an attempt, and if I fail, I’m not a bad Jew.

Having trouble finding time for a meal?: You are not alone.For my final day of decision-making, I didn’t want to talk to an expert. I didn’t want to hear what the Torah had to say, or how my cells would dry up and die, or how fasting contributes to body dysmorphia. I just wanted to talk to a Jewish girl like me, someone who had a flexible relationship with the faith, and who practiced on her own terms. I wanted to know what her reasons were for fasting, if she did it just because, or if there was intention in the ritual.

I met Wendy Shanker at New York’s City Bakery. She daintily picked at black rice, snow peas, and chickpea-encrusted chicken, and sipped an ice coffee. I ate three vanilla bean cookies. Shanker is 34 years old, the author of the memoir The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, and the kind of person you want as your friend. She’s warm, she’s proud, and she laughs easily.

Shanker, who doesn’t belong to a shul but keeps Shabbat and fasts each year, grew up believing that Yom Kippur was about suffering for sins, since for Jews, not eating is a major concession to God. As she got older, she found that a 24-hour fast doesn’t really work as punishment. It’s not long enough to cause much discomfort or to achieve elevated peace of mind, let alone a transformation. And fasting, as she noted, is not so different from what has become normal eating behavior. These days, it’s not only obsessive Jewish girls saying, “I had a huge dinner last night so I’m going to skip breakfast and lunch today,” but a good portion of everyday working stiffs who try to wedge their first bite of the day in at 4 p.m. If abstention is the status quo, does the Yom Kippur fast work as atonement?

Sweating off the pounds: Why Yom Kippur brings back unpleasant memories for some womenTalking to Shanker helped me understand on a personal level what Rabbi Gordon meant when he assured me that guilt and suffering weren’t the ultimate goals of the holiday. But I was still concerned about the way fasting echoes unhealthy eating behavior. I had perversely thought of the fast as having added weight-loss bonus, but for Shanker—who’d spent years trying to lose weight with various dieticians and trainers—not eating comes with an entirely different kind of guilt. Rather than giving her the secret pleasure of being allowed to skip meals, Yom Kippur instead roused unpleasant memories of being told not to eat. She’d had enough trouble dieting for her own well-being; why was it so much easier to do for God?

To make the fast meaningful beyond punishment-lite or indulging Jewish-girl body neuroses, I did not want to do it for an abstraction like God, or transformation, or even forgiveness. Shirking dogma and religious obedience, Shanker finds the fast significant partly because it reminds her of childhood and family, and partly because it makes the day different. There is no expectation of transformation, no half-hearted nod to forgiveness; she draws meaning from the day by designating it meaningful.

This is usually the kind of thing I hate—deciding something is meaningful just because. Unlike most mass holidays, there’s nothing particularly fun about Yom Kippur. There are no gifts, you can’t observe it until you’re old enough to at least fake solemnity, there’s even a special prayer just for the dead. And so unless you have a deep-seated faith or are just going through the motions, finding meaning in the ritual can be a struggle. This is what finally appeals to me, what makes me almost want to start fasting this instant—being in a room full of other people who are also trying to find meaning in what we have been told is a holy day.

Next page: Hunger Pangs

The guilt shouldn't be in the pudding: Is it healthy to fast in a country obsessed with food and weight?“I could eat all the time” is a favorite expression among the women in my family. It’s an exaggeration, yes, but not by much. We’re second- and third-helping kinds of eaters, the types who always eat dessert and apologize for bad moods by mumbling, “I was hungry.” But despite a seemingly unabashed pride in our appetites, none of us are particularly thrilled with our bodies.

Though I’ve never dieted or been diagnosed with an eating disorder, I have made—and inevitably broken—absurd promises to myself about food. I’ve sworn I wouldn’t eat dessert for a whole week, or that I’d go easy on bread, or even abstain from eating until 1:00 p.m. I feel guilty when I have Doritos, ice cream, and fries—all foods I’d like to eat every day. If this sounds strange to you, chances are you’ve never had an honest conversation with a woman about her relationship to her body and food. How could I separate a holiday that sanctions not eating in order to feel holy from the everyday pressures of not eating in order to be thin?

