Easy "Shabbat" sweet potato kugel

This is adapted from an Israeli recipe book, pashtidot olamiot.  It's parve, it doesn't take long to put together and it cooks for a long time.

2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes/yams/battata
2 large or 3 medium onions
4 eggs
1 cup flour
chopped herbs if you have/want
salt
pepper
sweet paprika
olive oil
food processor

Peel the sweet potatoes and use the slicing blade of the food processor to slice them thin.  Put them in a big bowl.  Slice the onions in the food processor the same way and fry them in a bunch of olive oil until they are golden.  Add them to the bowl.  Mix in the flour, salt, pepper and paprika and herbs (parsley, cilantro, whatever you want, it's fine with none).  Beat and add the eggs and mix it all together.

Oil a large baking pan.  Flatten the mixture into the pan - you choose if you want to make it deeper or more shallow by the size of the pan.  More shallow will have crispier parts.  This bakes for two hours at 180 C (365 F) or you can bake it overnight in a low oven.  It comes out very sweet and delicious.

Gail's last supper

Alen is coming home tomorrow so I am taking advantage of the opportunity to be creative and sloppy in the kitchen, like I like it, and to eat things she wouldn't.  Tonight's creations:

Gail's celery soup
This is so sweet, mild and delicious I am surprised!  Gabi thinks it needs chunks - this recipe is just for a medium broth.  (Not light, not thick.)

I know it's too hot for soup - but soup nuts were calling my name and I needed something to eat them with!

Half a celery (the inside half) cut up
One kohlrabi, in chunks
One diced onion
Four garlic cloves
One carrot in chunks

Cover well with water, add salt and boil for 45 minutes to an hour.
Puree with soup blender.
I strained it because Israeli celery is so stringy
Then add salt and pepper to taste and a dash of milk if you want.
Reheat and serve with the finest soup nuts!

Gail's salmon cakes 

Two potatoes, cubed, boiled and mashed
1/2-1 lb (300-400g) leftover salmon, mashed
One onion, chopped and fried
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 eggs (you could do one egg, or one egg and one egg white - these were a little eggy)
1 tablespoon flour or one crushed rice cake
2 tablespoons grated fresh parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Mix this all together and make into cakes on a cookie sheet - I used greaseproof paper.  Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180 C (375 F?) until they hold together and are slightly brown.  Serve with ketchup.

These were delicious.  Sasha even ate one, but he gave it a score of 6 out of 10.  We couldn't taste the cheese much - maybe add more if you want to taste it.

Alen would eat the salmon cakes, but not the celery soup! 

Good To Be In Woods Hole

My kids just left the house with Alen at 4 am to fly to Woods Hole for a month.  This trip was planned since last summer and though I am going to miss them a great deal until I join them in two weeks, I could not be happier that they are going.

Growing up I had two anchors:  Judaism and Woods Hole.  I had the enormous privilege to spend every summer in Woods Hole, and it really was almost like another, non-competing, religion.

The values of Woods Hole began with reverence for Nature.  Louis Agassiz said, "Study Nature, not Books," and that was the motto of the Children's School of Science where we learned each summer.  During the day time the town is criss crossed by groups of kids with buckets, nets, and sometimes cameras, learning from the sea, earth and sky.  Seashore Life, Marine Biology, Oceanographic Electronics, Invertebrate Zoology, Advanced Marine Biology were some of the courses I took.  I'm grateful I had a great biology education before I met my sexist high school biology teacher Mr. DeMarco (maybe I'll write about him one day).  If you know Alen and her work you can understand how deeply I "get" what she does from this amazing aspect of our Woods Hole education.

Woods Hole, of course, is home to adults who study science as well, but my experience was from a child's perspective.  Adults worked in labs, attended lectures, spoke on the beach about their research.  Kids went to science school.

Though there was no synagogue in Woods Hole, there was a "rabbi", Phyllis Goldstein.  She was my childhood hero and even as an adult I held her in awe.  The religion she taught was democracy and human rights, reverence for all cultures and for history, and of course the joy and value of music.  She taught it through folksinging every Tuesday night, each summer for forty years.  She was a living role model who had lived through tragic loss and risen.  She was incredibly charismatic - at times stern (to keep kids quiet) and almost always smiling and laughing.  She seemed like a walking encyclopedia of history and music.  She taught us about the evils of slavery, the music that accompanied the fight for freedom, the labor movement, the history of whaling and New England, songs from Africa and elsewhere around the world, languages and more.  We used to sing "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in about 20 languages.  The message of her songs was that all people have value, all people have songs and stories, all people can care for and about one another.  It's a message that never grows old.

