The Edible Torah

How do you connect to a place? To a moment? To a historical period?

Is it even possible to create a connection to a moment you weren’t yourself part of?

Talmud asks us to invest in the idea that every Jewish soul was present at Mt. Sinai. Various Rabbis took it a step further and asked that we try imagine (remember?) ourselves standing at the foot of the mountain. Rabbi Elimelech of Lyzhansk took that idea even further when he said “Not only can I remember the moment at Sinai, I remember who was standing next to me”.

Such a sense of connection is, at the very least, difficult. Perhaps even impossible for most of us.

Even so, there are situations where exactly that emotional connection naturally takes place. Hiking through the desert at the edge of the Mitzpe Ramon crater is one such time. Walking across the uneven ground, a pack animal at my side, sand and dust swirling around me: who did I feel like? One of the Moses? Abraham? Lawrence of Arabia?

It was with surprise that I found myself connecting with Isaac as we walked through the sparse landscape. I guess I expected Abraham, or maybe Jacob (although my family is nowhere near THAT big). Heck, even Sinbad (the sailor, not the comic) would have made more sense in my mind.

You see, Isaac is, honestly, one of my least favorite biblical characters. He’s not dynamic. He hardly does anything except retrace his father’s footsteps.

But there I was:  walking across the hard terrain, two rambunctious boys running from the long-suffering llama at our side to the 3 dogs who I believe were following us simply because the boys were the most exciting animals they had seen in a while. Meanwhile my wife was calmly taking it all in, reveling in the miracle of simply being in this place.

I wondered what this said about me – was I more like Isaac than I cared to admit? Less than dynamic? Simply running along old paths?

I realized that what I was doing – maybe what Isaac was doing too – was living my life. Going from here to there, digging wells when water was needed, enjoying hospitality where it can be found.

And in that moment, like Rabbi Elimelech, I could not only imagine standing in a sacred place, I knew who was standing next to me as well – a tall man with a gentle voice who was quietly telling me about the time that his boys ran off after the dogs and…

During our month-long stay in Israel, we spent a lot of time in Jerusalem and it’s nearby areas. But we did venture to a few places further out – Haifa, Ein Gedi (the Masada/Dead Sea area), etc. One of the places I wanted to try to have the family experience was the area known as Mitzpeh Ramon. Many people choose to camp or hike in this area, the site of the world’s largest crater, but that wasn’t going to work for us for a two key reasons:

1) A family with both big and small children plus a directionally challenged parent (me) plus an extended stay in the wilderness equals a recipe for disaster. Or a great idea for a sit-com.
2) We were in Israel in August, when the average temperature was about 3 degrees shy of the surface of the sun.

But I found a spot near the crater that offered a kid-friendly atmosphere, including an attraction my family would not be able to resist: Alpacas!

“The Alpaca Farm” is one of those “best kept secrets” of Israel’s Negev region. They are a fully functioning farm with llamas, alpacas, camels, sheep, goats and horses; the owners and employees are committed to a very specific way of life that is both inspirational and engaging; they are warm, and friendly and helpful and willing to share what they know, what they believe and even (in the case of my kids) what they are eating. Along with a petting area (which is basically the whole darn place) they also offer educational programs, wilderness hikes and horseback tours.

And they have the most beautifully appointed rooms we found during our entire stay in Israel.

Traveling on a budget, we don’t ask for much when we’re picking a location to overnight. As long as a place is basically clean and has enough beds, we’re good to go. The Alpaca Farm blew those expectations out of the water. They had some of the most reasonable room rates, and those rooms were drop-dead gorgeous! We were able to get a single accomodation that slept six people (!) with two bathrooms, a huge airy kitchen, two bathrooms, and a view overlooking the entire area. And two bathrooms – did I mention those?

We arrived expecting to “enjoy” a night of rough living with the animals, and to grab a quick shower at our next destination. Instead the farm was an literally an oasis in the desert where we took time to unwind and recharge.

