Shabbat leftover roasted vegetable gazpacho

This is an adaptation of the Fannie Farmer cookbook recipe:

6 ripe smallish tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 Israeli cucumbers, peeled and chopped
1 spring onion - white and green parts chopped
Roasted pepper - about 8 strips
3-4 cloves roasted garlic
4 cups leftover Challah torn up without crusts
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 cups cold water
1 tsp. salt

Put everything in a big bowl and mix with a soup wand (immersion blender). Leave a few chunks. If you have time, cool it - but you might want to just eat/drink it. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Spicy Carrot Cake

From Recipes for Success Girl Scouts Cookbook

2 cups grated carrots
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter or oil

Cook this for 5 minutes in a heavy saucepan, stirring often. Let it cool.

1 and 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cinamon
3/8 tsp nutmeg
3/8 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Sift these together.

1 egg - beat until light yellow

Mix everything together until just mixed. Bake one hour at 350 in a loaf pan. She says the cake tastes better after 1 day - we wouldn't know about that.

A Poem About Synagogue Presidents and Lay Leaders

I don't know why I do it
If I don't someone else will have to
If no one does I can tell you what will happen
The snow won't get shoveled and the cleaner won't get paid
There won't be any toilet paper
The rabbi won't have a contract
There won't be teachers for the school.

The kids are screaming and my long-suffering spouse
Is giving me the look as I walk out the door again
to another meeting.
I'll go to bed late and have to get up too early
I don't really have what this needs me to give.

I am not sure if I used to pray in shul.
Now I go more and pray less.
I'm looking at the cobwebs on the ceiling,
wondering when the roof will leak again.

But then I stood on the bimah as the ark opened
And the light streamed through the window
And the Torah glowed.
In that moment I was at Sinai.

Later someone came up to me to say
Thanks for coming to the shiva
And bringing the chairs and the prayerbooks
And I said you're welcome,
and remembered why I do it.

dedicated to the memory of Paul E. Policow z"l. 

Synagogue life

I had so many responses to Elana Sztokman's article "Why are women dropping out of synagogue life" that I decided to put them in a (lately rare) blog post.

I'm not dropping out of synagogue life, and it's not because I have not felt alienated at synagogue. I perhaps have a unique perspective having been a congregational rabbi, the wife of a synagogue president, and (if such a thing is possible for an ordained rabbi) lately a regular "Jew in the pew". I've regularly davenned at Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, modern Orthodox and lately Partnership minyanim, and felt alienated in every one of those spaces at different times. I completely understand the concerns of the women written about in the article.

I'm fortunate that my parents early on encouraged synagogue attendance and shopped around to find the shuls in which they (and by extension we, their children) had the best chance of feeling comfortable. I'm fortunate that my father set the stage for my synagogue life when he was a young man in the Navy and would visit local synagogues wherever he was stationed. I'm fortunate that the people at those synagogues welcomed him enough that he kept up the habit, and that on one of those overseas synagogue visits he met my mom at West London Synagogue. And I'm fortunate that they have lived a long time and I have had the opportunity to see the long term benefits that synagogue attendance has made in their lives.

When I was a congregational rabbi, I would often hear people tell me some version of "I had a bad experience in a synagogue and I stopped going." My (usually internal) response was this: I have bad experiences in supermarkets if not once a week, then definitely once a month. It has never stopped me from going to supermarkets.

Alienation is part of synagogue life because community is imperfect, because people inadvertently (and sometimes intentionally) hurt one another, but more than anything, alienation is part of synagogue life because it is part of spiritual life. Whether we call it hester panim or the dark night of the soul, feeling disconnected is part of spiritual life. So is feeling connected. When we have the disconnected feeling, we can easily blame it on community, on individuals within the community, on some way in which there is a lack of fit between where we are spiritually and the community. I choose, when it happens, and it happens frequently, to understand it as "where I am today".

The only book I ever read on economics was Exit, Voice and Loyalty a treatise written by Albert O. Hirschman. The idea was that when as consumers we are dissatisfied with a product, we have two choices, Exit or Voice, and that our choice is governed by Loyalty. I totally understand women and others who choose to exit synagogue rather than use their voices to make change, especially Orthodox women who (IMO) have been systematically silenced in many communities. But the question about loyalty or perhaps more the nature of our commitments is raised. What am I loyal to? What am I committed to?

Do I think my children will be Jewish if I stop going to synagogue? For many orthodox women whose children are in day schools, the answer may be yes. Those women may not see their synagogue attendance as having a bearing on their children's future observance, and they may be correct, though I would wager they are more correct regarding their sons than their daughters. For my kids this is not necessarily the case. They go to secular schools. If I stop going to synagogue, they will too. They may anyway, but certainly when they were younger, and even now, my example makes a difference.

Will my spirituality be impacted if I stop going to synagogue? What is synagogue about for me anyway? I long ago found spirituality in davenning, and made synagogue attendance part of my regular spiritual practice. Over the years of moving to Israel and moving to a community that most Shabbat mornings has no egalitarian minyan, I've had to ask myself what do I go to synagogue for? And I have decided that I go to shul to talk to G-d, not to talk to Jane (or Joe). I'm part of a religion that says talking to G-d is done best in community, and that by going I am giving and getting something, as I understand it. So I keep going, and I keep trying to talk to G-d, and I also talk to Yael (and Yossi). I go when it feels good, and when it doesn't feel good. I go when I feel alienated and when I feel connected, when it's easy and when it isn't. Some days I excuse myself from kiddush talk, but most days I make the effort, even when it's hard, which it usually is. I keep in mind a saying that I think is in the Reconstructionist prayerbook - that no sincere prayer leaves us where we began. I try to be someplace different when I leave shul than when I walk in.