(I wrote more about Phyllis here when she passed away in 2011.)

So now a terrible war is on, and my kids are getting on a plane.  I smiled and hugged them and reminded them that although they are leaving, they are going to be "mini-me".  With tears in my eyes I remember how we traveled to Woods Hole in 2002.  We had made aliyah during the intifada, and for 20 months had not returned home.  We went back to the US at the end of a year we had spent in Jerusalem when 200 people were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and the death toll from the intifada on all sides climbed over 2000.  I remember seeing Phyllis and talking to her, and I remember the look in her eyes when I told her I was living in Israel.  It was a look of incredible compassion, and a moment in which I understood that she felt the pain of what I was living through and she believed in me to continue to stand up for the values she had taught me, even when their realization seems hidden.

Jeremy Korr continues to sing Phyllis's songs in Woods Hole with a new generation of children.  And my kids (who met Phyllis when they were young) are going to sing and to feel the earth, ocean and sky.  And just maybe, they too will find their an anchor.

Who am I in this war?

I wrote this to some colleagues and family and I was asked to share it here.

I was asked to keep writing, both by colleagues and by people outside, so I am trying.  The longer this goes on, the scarier things get, the less sure I am of what to say. 

More than 80 students have just completed the first summer session at the Conservative Yeshiva.  About 50 are leaving now, while another 80 are due to arrive to join us for a bigger second session.  I am working to quickly regain the skills I used in 2001-2003 to support (and recruit) students in Israel during very difficult times.  I am incredibly grateful for my partner and for the wonderful team of people I work with.

Yesterday at our closing program, I gave a dvar Torah along these lines:  These have been very difficult weeks.  During these weeks, I and our whole program have focused on Torah, Avodah (prayer) and Gemilut Hasadim (deeds of kindness).  These are the foundations of our tradition and can always be counted on. 

Our students have been volunteering around Jerusalem, many working with and tutoring children in a mixture of programs at Kol HaNeshama, YMCA, the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and Merkaz Klass.  They have been working at a community garden and a wonderful group have been going with me each week to the Idan Hazahav nursing home (where RRC grad Alex Lazarus first introduced me 13 years ago).  Yesterday, the atmosphere of heaviness was palpable on both floors we visited.  We talked and sang, gave and gained strength.  Shortly after we left, a siren went off. 

Last week we sent 25 students to Tel Aviv for a program with Bina to learn about asylum seekers in Israel.  This week, more than 45 people attended a program with Ronit Sela, the East Jerusalem director for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.  More than 20 of our students have been learning a new Torah of Human Rights curriculum with Dr. Shaiya Rothberg.  Our center is currently collecting supplies for soldiers and for people in the south.

On the Avodah front, we have been holding a vibrant daily minyan.  As part of mincha, we include special memorial days of study and this week we gained strength hearing about a wonderful “rebbetzin of the old school”, a couple, parents of a colleague, who owed their longevity to either junk food or procrastination (or both), and the burning of the Gogol Street synagogue in Riga, Latvia, on 9 Tammuz 1941, a memorial donated by a man whose family came from Latvia to the US in the late 1800s who wanted to memorialize this community.

I got up on Wednesday after the sirens here and could not remember how to start my day.  My son reminded me to start my day with Tehilim (Psalms).

I ended my remarks by speaking about 1 Chronicles 10-15.  I am more and more holding the idea that the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.  We don’t know what we are doing here.  I came here because I wanted to be part of the experiment when the Jewish people came back to their ancestral land.  Now that I am here, I am just one of all the people who belong to this land. 

“David blessed the Lord in front of all the assemblage.  David said, “Blessed are You, Lord, G-d of Israel our father, from eternity to eternity.  Yours, Lord, are greatness, might, splendor, triumph, and majesty – yes, all that is in heaven and earth, to You, Lord, belong kingship and preeminence above all.  Riches and honor are in Your hand, You have dominion over all, with You are strength and might, and it is in Your power to make anyone great and strong.  Now, God, we praise You and extol Your glorious name.  Who am I and who are my people, that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering, but all is from You, and it is Your gift that we have given to you.  For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers, our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope.”

This last line, which ends on a stark note, is the one I have been carrying with me the past few years.  I heard last week (and may have written here) that hope is a beggar.  Hope can help you walk through things.  But faith can help you jump over them.  So I am digging deep for faith today. 