What I also didn’t expect, besides the fact that I had booked rooms at a bed and breakfast with a petting zoo attached as opposed to the reverse,  was that it was here – in all of our travels – where I would make a connection to our ancestors.

More on that in the next post.

“These tefillin – do you want Ashkenazi or Sephardi style?”

We’re in a great little store at the north end of Ben Yehudah street in Jerusalem. My wife and I have purchased tallitot for my boys (in anticipation of Bar Mitzvahs which are still years away); two “kiddush pishers” (the owner’s words, not mine) and a matching hand-washer. Now we were looking at tefillin.

“Ashkenaz or S’fard?”

There were questions where I already knew the answers – thin or thick. Lefty or Righty. There were questions I didn’t anticipate, but which were easily answered (scrolls written by a scribe with regular kavannah (holy intention) or great kavannah – at $300 extra). And there are questions I knew were coming, and had put off deciding.

“Sir? Do you know if you are Ashkenaz or Sephardi?”

Up until now, I’d been wrapping tefilling with my “practice set” – a couple of well-worn boxes bought on eBay for a price that virtually guaranteed they were found in an attic or scooped up at a garage sale. Likely not kosher, but also safe in the sense that I felt comfortable learning with them and knowing that if I made a mistake or somehow damaged them, nothing would be lost. But now I was more confident as well as committed to the mitzvah of putting them on, and I wanted a “real” set. It seemed foolish NOT to buy them while we were in Israel. So here we were. (Having taken out a second mortgage to pay for them because we needed sets for myself and my two sons and let me tell you, friend, these little boxes ain’t cheap!)

“Sir?”

There are a few visible differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi tefillin (there are a few differences you can’t see, too. But I’m not going into that here.). The first is that the letter “shin” has three branches on an Ashkenaz tefillin, but four on Sephardic. The other difference is in how you actually wrap the straps. Ashkenaz wrap the arm strap inward, toward the body. Sephard wrap away from the body. And the knot on the hands is completely different as well.

“Geveret? Ma’am? He is not answering.”

Neither is wrong. But you are supposed to follow the tradition of your family. On the one hand (pun intended), I’ve heard you should wrap the way your father taught you, or at least the way he did it. On the other, the exact phrase often used is “Al titosh Torat Imecha” – Don’t abandon the Torah of our Mothers. My Dad’s Sephardi but didn’t teach on the subject; my Mom’s Ashkenazi but of “the Torah of our Mothers” doesn’t extend (at least in traditional thinking) to tefillin – not that this would be an issue for me personally. Regardless, neither of my parents  (nor any of my grandparents) had any habit of putting on tefillin that I ever saw or heard about to emulate.

“Just give him a minute.”

Even so, it’s still not exactly a difficult question. Although we’re one of the few Sephardic families in my neck of the woods, we’ve stuck to Sephardic traditions (as we discover them) in almost all cases. We (joyfully) eat kitniyot – corn and rice and beans – during Passover. We wait 6 hours between meat and dairy meals. I sit, rather than stand, when putting on my tefillin. But those observances are all small, and don’t seem as public. This choice struck me as much more of a commitment, as definitive. You could conceivably eat kitniyot one year but not the next. It’s much harder to swap out tefillin. The choice would not only affect me, but my kids too – back to the whole “do what your Dad did”. In our mostly-Ashkenazi community, they would be wearing their heritage on their sleeve.

…It was that final idea, which echoed a teaching from my friend Phil – “yichus (tradition/legacy/heritage) starts with me” – which helped me decide.

“S’fard, please”

“You’re certain?”

If I wasn’t before, I am now.

As we’ve discussed our recent trip to Israel with friends, one point continues to come up: how (and why) did we keep it a secret until the moment we left. So I thought I’d describe both our method and madness here, in case you enjoy tormenting your family as much as we do.

It all started when the kids were very young. We decided that it didn’t make sense to wait until the baby/toddler/whatever was awake, only to stuff them into a carseat/booster/seatbelt so they could sit for hours and think about their bladder.

