Ilana-Davita interviewed Mrs. S. this past week, one of my favorite bloggers. Certainly my favorite Heblish blogger (read her blog to find out more about funny Heblish).
A Mother in Israel wrote about a disturbing topic: Orthodox Girls and Eating Disorders. Unfortunate but very important to discuss. A friend (who struggles with weight and food issues) said any culture that emphasizes food ends up with food issues. I would suggest that the inability to express one’s feelings because there is no safe place to do so adds to the problem.
Bronwyn writes Nuts! – “people who consume the most nuts are the least likely to be overweight” – and more on nuts. I asked my middle son if he would eat nuts, and he replied: “I like do-nuts.” Wise guy.
This year I said I would not take a lot of pictures. I would not, I would not, I would not. I came home and emptied a mere 126 images unto my external hard drive. This post features schools from New Jersey that marched in the Salute to Israel Parade down 5th Avenue in New York City in May 2010.
Next year my daughter will be old enough to march with her school. Her school, RPRY in Edison, always features dancers as a highlight.
It’s a lot of fun when you know the person holding the banner, and he enthusiastically smiles at you. This is my eldest son’s school, Torah Academy of Bergen County.
We recognized several of the students of Kushner Hebrew Academy and Kushner Yeshiva High School of Livingston, New Jersey.
Yavneh Academy had a sunny theme.
I liked the bright kites. Related to the sunny theme.
Here is Solomon Schecter Day School of Raritan Valley.
JEC of Elizabeth, New Jersey had a lively, colorful banner.
I captured the banner for the Frisch School of Paramus, New Jersey just as we were leaving the parade. We didn’t stay for the whole time – as it is, we didn’t get back home until 5 pm.
No idea what organization held this banner that reads “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”
Welcome to the #54th edition of Kosher Cooking Carnival, the blog carnival of kashrut in Jewish law, reviews of kosher restaurants and cookbooks, Shabbat and holiday menus, and kosher recipes.
Upcoming is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, and it is customary on this holiday to eat dairy. However, there are those that insist on eating meat with every holiday meal, and so they have a bit of dairy first and then meat. There are others who insist on never, ever, ever having any animal products, and so they eat vegan food as usual. Finally, there are those like myself who are lactose-intolerant or allergic to dairy, so we avoid it, too. Thus the name of this KCC edition.
On May 19 and 20 we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot (one day in Israel). Why do Jews eat dairy on Shavuot? For standard answers see seven reasons behind this popular custom.
However, customs vary. For example, a friend writes that her Hungarian grandfather ate the blintzes her grandmother made then they waited a bit and had a meat meal. That’s basically how one brother-in-law handles the holiday. My vegan friends are eating neither dairy nor meat. For myself, I will limit the amount of dairy I eat, as my body just doesn’t do well with dairy (I am lactose-intolerant and beyond).
On Facebook, I asked: “Looking for funny, historical, hysterical or creative reasons why Jews eat dairy on Shavuot.” Some of the responses:
You’re milking this for all it’s worth. We’d butter not fool around. (She also came up with the title of this post).
A naturalist answer: It’s approximately the time when goats wean their kids and the mothers have additional milk that’s not being used otherwise.
Because you may go to a shiur where real ice cream is served. There ought to be one Jewish holiday in honor of cheesecake.
From a vegetarian: You meat-eaters get ALL the holidays. It’s OUR TURN, people. ๐
What kind of world would it be if we didnโt have license to eat cheesecake guilt-free at least once a year?!
I’ll conclude with a joke:
Upon Mt. Sinai, Moses is receiving the Torah.
God proclaims through the burning bush “THOU SHALT NOT SEETHE THE KID IN ITS MOTHER’S MILK.”
Moses is a bit confused. “What does that mean, Lord? We should not cook meat in milk?”
God repeats “THOU SHALT NOT SEETHE THE KID IN ITS MOTHER’S MILK.”
Moses responds “But what do you mean, Lord? We should never serve meat and dairy in the same meal?”
Again, God repeats “THOU SHALT NOT SEETHE THE KID IN ITS MOTHER’S MILK.”