My facebook feed is full of the words of politicians, and many of us are searching for the right political interpretation of these devastating events, but I don’t have a job in politics.  My job is (still) to be a mom and partner, to recruit students to come to Israel and support them while they are here, including raising funds for their scholarships, and to teach Torah and be a religious leader.  I am praying for the strength to do that job in these times.

Geography of present and past

I still don’t completely understand the geography of the murder of 3 boys who were hitchhiking and killed, but I spent a good deal of time with google maps today.  As far as I can tell, from what I read in the Times of Israel, the boys were hoping to head down route 367, out of Gush Etzion and down to Aviezer, reaching route 375 and heading through Beit Shemesh to the center of the country.

I drove down route 367 once.  It’s a long, winding road.  It was daytime.  I was coming from the funeral of Avraham David Moses in 2008 after he and 7 other boys were shot at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva.  I did not feel safe on this long winding road, passing by few towns, mostly all Arab towns, and finally a checkpoint, and then Neve Michael and Aviezer.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the familiar route 375 and headed home, and I promised myself if I travelled to the Gush again I would go up route 60 and the main road to Alon Shvut, through the more travelled area at the top of the hills.

Near Aviezer, at the base of route 367, is Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Hey.  The village was established on 16 August 1949 by demobilised members of the Daled Company of the Palmach's Harel Brigade, and was initially named Peled (an acronym for Plugot Daled, lit. Daled Company). It was later renamed after the 35 Haganah soldiers killed in a convoy to resupply the Gush Etzion kibbutzim during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine (Lamed-Heh is 35 in Hebrew numerals).

We drive near here often to go to the pool at Beit Guvrin.  We go down route 375 to Tzomet HaEla (corner of routes 375 and 38) and down route 38 to route 35.  But if you head east on route 35 from Beit Guvrin, you’ll be in the West Bank in about 2 kilometers, and you’ll pass Tarkumiya.  That was the home of the men who killed Christine Logan when she was hiking with a friend in the woods near our house in 2010.  Near Beit Guvrin, the road (Route 35) heads into the hills west of Hebron. 

Further north, route 375 heads up to Tzur Hadassah where I live, past the Hanot mosaic (Roman, now destroyed by vandals).  The path from the mosaic (thought to be a Roman roadside shop), heads down to Mayan Mata, and the ruins of an Arab town, I believe called Hanot.  That town was probably abandoned/evacuated/destroyed in October 1948 when most of the Arab towns in this area were attacked/cleared/vacated.  On the path going down is where Christine was murdered.  Before you head up the hills of route 375 coming from Emek HaEla, you can also see Roman pillars, collapsed, on the right side of the road. 

Somewhere between routes 375 and route 35 is where the boys bodies were found yesterday.  From what I saw in pictures, it seemed it was a hilly area, but maybe towards the lower end of the hills.  One article said it was terraces.  If you look on the map, you’ll see between routes 375 and 35 a pretty big and hilly area, and route 367 cuts diagonally through it heading northwest.  The Green Line cuts pretty sharply West here, meaning that the wide area inside the Green Line near 375 (we live at the northeast edge of it), narrows to a much smaller western area within the green line as you go south.  I don’t know what happened here in 1948-49, or to what extent the Green Line is following the contour of the hills.  I do know there aren’t really any Jewish settlements on route 35 between Beit Guvrin and Kiryat Arba (next to Hevron).   But south of route 35, I had not realized, is Tapuah, a settlement known for radical views and Kahanist politics.

Karmei Tzur is also in this area, but pretty far East near Route 60 and closer to Hebron/Kiryat Arba.  It’s important historically because it’s on the site of Beit Tzur, which figures heavily in 1 Maccabees as a southern entry point to the area of Judea.

Looking at the map now, it’s striking to me how this southern West Bank area is isolated from other areas – for both Arab and Jewish populations.  This southwest corner looks both empty and cut off.  For the Arab population, it is at quite a distance from Jerusalem and Beit Lehem, and farther still from Ramallah and Jenin in the northern West Bank.  There would geographically be connections from here to the low lands, the Ekron plain and the places ruled by Philistines in the past along the lowlands and the coast, all the way to Gaza.  Trade routes of Nabateans cut across this far north I think.  Idumeans were pushed out of the south-eastern areas and made their capital Maresha, near Beit Guvrin, in the second Temple period.  Earlier, in the time of the prophet Micah, Assyrians came down the coast, attacked these same areas, and pushed eastwards toward Hebron, across but maybe just across what is now the Green Line.  At the same time, the hill culture will have been different from the coastal culture.  (See the Geopolitics of Israel, Stratfor.)

