RJ Blog

by Rabbi Adam Morris I am thinking a lot about food at the moment, not because I am hungry as I write this post, but because I am in the midst of a 21-day cleanse. Under the guidance of Jen Nassi, my holistic health coach, my wife Renee and I are participating in an exhaustive eating exercise. During these three weeks, we are eliminating many foods that are common to our everyday diets and adding foods that will help our bodies remove toxins and work more efficiently.

by Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot Until 2008, one of the most popular foods served in Beijing restaurants was known in English as “saliva chicken.” This was actually a literal translation of the dish’s traditional name in Mandarin—which could also be translated as “chicken that makes your mouth water.” In advance of that year’s Olympic games, however, the Chinese government demanded restaurants revise their menus. Eager to be taken seriously as a world power, China feared literal translations like this one would besmirch its image and so, “saliva chicken” became “steamed chicken with chili sauce.”

I did not grow up in a kosher home. In fact, I refer to the home in which I was raised as “glatt treiff.”  My becoming a bar mitzvah in 1973 coincided with my mother’s personal liberation.  A few months after I became a bar mitzvah, my mother returned to work and the kitchen closed forever.  It re-opened, however, once a year, for one week:  Passover.  We did not change dishes, but it was the occasion for a major spring cleaning.  My father and I would make the long trip by subway down to the Lower East Side.  We would [...]

Recent seasonal discussion on the URJ’s iWorship list-serv has centered, naturally, on Passover rituals, and certainly for no other holiday do we give so much ritual attention to food Bob Korngold got the conversation started with his reminiscences of a seder he conducted in Japan when he was in the military, for which the Jewish Welfare Board supplied gefilte fish, matzo, and charoset (plus Haggadahs).  That stimulated Mike Rankin to ask if any other family besides his had a Pesach tradition of serving beet preserves with matzo brei or matzo pancakes, like his great aunt Jennie made, from a recipe she [...]

How often is family dinner a spiritual time? In our household, not nearly as often as I would wish. Especially now, with only one child at home, it is so easy for the conversation to devolve into an inquisition of that object of my wife’s and my parental affection and obsession – how was school, what did you learn, is your homework done, do you see how you’re sitting….blah, blah, blah. Add onto that a type-A personality (me) coming home after a day commuting into the city for work, and you have – to say the least – a recipe [...]

by Tina Wasserman Today was a terrific day! I drove to Virginia to be at Temple Beth El in Alexandria. The wonderful ladies of that synagogue’s WRJ offered to help me prepare all the foods I am presenting at the Biennial this week. To thank them, I gave a talk about the history of Jewish food. We were all happy! There was one man in the kitchen cooking with us, and he was a terrific pastry chef. I am nibbling on the broken spice cookies as we speak! Here’s what’s cooking at Biennial…

by Tina Wasserman Many years ago I created a birthday cake for my son that covered an entire table with cupcakes, licorice and cookies transforming the table’s surface into a giant Pac- Man grid. I used a contemporary cultural icon to create a centerpiece for his birthday celebration. Jewish cooks, for millennia, found their creative stimulus in themes from the Bible, regional folklore, and daily life.  The Chanukah story of the rededication of the Temple and the single vial of oil lasting eight days was the impetus for the creation of the potato pancake, probably in the early 17th century, [...]

Just before the High Holy Days, Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs asked me to join a group of Jewish and congressional leaders in a project called the Food Stamp Challenge. I was somewhat aware of the Food Stamp Challenge because, among others, Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs our Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) in Washington, had participated last year and he had written about it. A number of members of the RAC staff took the challenge this year as well. But being aware and actually participating were two different things!By accepting his invitation, [...]

by Tina Wasserman(originally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah) I imagined her eyes smiling as her gleeful voice responded to my question over the telephone; I had just asked this Dutch-born Octegenarian, “What was it like to celebrate Shabbat growing up in Holland? She told me how it was a special day for her. It began, in summer at least, with her older sister taking the children to a Jewish store before sundown to buy a treat–usually a pickle or the national Dutch addiction, licorice. They got dressed in clean clothes and the table was set in all the finery befitting [...]

by Melanie Aron(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah) For almost twenty-five years, since his article, “Toward an Ethical Kashrut,” was published with Rebecca Alpert in the journal Reconstructionist in the spring of 1987,1 Rabbi Arthur Waskow has been talking about standards of kashrut that extend beyond the traditional ritual requirements. In his book Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life, 2 he asks some questions that illustrate his extended definition of what could be included in an expanded, more contemporary understanding of kashrut: Are tomatoes grown by drenching the earth in [...]