The Edible Torah

I arrived at the kollel, the house of study (literally – this was a house that had been emptied of everything, including interior walls, and re-purposed as a space for married men to come and study Talmud, Torah and other texts throughout the day) at 7:45pm, the usual time. I found one of the few English-Hebrew siddurs and opened it to the section for afternoon prayers and waited expectantly for the rest of the crowd to arrive.

It was all part of my routine since arriving in this neighborhood 4 months earlier. Thursday nights at the kollel: davening (praying) a quick mincha (afternoon) service and then sitting for an hour to study with my “learning partner” (a euphamism for “the incredibly patient young Rabbi who graciously volunteered to shepherd me through the painful first steps of rudimentary  Talmud study”).

7:55, the normal start time for Mincha, came and went but the room was still suspiciously empty. Another 5 minutes and 2 other men arrived, but didn’t have that rushed “I’m late to pray” look I would have expected. I began to suspect I had missed something. Screwing up my courage, I approached one of the guys, a solidly-built man wearing the standard white-shirt-black-suite uniform of the frum Jew, with a thick black beard and a kind face.

“Is Mincha downstairs today?” I asked, hoping I had made the easiest of all possible gaffes.

He paused, and I could see him working hard to understand the context of my question. Which caused my heart to sink further, since this was another clue that I had missed something bigger than just being on the wrong floor.

“Mincha?” he finally answered carefully. “We davened mincha this afternoon.”

I tried to make my voice sound both unperturbed and curious, hoping it wouldn’t betray the embarrassment and frustration that crushed down on me. “Oh really? What time was that?”

“1:30. Mincha is always 1:30 after the High Holidays.” while he spoke with nothing but kindness, my insecurity mentally overlaid a patronizing tone laced with derision.

I thanked the man for the information, choosing not to mention (to yet another person, for what seemed like the hundredth time) that it’s hard to know what “always” is when everything seems to be a “first” for me.

I  went back to the place where I had carefully laid out my siddur.
Closed it up.
Placed it back on the shelf.
Fought the urge to just ditch it all and leave.
Sat with myself and came to grips with the fact that I was going to miss mincha prayers entirely.
Waited patiently for my partner to arrive

What frustrates me most in these moments (and this was not the only example that led to my writing this post. Nor was it even the first. Nor, I’m afraid, will it be the last.) is not the mistake. What’s really hard for me to swallow is the feeling that there are instructions for these things, but I’m somehow not seeing them, or understanding them. I feel like an illiterate foreigner, sitting at a bus stop on a national holiday when service has been cancelled. Making matters worse, there’s a large sign next to me stating that fact but, being a stranger in a strange land, I can’t read the sign. I don’t even know the sign has anything to do with the bus service. So I wait, and wait, and wait. Until someone takes pity and tells me what’s going on.

The condition of being both uneducated and inexperienced, of having to figure out what’s going on based on “sideways clues” (the guy next to me turned a page. I better turn mine too.), of always having to put on the self-effacing humor and “oh golly shucks I messed up again” smile because pounding the table in frustration (which is what I feel like doing) will only make the situation more awkward, the effort of swimming upstream against my own ignorance is exhausting in a way I find hard to even describe.

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This essay has sat on my computer for some time, and I come back to it each time there is a new embarrassment, a new gaffe that leaves me feeling demoralized. I would work at the words like one might pull at the strings in  a knot, solving nothing and, in fact, only making the entire thing tighter and harder to unravel. But I kept thinking that if I could get this post just right, it would help me find a way out of the cycle.

In the end, my solution came from someone much more experienced in these matters. Not a Rabbi, not a Jewish studies professor, not a Hebrew tutor  and not even a been-orthodox-my-whole-life friend. It came from someone who knows a great deal about living with, and even embracing, this state of not-knowing.

As we were standing together one Shabbat morning, I looked up from my prayerbook where I had been painstakingly sounding out yet another prayer I didn’t know, to find my 8-year-old son looking up at me. “Are you done reading that already?” I whispered.

“Nope.” he answered nonchalantly. Then he confided, “I haven’t learned this one. So I pray by watching everyone else.”

There were so many things wrapped up in his small, simple answer. Faith that he would, one day, learn “this one”. Confidence that even if he didn’t learn how to say the words, he still had options. Trust that he could still connect to God in a way that was authentic and valid.

But above all, he was unconcerned about not measuring up. To extend a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, he intuitively knew that his legs were long enough to reach the ground, and that his soul was tall enough to reach heaven.

I began to study how he experienced the world, and discovered a seemingly endless series of things he didn’t know, which he dealt with daily. I saw the way faith and trust and a sublime acceptance of the each moment -asking it to be nothing more or less than what it was – how all of that was a natural part of his responses. I realized that, in growing up and getting all sorts of amazing skills and tricks and knowledge, I lost the very thing that allowed me to acquire all those things in the first place.

That disconnect, more than anything, was my actual problem. I’m now working to fix this deficiency.