I took this question to Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, the director of Eating Disorders Education and Prevention at McLain Hospital in Boston. She disagreed with the idea that Yom Kippur contributes to dominant body neuroses. Judaism, she suggested, can actually counter unhealthy choices. Paraphrasing the Torah, Steiner-Adair offered the old body-is-the-temple-of-your-soul adage, insisting that Judaism actually promotes a healthy psychological and physical connection to your body.

It’s nice to think that the Torah discourages unhealthy behavior, but the ethics of Judaism can easily slip into obsessive behaviors. Indeed, Lori Hope Lefkovitz, a women’s studies professor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (and the wife of Rabbi Gordon), pointed out that some kosher cookbooks, with their strict hygienic guidelines and separation of foods, read like a prescription for an eating disorder. Whether you’re doing it for obsolete sanitary purposes or for ritual purity, keeping kosher requires you to be vigilantly aware of everything that goes in your mouth. This can easily contribute to being freaked out about food in general.

Cracking under pressure: A disproportionate number of Jewish women suffer from anorexia.Though Steiner-Adair does not believe that keeping kosher contributes to eating disorders—she thinks eating disorders are a contemporary neurosis—she agreed that Jewish women are especially susceptible to the cultural pressure to be thin. Anorexia clinics, she told me, actually house a disproportionate number of Jewish girls. From her time spent working with women who suffer from eating disorders, Steiner-Adair thinks Jewish women grow up with the impression that to assimilate into American standards of beauty, you must be thin.

While Steiner-Adair’s optimism in the Torah as a way to help women get over body issues struck me as naïve, I did like her suggestion that the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur should be a time to remove yourself from the strange dialogue women have about food. In fact, Steiner-Adair sometimes tells her anorexic Jewish patients to eat a little more on Yom Kippur as an alternative way of observing the holiday. Flipping the rules this way helps undermine the idea that eating is bad. Similarly, those who decide to fast need to stop thinking about food as sin. “Don’t worry if you can’t hold the fast,” Dr. Steiner-Adair told me. “You’re not a bad Jew and you’re not a bad person and you’re just not bad.”

Instead of using Yom Kippur as an excuse to not eat, Dr. Steiner-Adair says, you should use it as a time to think about who you want to be in the world. This is a simple enough suggestion, but I’ve never connected the holiday with personal reflection. I certainly spend enough time during the rest of the year thinking about what matters, but typically in a list-making, goal-oriented kind of way. Whatever my ambiguous relationship toward spirituality in general and Judaism in particular, I liked the idea of using the fast as a designated way of taking stock.

Having spent the last three days hearing the various opinions of officialdom, for my last interview I wanted to get a personal take on the fast. Tomorrow I’m going to forget doctors and rabbis and instead talk to a regular Jewish girl, the author of a memoir about body image who has plenty of reservations about both religion and dieting but fasts nevertheless.

Next page: Lunching about fasting.

Hold off on the Manischewitz: Water is better after a fastDr. Myron Yaster is the reason I started fasting, though he doesn’t know it. Yaster has been observing the fast since his bar mitzvah 41 years ago. He attends a Conservative synagogue in Baltimore, the same one where his three children were all bar mitzvah’ed. Since the eldest of those three children happens to be my boyfriend, the guy I followed to synagogue three years ago, it seemed especially appropriate to get medical advice from him.

I wanted to speak with an M.D. because when you separate fasting from a religious or political context, it comes down to a simple question of metabolic health. As a mostly non-observant Jew, I have a hard time accepting religious practices that compel you to inflict pain or even stress on your body. What I wanted to learn from Yaster was exactly how much stress our bodies undergo during this religious rite. Additionally, I wanted to know if there was any kind of documented physical transformation I could expect as a result of not eating.

Yaster assured me that a 24-hour fast is fine for anyone with a normal metabolism. The physical effect of fasting on the body is sort of like being on a high-protein or low-carb diet where your body is tricked into using fat as a primary fuel. Although you might feel a little lightheaded or cranky by the 22nd hour, a one-day fast has almost no effect at all on your health or ability to function.