Moses continues “Do you mean that we should have two completely separate sets of ovens and cookware? One for meat and one for milk?”
Finally God agrees, “OK, Moses, have it your way.”
One more joke:
Elijah the Prophet resurfaces on Planet Earth in New York City right before Chanukah. He gets very excited when he sees Chanukah decorations, Chanukah parties and Chanukah cards and hears Chanukah music. He declares: if this is what Jews do for Chanukah, I can only imagine what they do for Shavuot!
My neighbor has this beautiful nodding flower in his front yard called a hellebore. I find it delicate and gentle.
Today is Lag BaOmer, the 33rd day of the Omer. My kids get to go on a field trip tomorrow in honor of this day when Rabbi Akiva’s students stopped dying (2000 years ago?), and some people may get haircuts. The Omer is counted every day from Passover to Shavuot; Shavuot falls on May 19 and May 20 this year. For a fun post on Lag BaOmer, visit Mrs. S.
Here is a scene from last year’s march around the block for Israel. Will I make it to the little school parade today? Busy day ahead … we shall see. My daughter is already dressed in blue and white in honor of the birthday of the State of Israel.
One picture in Rosenstein’s new exhibit, however, is very serious. She painted it in honor of her husband’s mother, whose 12 brothers and sisters and parents died in the concentration camps. “Joe’s mother and father were on the last ship out,” said Rosenstein. The picture in the show, which she calls “Defiance,” shows striped pajamas with a gold star in the background surrounded by green, representing the forest, and Jewish people in all directions. The sense of the painting, she said, is that there is nowhere to run.
A story about the mother of an East Brunswick friend, from the East Brunswick Sentinel (article is a year old, so I am copying it in full):
EAST BRUNSWICK โ Henia Konopko was a young girl, about 10 or 11 years old, when her brother, Harry, rescued her and his wife, Luba, from a Jewish ghetto in Poland during World War II. He took them to live deep in the primeval forest near the town of Lida, now part of Belarus. There, they hid from the Nazis for more than two years, with the help of the legendary Bielski partisan group.
East Brunswick resident Molly Kaplan said she always knew her mother, Henia, was a Holocaust survivor. But it wasn’t until Kaplan was a teenager that she learned the heroic details of Henia’s epic struggle for survival.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and the remarkable story of the Bielski partisan group has now leapt from the dustbin of history into the din of popular discourse with the recent release of the movie “Defiance.” The film made its national debut in theaters earlier this month. It chronicles the efforts of three Jewish brothers who created a safe haven in the forest where they eventually saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis.
“Brothers Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski took it upon themselves that they were going to save Jewish men, women and children,” Kaplan said. “During the Holocaust, there were other partisan groups, resistance fighters โ there were Polish, there were Russians. But the thing that was unique about the Bielski group was that those other resistance fighters refused to take women and children.
“It was because of my uncle saving my mother’s life, bringing her out to the Bielski partisan group, and because of Tuvia Bielski and his brothers that I’m sitting here today.”
On May 8, 1942, the Nazis marched an estimated 6,000 Jews from the Lida ghetto to the outskirts of town to be shot and dumped in a mass grave. Harry broke from the crowd and took a bullet in his head as he sprinted for cover. Miraculously, the bullet lodged half an inch from his brain, and Harry was able to make his way back into the ghetto where a Jewish surgeon successfully operated on him, removing the round. Harry then went into the forest and joined the Bielski partisans before sneaking back into the ghetto to rescue his sister and wife.
Henia described how she and the Bielski partisans lived in the woods by digging out underground caves. The Nazis sent out frequent search parties with dogs, and the partisans were always on the alert and frequently on the move. Kaplan said that Harry, approaching 20 at the time, went out with the partisans on sabotage missions targeting Nazi supply lines.
“My Uncle Harry and Tuvia Bielski and his brothers โ I taught my kids that those are what true heroes are,” said Kaplan.
After the war, Henia met her husband, Jacob Karp, in Israel. Karp also had survived the Holocaust in Poland, and the two were married before emigrating to the United States in 1957. They raised Molly and her older brother, Fred, in The Bronx and Brooklyn. Henia died in 1993, Jacob in 1999, and from time to time, Kaplan would run into people who knew her mother.