The other day, I found myself in that situation again. Asked to open the ark (twice – once when the Torah came out and again when it was being returned) I found that I had no idea about the mechanics of the job.

I didn’t know when to go up. I didn’t know when to open the doors. The leader waited (it seemed to me) until the last possible second to come up and actually get the Torah, and I stood in pure terror wondering if I was supposed to bring it to him. Instead of escorting the Torah around the entire sanctuary, I (practically) ran back to my seat and stayed there (only to be immediately informed by a well-meaning elder of the congregation of my gaff). Later, when the Torah was put back, I closed the ark too early.

But you know what?

A friend told me when to go up. The president of the congregation (who sits up front) clued me when open the ark. The gabbai, seeing my panicked expression, gave me the “it’s ok” sign so I knew to sit tight and wait for the leader. And when I started to close the ark at the end, the leader was up there and explained I was too early.  I re-opened it, and we kept going.

We all make mistakes, and as much as my lack of functional knowledge frustrates me, it’s also to be expected. It is understandable for someone in my position. It is forgiven by everyone in this community, many of whom have stood where I stand. If we are brave enough to start at all, we will all have to start somewhere, and some-when for that matter. And after that moment of beginning, it’s a sure thing that there will be mistakes. The scientific term for this, I believe, is “learning”.

I got back to my seat after closing the ark (this time at the correct point in the service). My son was waiting to shake my hand. It was clear that, as far as he was concerned, it had all gone off without a hitch.

And he was right.

Courtesy of Julie Seltzer and MyJewishLearning.com

This week, rather than quickly summarizing the portion I decided to keep you in the dark about the food assignment.

Limited only by your research ability, creativity and the category of food assigned, please bring a food which is “dark”.

Not sure what this Torah portion is about? You can find a brief summary in The Edible Torah’s “Condensed Guide to the Weekly Torah Readings”. For more information on what The Edible Torah is all about, along with insight on how to set up a pot-luck Shabbat experience, check out “The Edible Torah”.

Courtesy of Julie Seltzer and MyJewishLearning.com

In this weeks portion Pharaoh gives us a good role model for the phrase “slow learner”. One simple request – let the Israelites go. One simple consequence – or else God is going to get medieval on your country. Each plague was saying the same thing in a different way.

And yet 6 plagues later Pharaoh is still not clueing into the concept.

So, limited only by your creativity and the category of food which you have been assigned, please bring a food which could be presented in many different ways.

Not sure what this Torah portion is about? You can find a brief summary in The Edible Torah’s “Condensed Guide to the Weekly Torah Readings”. For more information on what The Edible Torah is all about, along with insight on how to set up a pot-luck Shabbat experience, check out “The Edible Torah”.

The first portion of the second book of Torah is called “Shemot” in Hebrew, which means “names”

This week we fast forward 400 years. There’s a Pharaoh – we never find out what his name is, but then again the 5 Pharaoh’s named in Torah all are never called anything except “Pharaoh” – who doesn’t remember Joseph’s name. We meet two midwives, and we learn their names are Shifrah and Puah A man from the tribe of Levi (who’s name we do not learn until much later) takes a wife (again, no name given) and they have a son and hide him. When it becomes impossible to hide the baby any more, he’s placed in a basket and his sister (no name given) keeps an eye on him until Pharaoh’s daughter (whose name we never learn except in midrash) draws him from the water and names him Moses.

In the whole narrative of Moses’ birth and life until adulthood, the Torah only gives us the names of the midwives and Moses himself. Through midrash, we understand that these midwives are actually Miriam and Yocheved – Moses’ sister and mother – working under assumed Egyptian names.

Nobody – not ancient scholors or modern commentators – have ever stated what Moses’ name was before he was floated down the Nile. What was he called for the 3 months he was kept hidden?

And most compellingly, we are given the first formal presentation of God’s name. According to Richard Friedman, this 4-letter name “…is a verb. It is third person. It is singular. And it is masculine. Its root meaning is “to be”. It is generally understood to be a causative form. It’s tense is the imperfect, and it cannot be limited to a past, present or future time. Its nearest translation would be ‘He Causes To Be’. ”

SO… limited only by your creativity and the category of food assigned , please plan to bring a food with many names.

Not sure what this Torah portion is about? You can find a brief summary in The Edible Torah’s “Condensed Guide to the Weekly Torah Readings”. For more information on what The Edible Torah is all about, along with insight on how to set up a pot-luck Shabbat experience, check out “The Edible Torah”.

Image courtesy of Joel Robinson

Last night I watched what might be a thought-changing, if not life-changing program: “The Big Waste”, on the Food Network. In it, four of the network’s star chefs explored ways to turn food that would otherwise have been thrown out into a gourmet dinner for 100 people. In the course of the 1-hour special these chefs visited grocery stores, specialty markets, farms and even “dumpster dived” through bags of trash on the street.

For a summary of the program, you can check out this post on the blog “Eat Drink Better”. But really, you ought to watch it for yourself (additional date and air times appear at the end of this post).