Don't let the Torah get you down: Bodies can handle a lot of deprivation.At sundown on Yom Kippur I generally head straight for the lox plate and bagel basket to stuff myself with as much fish and bread as I can grab. Yaster explained that while this is a common urge, liquid is really the first thing you should have after the fast (wine doesn’t count). I’ve never seen someone bring Gatorade to Yom Kippur dinner, but it’s an ideal way to break the fast, since it contains a severe infusion of salt, water, sugar, and glucose—the things you need to maintain a well-functioning metabolism.

Though he put all fears of masochistic worship to rest, I came away from our conversation feeling somewhat let down. It is true that I don’t want to harm my body just because the Torah says so, but part of me was expecting—hoping—for the fast to be more of a physiological undertaking. If your body hardly registers 24 hours without food, any real physical change is unlikely. It seems that achieving an inward-focused death-like state, as Rabbi Greenberg suggested, requires a lot more than the hungry, sleepy stupor I tend to fall into by the holiday’s end. In spite of my own misgivings with religion, I didn’t want my fast to be the equivalent of a crash protein diet.

In a culture that rewards abstinence, where Atkins is a household name, it is impossible not to associate fasting, no matter how holy, with the desire to be thin. As someone with a fairly normal attitude towards her body for an American woman—not pleased but not moved to change—I know I will have to confront the fast-as-diet before deciding if I want to observe. Tomorrow I will talk to a clinical psychologist who specializes in eating disorders, particularly among Jewish women.

Next page: Yom Kippur as a time to eat more, not less

COFFEE CRAPPED OUT OF ANIMALS!!!!!

Pickled: Jewcy's new food blog launches Wednesday.Jewish delis may close more than open these days, but Jewish cuisine isn't going anywhere. This Wednesday Jewcy launches Pickled, a blog about cooking and entertaining the Jewcy way. We'll break recipes down with pictures and easy instructions. We'll rank essential grocery store products and kitchen tools. We'll interview our favorite Jewish and Jewishly-inspired chefs and cook book authors. We'll advise you on catering menus for bat mitzvahs and weddings. We'll profile restaurants with the Jewciest eats in your hometown and around the world.

We’ll show you just how far beyond shmaltz, pastrami, and matzah balls Jewish cuisine goes. (But don't worry--we'll blog plenty about these, too.) Whether you've got the knife skills of Bobby Flay or find your cheese grater daunting, Pickled breaks it down for all skill levels.

And with Rosh Hashanah—Thanksgiving's Jewish culinary equivalent—quickly approaching, what better time for Pickled? As we pool recipes and tips to help you fill your Rosh Hashanah dinner tables, we thought we’d go to you, Readers, for your holiday favorites.

Honey: for a sweet New YearHoney is the star of the Rosh Hashanah meal, eaten to welcome a sweet new year. We want to know: How do you take your honey? Whipped into a crème brulee? Warmed and painted over crispy chicken wings? In a dip for fried pickles? If you’ve got a honey recipe you love enter it in our “Jewcy Sweet New Year” recipe contest. Sharon Lebewohl, former chef of New York's famous Second Avenue Deli, will help judge the tastiest and most innovative recipes to feature on Jewcy. We’ll also send winning entrants a gift box of Jewcy swag.

Don’t wait! Send recipes to Pickled@Jewcy.com.

Regular readers bemoaning Jewcy's descent into Brit tabloid hell this week will be glad to hear that this will be the final Shambo update. Despite heroic resistance from the Welsh monks fighting (non-violently) to protect the TB-infected temple bull from the clock-punchers and pencil-pushers, I can confirm the worst. 

After a dramatic day in which officials had to obtain warrant to enter the Llanpumsaint community, the six-year-old Friesian was eventually removed from the site at around 1930 BST on Thursday night.

In a joint statement with Dyfed-Powys Police, the Welsh Assembly Government said it had been "an extremely difficult operation for all concerned".

And on Friday morning, it was confirmed that Shambo had been put down by lethal injection on Thursday evening.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy T-bone,
Silence the tambourines and with muffled drums
Bring out the burger buns, let the ketchup come.

Let cattle trucks circle moaning round the barn
Scribbling in the dirt the message, Shambo Is Dead,
Put mournful garlands round the white necks of the temple monks,
Let the government veterinarians wear black rubber gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My midweek sandwich and my Sunday lunch,
My stir-fry, my fillet, my stock, my chop;
I thought that leftovers would last for ever: I was wrong.