I hope my sisters will keep coming. I know I will not abdicate. I know my order of preference in our town: egalitarian (Reform) - I go whenever there are services; partnership (I go whenever there are services and there are no Reform services); and last orthodox, in which women play virtually no liturgical role (occasional gomel blessing being the exception). I pray no one mistakes me for supporting that system, which I don't, but I go because the cost of staying away is higher for me than the cost of being there, and because I still believe in achdut am yisrael and in the value of prayer in community. In that space, without exit, I have a voice, the voice of one person, speaking my truth that is pretty different from that of others (both my background and my ideals) "quietly and clearly, and listening to others." That's what I can do.

Orange Chicken or Tofu

This is adapted from a recipe in the Diane Mott Davidson culinary mystery, the Grilling Season.  I served this with mashed potatoes.  It's a really good way to serve parve mashed potatoes with a creamy, sweet orangy sauce.

1 orange
1 cup orange juice
vinegar (anything but balsamic)
mustard
olive oil
flour
sugar
cumin
salt & pepper

1 pack tofu or 8 pieces of chicken shnitzel (that's flattened breasts cut in pieces for you overseas folks).

Marinade:

2 tbsp. vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. mustard
grated zest of orange
juice of the orange
pinch of cumin
salt & pepper

Mix the marinade and marinate the chicken or tofu in a flat pan for 30 mins to an hour.

Sauce:

heat 2 tbsp. oil and add 2 tbsp. flour.  mix over a flame.  add 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp. vinegar, 1/2 tsp. mustard and mix well.  Add 1 cup orange juice and 1/2 cup water, salt and pepper.  Whisk until smooth, heat until thickened, turn down heat and put a lid on to keep it warm.

While you are cooking the sauce, fry the chicken or tofu in a large pan, 4 pieces at a time.  Fry chicken well on each side.  You won't need oil because of the marinade, you can put a spoonful of the marinade on top of each chicken piece.

Put the chicken or tofu in the oven for 5-10 more minutes while you get your other stuff finished. 

Apple Orange Muffins

Made these easy muffins today - adapted from a Fannie Farmer basic muffin recipe:

Preheat oven to 375/190

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar

Mix these together.

In another bowl mix:

1 cup orange juice
1 egg
1/4 cup - 50 g melted butter (or oil)
1 teaspoon grated orange peel

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix till just mixed.
Add 1/3 cup ground up cereal flakes - this is optional but good for texture.  I used fitness flakes.
Add 2 small apples or one large apple, diced about .75 cm.

Mix gently and put batter in muffin cups.
Bake 25-30 minutes.

Makes 12.

You know, we don't tell our kids

I have pretty strong defenses for keeping terror at bay.  I try to avoid news.  I try to only open my heart to what actually touches me.  I feel things and I would prefer not to.

Last week's shooting in Tel Aviv felt like too much to take in, please not more, because I'd been at a shiva for a brave woman who decided not to fight her cancer, and I saw the face of her son who supported her decision.  I saw what it cost.  And I was helping a friend whose father had a heart attack on the anniversary of his mother's death.  The father died after the attack in Tel Aviv and before we got the news about Orlando.

And we don't tell our kids.  Sure, they hear about it in school.  If we mention things, we mention them quietly.  We have one word that covers everything man-made - pigua - it means people were hurt.  It means but does not say terror.  It refers to the harm.  So when we are talking to one another about Orlando, we aren't talking to our kids, and when they ask what happened we say it was a pigua, someone shot up a club.  We don't say a gay club.  We don't want them to feel less safe for being part of this family.  We don't watch the news and we don't let them know details.  They know Shira Banki died last summer and how and "why".  They know that homophobia and hate is out there.  We want them to know and we don't want them to know.  We can barely breathe ourselves - should they feel the same way?

I walk one of our dogs and I see the border police have stopped a car and there are six men on the sidewalk, seems to be three police and three Arab men.  The discussion seems calm, the car eventually drives away.  I think one man may have been arrested or detained.  The beginning of a bad day for him at 6 am.  Meanwhile around the corner two men jump a fence and continue walking/running to work avoiding these same border police.  Another Arab man comes to the bus stop.  I live on the line of the West Bank and our town is one big porous illegal border crossing.  If I want to fear, there are ample occasions.  I comfort myself by reminding myself that the attackers can get a much bigger response from attacking a larger venue.  Tzur Hadassah is not Tel Aviv, is not Jerusalem, is not.....  And I walk with my head held high because honestly, in my heart of hearts, I know that most people around me are not killers, and that the men I see every morning are on their way to work to support their families, just like people everywhere.

I wonder a lot about the lessons I teach as a parent.  Our kids know our politics, but I try hard not to tell them what to think.  I prefer to listen as my daughter starts to develop her own critical thinking skills, and maybe suggest a direction or two, but quietly.  I am not sure how my son is making sense of the world.  I would say I do more interrupting and questioning than pushing ideas.  And in the absence of a frame, in the absence of a pat answer to tell my children, in the absence of any earthly explanation of how a human being can gun down 50 people for being in a gay club, I have nothing to say.  So I don't tell them.