My first thought, after getting over my initial shock and disbelief, is that there has got to be a connection to Torah in all this. Because, you know, that’s just how my head works.

For long-time readers, you may recall that I touched on this idea way back in a D’var Torah (sermon) I wrote for the Torah portion named “Eikev“:

If we continue to shove resources into the gaping maw of our society without regard for whether we need it or not then we not only use what may be difficult to replace but we also pollute – spiritually and physically – whatever is left over. If we observe the commandments – the ones that deal with respect and love and fair use – when we consume stuff and interact with others then blessings will flow. And if we don’t, they won’t. It is we ourselves who are handing out the reward or punishment mentioned in the Shema.

But Torah doesn’t just stop with a “don’t waste your food because starving children in India would love this” message. Our ancient texts actively – in the strongest possible terms – speak out against destroying or wasting food. Mark Kaplan pulls these facts together in a post on the blog “Let’s Get Fresh“:

“When you besiege a town for many days, waging-war against it, to seize it: you are not to bring-ruin on its trees, by swinging-away (with) an axe against them, for from them you eat, them you are not to cut-down – for are the trees of the field human beings, (able) to come against you in a siege?”   (Deuteronomy 20:19)

This command that the Israelites refrain from destroying the fruit trees of their enemies during war-time becomes the foundation for a comprehensive, and quite radical, set of teachings around the prevention of waste.  For example, Maimonides (1135-1204) teaches that “Not only own who cuts down food trees, but also one who smashes household goods, tears clothes, demolishes buildings, stops up a spring, or destroys food on purpose violates the command: ‘You must not destroy.’

While we can intellectually understand that this is a bad idea, Judaism isn’t just about doing things because they feel good or feel bad. Sometimes we’re given rules to follow that make no sense at all (“Chukim” such as keeping kosher, not wearing wool and linen together, and the whole weirdness with the red heifer.) So we can’t just observe the commandments if and only if they make sense. Likewise, we can’t assume the punishment or reward is going to be logical. The reward for shooing a mother bird away from the nest before taking her eggs is “Long life in the Land” – this is the greatest reward expressed in Torah and is the same as for “honoring your father and mother”. Why are the two equivalent? Nobody knows for sure.

So what’s the punishment for destroying food? Dr. Moshe Gartenberg and Rabbi Shmuel Gluck point in this post that the penalty is an early death. Whether that makes intuitive sense to us or not, it’s clear that from the Torah’s perspective, destroying food is a bad idea!

After watching the show, I found it hard to understand how, in a country as focused on profit as America is, producers and sellers would be so willing to just see such a large portion of their inventory go to waste.

However, I also noted a certain culpability on my part as a consumer and as part of the consumer ecosystem:

• A bagel store owner I know will throw out day-old bagels rather than sell them because she doesn’t want half-price products to “compete” with full-price fresh products.
• That same bagel store owner cannot donate them to a food center because they can only accept sealed and mostly pre-packaged food due to issues food banks experience with people having allergic reactions and then suing the food bank.
• As shoppers, we’ve been trained to expect perfect food and will only purchase “poor quality” food (which, as the show points out, is anything but) if it is reduced price. So once again the store has to choose to either compete with itself for a lower profit, or trash the items that won’t sell.
• As a society we aren’t putting the infrastructure in place to allow producers to deliver their “second rate” goods to the right location in the right timeframe.

So we find ourselves standing amidst a sea of food while a significant portion of our population goes hungry every day. How many? Once again, Mark Kaplan spells it out on “Let’s Get Fresh“:

For 1 in 8 Americans, hunger is reality.  According to Feeding America (the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief organization), in 2007, 36.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 23.8 million adults and 12.4 million children.  (And these numbers are before the economic downturn!)

At the same time that so many Americans are going hungry, we are wasting a shocking amount of perfectly fine food.  The USDA estimates 96 billion pounds of food are wasted each year in the United States.  Feeding America estimates that if we could recover merely 5% of the food wasted each year, we could help feed 14 million people.

Torah acknowledges that this apparent contradiction can happen, in a series of almost sequential statements in the portion Sh’lach:

• There shall be no needy among you — since the Lord your God will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion (Deut 15:4)
• If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs. (Deut 15:7-8)
• For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.  (Deut 15:11)

There shall be no needy, but if you find them, help them, because there will always be those in need.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to start getting the bulk of my sustenance from trash bags in the style of the Freegans showcased in this program, but I am certainly willing to take a closer look at how I’m treating the food I consume. Because every day when I say the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after a meal), I am struck by one of its final statements:

“I have been young and I have grown old, and I have never seen the righteous forsaken and their offspring begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25).

It’s inconceivable to me that the author believed that statement to be literally true. It was, I believe, a statement designed to be so outrageous that it would stop us up short and make us think, reconsider, and change until it was, in fact, true.

The Big Waste, on The Food Network
“The Big Waste” will also air on January 9 at 1:00am ET/PT and January 14 at 4:00pm ET/PT