One last geographic point – Rav Steinsaltz recommended we read Psalm 142, which is linked by tradition to David’s flight from Saul into the caves of Adulam.  These also fall in this region.  The Adulam caves park is found just east of route 38, near Nehusha, within the Green Line, north of route 35 and south of route 375.

May the memories of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach be blessed and their souls elevated, and may we all take time to learn more about the geography and history of the lands in which they lived and died.

עליה לצור הדסה

This is something I read at our shul for Yom HaAtzma'ut - סיפור עליה

עליה לצור הדסה

בלילה הראשון שלי בארץ ישראל, בשנת 1977, שתיתי הרבה ויסקי עם החבר שלי לאותו קיץ שהכרתי אותו באותו ערב.

טיפסנו בגדר הבריכה של חוות הנוער בסן סימון בירושלים, גדר די גבוה.  שחינו, יצאנו, נתפסנו על ידי המדריכים.  זאת היתה תקופה יותר סובלנית להרפתקאות ולא נזרקנו מיד מתוכנית הקיץ.

כמה שבועות לאחר מכן, ביקרנו לשבוע במושב ליד בית שמש, שהשנה גיליתי היה מושב נוחם.  וכמה שבועות אחרי כן טיילנו בהר שמשם ראינו את המושב מלמעלה – אולי זה קרוב לנו כאן אך איניני יודעת איפה זה היה.  אני וחברה ראינו את המושב "שלנו" מרחוק ויצאנו דרך היער לקפוץ לשם להגיד שלום.  אחד המדריכים היה צריך ללכת אחרינו ולהחזיר אותנו באוטובוס.

אותו המדריך גר כיום ברחוב הפלמ"ח, בבנין שגרים בו חברים שלנו מקורס הכנה ללידה שעשינו לפני הלידה של גבי.  ראיתי אותו לפני כמה שנים והיה נדמה לי שהוא זוכר אותי - לא לשבח.

בשנת 1990-1991 גרתי בירושלים ברחוב וושינגטון.  כשחזרתי לארץ עם אלן במסגרת עליה, התקבלתי לעבודה כמעט ליד המקום שגרתי בו אז, וגרנו ברחוב טשרניחובסקי, לא רחוק ממקום ההרפתקאה הראשונה שלי בארץ.

כשהגענו לצור הדסה ולקהילה, בא אלינו להציג את עצמו דוד קריגר.  הדוד שלו, Seymour, היה מורה של אלן אחרי הגיור שלה ב1995 ולימד אותה להגיד שמע ישראל וואהבת בעל פה. 

אחרי שהגענו לצור הדסה, גילינו שאבא של רחל שבת ואבא שלי למדו ביחד באוניברסיטה, שסיימו ב1950 ו1951.

בשנת 1999 כתבתי שיר שדמיתי את עצמי לרקפת צומחת ליד אבן בהרי יהודה.  כל הרקפות שאי פעם נתנו לי בארה"ב מתו בקלות.  כאן נדמה לי שהן צומחות בלי שום מאמץ של אדם.

לא קשה לי להאמין במושג של "unseen hands",ידיים שמובילות אותנו למרות שאנו לא רואים אותם.

What do to with green beans - healthy food from Moosewood (adapted)

Steam or boil a pot of green beans
Fry an onion chopped small
Hard boil two eggs
Get 1/4 cup roasted almonds (or not roasted)

Mix this all in a food processor with a tablespoon or more of mayonnaise plus salt and pepper to taste.  You can also add a little lemon.  Chill and use as a sandwich spread.  It tastes a bit like chopped liver, but not really.

Books, fear and all that

It’s the end of 2^nd grade and my son, like most 2^nd graders in Israel at the end of the year, came home with a book report assignment.

Having no prior warning and with several other pressing matters involving a distant health appointment for my other child, a trip to the pharmacy for what I will lovingly call “school drugs,” and a short effort to appear at the job that pays our bills, I came home late.

“Mommy’s home, time to turn off the TV.”  Having lost half my audience here, I will continue.  We are bad parents.  We work too late and come home too tired.  Our kid watches too much TV.

“He has homework and I couldn’t get him to do it.”

Now this is the kid who the night before at 9 pm, after a special birthday dinner party, sat next to me on my bed while I studied to teach, got out his own math homework and did it.  But instead, on the following day, I can’t even find him.

I check the inside of the house and the entire yard.  I check the closets.  He’s not here.

He is found outside, climbing on my car.

Back inside, he develops an intense interest in his Lego.