So we would get up early (like 4am) in the morning, carry them from bed to (the already running, warm) car where they would inevitably fall back to sleep, and then get on the road. We would get 4 or 5 hours of solid drive time before they woke up. Then we’d stop, get them dressed, grab some breakfast, and get back on the road. For most trips, we’d be “there” by lunch – enough time for the kids to run off some of that pent up energy before dinner and bedtime.

We just forgot to stop doing that as the kids got older. It was waaaaay too much fun to hear their exclamations when we woke them up (especially the oldest, whose invectives now include “You people need HELP!”)

To all of this we added the “special magical backpacks” – new backpacks filled with stuff we get at the dollar store. Nothing valuable, nothing that we’d worry about losing along the way, but all new and interesting (at least for the duration of the trip). So that once people are awake, they have something to keep them busy. In recent years, these backpacks also contain various electronics – DVD players, laptops, i-thingies, etc.

And then there are clues. We hand out clues every so often during the drive to our destination, giving hints about where we are going and what we’re going to see. On the ride to Boston the clues included a cardboard “man” cut out from a Minute-Maid can (Minute Men), a pebble and matchbox car (Plymouth rock), and a paperback novel from the “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” series (featuring the cat Salem on the front). The clues are meant to be obscure, to keep the kids guessing. Only the final clue is the big reveal. But it generates hours of conversation along the way about where we might go, where we could go, where we would like to go.

“What about cloths? How did you handle packing?” is the most often asked question. Obviously when the kids were little nobody noticed. As this kids have gotten older our tactic has been both simple and elegant: a combination of sleep deprivation and outright lying.

First, we manufacture some reason why laundry isn’t getting done quickly. We’re both busy, we run out of (that is to say “hide”)  laundry detergent, etc. Then we do the laundry late at night, and stuff it way into suitcases.

There were some differences for the trip to Israel (no long drive, no early wake-up) but the key parts remained the same. We surprised them with the news at lunchtime; we handed out clues (which included sunscreen, sand, and an orange – which of course was a red herring since it could easily have meant “Disney” – along with honey, an airplane with holes drilled in it (“holy land”) and a crocodile (because Hamat Gader – an alligator farm and water park – was too cool not to put on our list of places to visit).

Most importantly, in the process, we guaranteed that getting generated almost as many memories as being there.

What does a month days in Israel look like? Obviously, the answer would be different for everyone. What appears below is a brief outline of our experience. Looking back, there is very little that I would have changed.

To understand our choices of stops and pace, you may need a little background: We are a family of 6 – 2 parents and 4 kids ages 19, 15, 10 and 7. That spectrum of ages means we need to be considerate of how much time we spend in museums as well as playgrounds.

We tend to travel heavy – bringing things along with us for both the total trip and the day – so that we don’t get caught short and don’t get caught up spending money where it’s not needed. We pack sandwiches (and a lot of snacks!) for the day and eat as we go. By dint of luck and with the generous guidance of a a member of our synagogue, we found an apartment in the middle of Jerusalem with a kitchen and room for 6 beds.

That having been said, what appears below are the highlights of each day. There are more things we accomplished, but much of it was intangible – meeting people, just making our way from place to place, and stopping to take things in.

Another point to consider is that one of our kids was really under the weather when we arrived in Israel (we took her to urgent care about 2 hours before we left for the airport) so our first few days were slower than expected as she recovered.

We also did NOT rent a car – partially because we had heard Jerusalem has ample public transportation (it does, for the most part) but also due to the fact that it was impossible (no, really – IMPOSSIBLE) to find a vehicle that seated 6 during August. Everyone else is taking their vacation so all the larger cars are booked up. Never the less, we were able to get everywhere we wanted to go, and probably ended up saving money even when you factor in the extra cab, bus and train fares.

Some of the items below will merit their own post, so keep checking back!