The barbeques are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the mustard and dismantle the grill;
Pour away the gravy and sweep up the wood.
For no meal now will ever be as good.

On Monday night I read an awesome piece over at SOMA Review about how hard it is to find a good Jewish deli outside of a big metropolis. It’s a fun, interesting article by a woman named Mary Beth Crain who’s had to move to the small town of Hart, Mich. to be with family, and who has an interesting way of prioritizing:

I soon discovered that being a Jew in Hart is a far different experience from being a Jew in L.A., or New York, or Flatbush. There’s no synagogue, and no Jewish community, but far more important—there’s no Jewish deli.

Yes, if you ask me, the deli—and by deli I do not mean those pathetic packaged sandwich sections in the supermarkets and 7-11’s—is the real place of Jewish worship. A genuine Jewish deli is not simply a wondrous locale, it’s a wondrous experience.

Full Story
Schmaltz and Co deli in Naperville, IL: Kosher style, and Jewish, but not kosher
Crain goes on to list, at length, her favorite things about various delis in LA, where she lived before the move to Michigan. And I have to admit, her descriptions are fantastic, and totally make me want to visit those delis the next time I’m in LA. Except for one thing: they’re not kosher, and I’m a vegetarian.

The whole phenomenon of Jewish delis irritates me, to be honest. I get annoyed because in my mind, Jewish should mean kosher, but in fact, the prototypical Jewish delis—the Carnegie deli in New York, Manny’s Deli in Chicago, and Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor are pretty thoroughly treyf these days.

The only thing that gets my eyes rolling faster than Jewish delis is anything that’s “kosher-style.” Does anyone know what that means? Is there anyone out there that eats only at kosher and “kosher-style” restaurants? I doubt it.

I love food, and I especially love traditionally Jewish foods. I make a mean Jerusalem kugel, and I think even vegetarian matzah ball soup has mystical medicinal powers (but I outright refuse to spell it matzo). The only thing that I love more than traditionally ashkenazic foods like kugel are traditionally Sephardic foods, like dolmades. And I’ve said before that whenever my faith in God wanes, I eat hummus and my faith is restored. But somehow a Jewish deli just doesn’t do it for me, and I think that’s because it makes me uncomfortable to sit in a place that’s openly proclaiming itself as Jewish, and that also openly serves a corned beef and Swiss sandwich.

Earlier this week I wrote about ahavat Israel, and I truly intend to make ahavat Israel a bigger part of my life this year, so I don’t want to come down hard on Jewish delis. I just wonder what makes a deli Jewish? A sign that says shalom? A Reuben on the menu? Homemade pickles?

When did Jewish come to mean quality meat (wow, SO many jokes to be made here), as Mary Beth Crain seems to imply? Why do we insist on making the deli part of our religious dialogue, when it seems to belong more in our cultural myth?

Frankly, when something is labeled Jewish, I have certain ethical standards that I hold it to, and I don’t really want to care about the ethics of some guys running a deli on the South Side of Chicago. But when they call it Jewish, I feel a sense of obligation.

You can call language Jewish (Yiddish) and you can call a piece of art of an artist Jewish (Chagall) because those aren’t things governed by Jewish law. So, if they act in a way that’s specifically non-Jewish, it’s less problematic. But I get edgy around foods and countries that label themselves Jewish, and then don’t live up to their own labels. But I don’t know. Maybe I’d feel different if I ate corned beef.