I finally corner him.  “Is the reason you are running away because of what the homework is?”  I get a nod.  He tells me it is something about a story; he is going to write about Bon 12.

Bon 12 is a comic book with very small writing.  I estimate he has read maybe 20% of what is written in the boxes.  I can’t read the book – the writing is too weirdly shaped, I don’t understand the plot or the characters.  It has too many words. Comic books don’t work so well for me for reading, but I do pretty well with Ricky Robot and Lunch Lady.  I've worked to get my Hebrew reading skills up to reading to him (that was Kitah Alef for me), but when we move into Hebrew comic books, I have a tough time.

We get him to the dinner table and attempt to talk him out of Bon 12.  He says he told his teacher he is doing this book and she won’t let him change it.  He develops an intense interest in pasta and salad and becomes completely non-responsive verbally.

I decide we need a change of scene and tell him we are going out for a walk, which he is very excited about.  “See a friend!”   We take the homework, a soccer ball, my phone and a bag of bamba and start walking.  

I start reading to him from the 3 page assignment.  I start reading the first page out loud, which is addressed to parents.  “Read that to yourself” he tells me.  I read to him that he has to write the book name and author and he tells me them.  I tell him he has to write a summary including beginning, middle and end.  He tells me what happens in the book - about 4 sentences in a row, including some characters’ names, and one he has forgotten but then remembers.  I understand none of what he says but at least he is putting words together into sentences.  I start to feel a glimmer of hope.  He is speaking Hebrew, I am reading Hebrew to him but switching to English to talk to him.  I wonder distantly to what extent this is part of the problem, but having achieved 5 minutes of actual verbal communication about the homework assignment, I feel a very minor sense of victory, coupled with ongoing dread about the coming days.

We get to the park.  He takes his ball and goes to a group of boys.  The park is fairly empty, and the clientele is 90% boys on their own.  It’s about 7 pm.  Not a parent in sight.

He finds a group of four of his classmates, three of whom live right next to the park.  (We missed the memo about buying a home right next to the park.)  They have a shopping cart and are collecting wood for Lag B’Omer.   They bring the cart and unload the wood in one kid’s yard.  A dad is there, talking either to dogs or younger children, paying little attention to the boys.  When they tip the cart over and the wood spills out, the dad rights the cart for them.  Another dad, we’ll call him dad #2, rolls up in his car, coming home from work.

After about 5 minutes, Mom #2, wife of Dad #2, comes out of her house.  I ask her if the boys always come here on their own; she admits how convenient it is to live here. 

“I’m trying to talk with him about the book report,” I say, showing her the page in my hand.  She glances at it, interested but not alarmed like I am.  “Yeah,” she says, “I saw they have that but my kid forgot his book at school.”  I detect no major anxiety.  I recall, as I do each time we meet, that Mom #2 works half-time and comes home by 2 pm.

I say I don’t feel I can leave my kid here to come home on his own so I am hanging around.  “Does he have a sense of time?” she asks.  “Could you tell him to come home in half an hour?” 

I look at her like she has three heads.  If my boss, who pays my salary, asks me to come to his office in the next building in half an hour, and I am sitting at my computer, with a clock staring me in the face every second, I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance I’ll show up there on time. 

“There’s a big street between here and our house.” I say.  She knows, and I know, that the kids aren’t supposed to cross streets by themselves till age 9.  Age 8 is the most challenging age.  Ready to go but….

As if on cue, a car starts backing out of a driveway where the boys are, and one kid runs behind it into the street as it is backing, and as I draw a sharp intake of breath and start moving, my son comes behind him and does the same thing.  “Oh no, it’s not going to be like this,” I say loudly as I start running.  I’m next to my kid in about 10 seconds.  Mom #2 is still where we were standing, mid-sentence.

A difficult encounter ensues in which eventually I get my kid’s attention and convey to him that we are now leaving, and that he may not run behind a car that is backing up and must stop.  All in English, pretty loudly.  Mom #2 arrives and decides to maybe say something to her child.  I am half way down the block on the way home with my kid, with him arguing with me that the man who was backing up saw him and the other boy.

Hours later I wonder, what would it be like to be an Israeli parent, who didn’t jump, who didn’t worry, who knew her kid would understand and complete the assignment?  How is it that the native born in this crazy country, full of minefields at every turn, can be so relaxed and confident?  Would language, a sense of belonging, a part time job, a husband who came home late and earned a good salary, a quiet son, any of the above, ever give me that elusive sense of “yihyeh beseder?”