Kaplan said she once met a woman who was is the forest with the partisans, and she remembered Henia not by name, but by her smile.
“I showed her a picture of my mom as a girl, and she told me, “Now I remember her, I remember that smile.’ Kaplan said she is most happy when her friends say her three children have their grandmother’s smile, and Kaplan finds strength in the fact that Henia was able laugh and smile throughout her life.
“Despite all the hardships she’d been through, she was always very happy, with a joy for life,” said Kaplan. “One of the things she always said to us was that the way they succeeded against the Nazis was not only by fighting, but also by living.”
Kaplan also once met Tuvia Bielski after he spoke at Brooklyn College, her alma mater. After a lecture Tuvia gave, she ran up to him and introduced herself and told him he saved her mother’s life, adding, “I’m here because of you.”
“He was very humble, to him it was no big deal, he wasn’t looking for prestige,” Kaplan said. “He said “Thank you’ and told me he was happy we met. But he didn’t perceive himself as having done something so great. My uncle Harry was the same way, and that, to me, is what the essence of a true hero is.”
Kaplan said she attended Tuvia Bielski’s Shloshim ceremony 30 days after his death โ going out to Flatbush in Brooklyn; she was surprised to see only a scant few in attendance. She thinks the movie “Defiance” will change the way the Bielski partisans are remembered and said her mother always wanted people to know of their story before she passed away.
On the bottom of Henia’s gravestone in Elmont, Long Island, Kaplan said there is an inscription that reads: “Never say that you are going your last way.” The words are from “The Partisan’s Song,” which they sang in the forest to keep their spirits up.
“The words in the song are in Yiddish, and they say to never give up hope in life, don’t ever say that the situation you are in means death,” Kaplan said. “The song says that its own lyrics are written in blood.
“Yes, you fight back when needed, but you fight back to live, you fight back for life.”
Blossoms on Trees in Highland Park, New Jersey
Those of us recovering? re-emerging? from having celebrated Pesach (no noodles, no bread, no pretzels, no oatmeal, no breakfast cereal except for ones that should be outlawed, no rice if Ashkenazi, no beans if Ashkenazi, no corn chips if Ashkenazi, no peanut butter if Ashkenazi, no popcorn if Ashkenazi and lots of cooking and food and meals) may be experiencing difficulty in reconnecting with the planet. I think a good night sleep tonight for me will help do the trick. More importantly, my kids finally return to school tomorrow, though my eldest sighs it was too short a break.
Any Pesach recuperators having a hard time looking at a potato?
I’m reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I finished Harriet Reisenโs Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. It left me with great admiration for Louisa May Alcott – she worked hard to support her family (never married – she supported parents and sisters), volunteered as a nurse in the Civil War, and in an era when women had few choices of livelihood, became rich and famous. She unfortunately became ill in her middle years and died at age 55 probably of complications from lupus.
Feel free to talk about whatever you like, as long as it’s not rude. (the people who comment on this blog make the world seem like remarkably polite folks – what a group of mensches, that is, good, polite folks).
Avdus L’Herus (Slavery to Freedom) Salad Revisited
Passover is a challenge even for vegetable salads – sometimes one cannot get a certain condiment with a Pesach hashgacha (approval) that adds flavor, so one gets creative. Last year I blogged about the Slavery to Freedom Salad. This year I became enamored of a macrobiotic dish of pickled radishes with umeboshi paste. Since I cannot get the umeboshi paste for Passover, I came up with this combination of the two salads:
Ingredients:
3 fresh beets – boiled and beet juice preserved
1 bag of red radishes, sliced
1 bunch chopped mint (or substitute parsley or cilantro)
3 navel oranges, cut into pieces
1 half chopped red onion
Cut the radishes into circles and cook them until slightly soft in the beet juice. Mix with oranges, chopped parsley and red onion. Serve at room temperature.
• • •
Beet Salad
Don’t know what to do with the cooked beets? Here is what I put together:
Peel the beets after boiling. Discard skins. Chop into circular pieces (and then cut in half again, if desired). Drizzle with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Garnish with scallion and parsley. Sprinkle with fresh lemon juice.