On Friday I blogged about a lot of the holes in a contemporary Jewish day school education, and one of the major gaps involved general lack of knowledge about Jews that aren’t Ashkenazi. That is, Jews who are not of Eastern European descent. In the US the vast majority of day schools and Jewish community organizations are run with the assumption that pretty much everyone involved is Ashkenazi, and this isn’t a completely farfetched assumption. In the US, non-Ashkenaz Jews are the minority, but not by as wide of a margin as programming and organizations would lead one to assume. The States are home to small enclaves of Jewish communities with origins all over the world, including India, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, India, China, and Afghanistan. These communities are often lumped together with Sephardic Jews (literally, Spanish Jews, or Jews from Western Europe) even though their customs and communities are quite different. Jews from Middle Eastern countries like Yemen, Iraq and Iran are most accurately identified as Edot HaMizrach, or Tribes of the East, because they’re generally thought to be remnants of the community that was exiled from Israel is 587 BCE to Babylonia. When the Second Temple was built many Jews returned to Israel, but even more stayed put, and the Babylonian community and its offshoots became what we now call Edot HaMizrach.
Exotic Jews: Are hot
I have a crush on all of the Edot HaMizrach because they’ve done the best job of preserving customs from Talmudic times. Everything from having kids give Aramaic translations to the Torah as it’s being read on Shabbat (a practice originated thousands of years ago, and contemporarily being reinstated via Storahtelling) to speaking Hebrew in a way that distinguishes between letters that are pronounced exactly the same way by Ashkenazi Jews. They also have amazing cuisine, and many cute olive-skinned Jewish boys.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about Edot HaMizrach is that they weren’t victims of the Holocaust since most of them live much farther East than Hitler ever ventured. This doesn’t mean, though, that they didn’t suffer all kinds of cruelty, discrimination, and pain at the hands of the governments where they lived. There were pogroms and serious problems of anti-Semitism in the Middle East long before the Nazis came to power. Unfortunately the Holocaust has mostly drowned out any communal memories of these problems to the extent that many people don’t even know they existed. Tension relating to this problem, and a more general sense of discrimination against Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews is still potent in Israel today. For one thing, Mizrachim tend to look like Arabs, and so are searched more often by security in Israel, which, as one might expect, is rather unpleasant.

A few other cool things about Edot HaMizrach: each community has its own traditions regarding cantillation of the Torah, more commonly known as trope. Mizrachi weddings are notoriously awesome, especially since they’re preceded by a henna ceremony, which is a really cool and weirdly erotic pre-wedding ritual. See pictures here. And finally, there are some Mizrachi Jews who speak Judeo-Aramaic, a modern Jewish dialect of the language used in the Talmud, and parts of Tanach. I imagine I’m one of about three girls in the world who think Judeo-Aramaic is among the coolest things in the world, but it’s kind of the family business, so I’m allowed this luxury.

Anyway, there’s clearly lots to be taught about Edot HaMizrach, and it’s not getting taught in day schools or Sunday schools. Next time you have the opportunity to lead or teach something in your community, think about adding a Mizrachi custom, song, or food. Kugel is like, so last season.

Well, today was harder. Dukkha day, they'd call it on a meditation retreat; the "day of suffering" when the initial thrill is off and the hard work really begins. My dukkha day started early -- around 5:15 in the morning, when I woke up dehydrated and couldn't get back to sleep. You really have to drink the lemonade all the time; if you don't, you pay for it sooner or later. In my case, I just wasn't thirsty after about 8pm last night, so I didn't drink -- and it came back to haunt me with pre-dawn nausea, aching, and general lousiness. I did get back to sleep around 7, but had to be up at 9 for a conference call, which didn't go so well either.

I'm drooling already Now, my (even thinner) body aches, and I have started to get cravings at the mere mention of Entenmann's Louisiana Crunch Cake (I saw some boxes of it at the Rite Aid where I was buying more Spring Water... mmm, processed food). But at the same time, I have really enjoyed moving more slowly, noticing the limits of my body. I can't jump down the subway stairs two steps at a time. I just can't carry that much. And it feels good to just sit around.

I also really have appreciated, in a bourgeois-tourist sort of way, what it is to be nourished, and to be hungry. Walking down the street this morning, I felt a wave of gratitude for this lemonade, which really is a lifeline. In the Jewish tradition, we have all kinds of gratitude-practices for food -- blessings before and after, dietary laws, special recipes -- but it often takes a lot of work to really feel the emotions behind the ritual. But when you're hungry, it's easy. Of course, I understand that this is a privileged, touristic visit to the world of hunger; unlike people who are actually starving, all I need to do is open my fridge and eat some of the veggies rotting inside. I'm not claiming I really know what it's like to not know where your next meal is coming from. But there is still something to feeling, literally in your bones, that life hangs by the thread of this little bottle of liquid. Somehow that is easier, more tangible, than some more abstract and diffused notion of "I depend on food for my existence," or blessing God for providing sustenance.

I also learned today that I'm more disciplined than I give myself credit for. I recen