Tzimmes

Down the street from my new apartment is Cobblestone Foods. The small store, no larger than a small studio, is filled with fine cheeses, baked breads, ice cream, Brooklyn-roasted Fair Trade Organic coffee, and prepared foods. Walking inside makes you feel whisked away to an English suburb where everyone knows their local grocer and shops from him before making their afternoon tea.

On their counter the other day, I picked up a menu of available prepared items for Pesah. Ducks, free-range chickens and poached salmon are all available, not to mention matzo ball soup for $24 per quart and potato kugel. To busy to do all the cooking for your seder? No problem. Cobblestone Foods will help you out.

Next to the menus for Pesah are ones for Easter and other holidays. The menus are distinct. Different foods for different celebrations. Different celebrations for different people.

There is something cosmopolitan about Cobblestone Foods - the fact that this one fine grocer in Brooklyn serves as a meeting point for American cultures and religion. Yet, not a melting pot. The store recognize and celebrates each person's unique differences, and does not ask that people change. It is multi-cultural, not assimilationist.

It is, in a sense, the best of what this borough has to offer. A place to show off my distinctness, while also appreciating the others around me.

Two nights ago I had dinner with a group of teenagers eager to show off their distinctness and show their peers how to be so proud as well. White strings hanging from their shirts, they were approached by a man from another walk of Jewish life and were chided: You think that most Americans see you, a Jew, and smile?

They shot back: Maybe. We don't care. What they wanted to say was that they don't wear arba kanfot to make the goyim happy. They do so because they are proud of who they are. They do so as a statement of how they relate to God and their people. They do so as a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt every time they look down or get dressed.

Or they do so because it makes them feel cool. And distinct...

Around the corner from Cobblestone Foods is a synagogue which, upon entering, makes you feel like you could be back in Europe a century ago. Not because of the style: women are equals in this house of prayer. No, the architecture. And the sounds.

Finishing my recitation of the silent Amidah, a man comes up to me. He notices I'm new there. In the most sincere offer of community-building, he asks if I recently moved to the neighborhood, welcomes me to the shul and makes small talk.

I don't chide him for talking during the Repetition. I am gracious for the friendship - the true display of Ahahat Yisrael - that this man shows me. He does not know me. But I am a fellow tribesman. So he cares. He saw me at Sinai. Not the website. The mountain.

And then, a few minutes later, during the Torah service, a child, no older than fourteen, ascends the bimah to read the second aliyah. It is not the day of his Bar Mitzvah. No. Just your average Saturday, and he wants to fulfill the amazing mitzvah of reading from our people's constitution.

He does so beautifully, better than most people my own age. He finishes, he goes back to his pew. The service goes on. Next reader. Just another duty in the eternal struggle of the Jewish people. Just another day.

As Passover quickly approaches, I remember the stewed-fruit concoction that my great-grandmother used to make. Every year, this was her contribution to the Seder (in addition to, in her later years, our ceremonial parting of the Sea by walking around the dinner table). Tzimmes never appealed much to me. I don't like figs, I don't like prunes. I don't like much of stewed-anything. Fruit is not meant to be eaten with dinner. The brisket is always the main attraction.

But the tzimmes, in the ridiculous mix-of-everything that it is always sat there on the table, looking at me. And then, from amidst the dark stew, shined through a single apricot - the sole morsel in the pot left with any color. So special, and tasty. So distinct.

These moments - the grocer, the Torah reader, the tsit tsit, the greeter - are like those orange pieces of fruit: in an already sweet mix of moments and thoughts and learning and action, they highlight the things around them, shine through, and make everything all the more worthwhile. They remind me why I do what I do, why I spend so much time thinking about what I think. They give me hope for a future-improved beyond today. One in which more people know, more people care, and more people act.

To apricots! To life! To Brooklyn!

This Passover, Cobblestone Foods is selling tzimmes. It costs $3 a person.

Comments

[Seth]

You wrote:

"White strings hanging from their shirts, they were approached by a man from another walk of Jewish life and were chided: You think that most Americans see you, a Jew, and smile?

They shot back: Maybe. We don't care. What they wanted to say was that they don't wear arba kanfot to make the goyim happy. They do so because they are proud of who they are. They do so as a statement of how they relate to God and their people. They do so as a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt every time they look down or get dressed.

Or they do so because it makes them feel cool. And distinct... "

(1) I don't quite understand your use of the plural form here, because it was one person wearing tzitzit.

(2) I was sharing with him something another rabbi shared with me -- not suggesting that he was wrong.

(3) He (not they) did not shoot back. He shrugged, unsure of how to respond. Your re-framing of silence is, I think, rather ingenuine.

(4) No one was suggesting that anyone wears or ought to wear tzitzit to make anyone else happy. The point is that in our effort to live a life of Torah, we should not fool ourselves into thinking it can be done without some cost.

Hag kasher ve-semeah,

Seth

P.S. How depressing that you resort to qualifiers like "from another walk of Jewish life" so close to zeman herutenu. So much for your efforts to blur lines and move us towards an ideal of transpostdenominationalism.

[Barkin]

ouch.

[Jesse]

Transpostdenominationalism.

Now there's an interesting word.

Much like Jewish life as a whole, it tries to mix together a motley crue of different practices, beliefs, theologies, philosophies and such. Unlike Jewish life, attempting to live such a life is usually quite unsuccessful. I'm not sure how many people call themselves "transpostdenominationalist"
and I'm even less sure how many people even know what it means. It sounds somewhat pejorative in context.

Sometimes I envy those who identify as "Just Jewish" They don't have to deal with all of the baggage that accompanies those of us who have some sort of connection to a "Movement," "sect," "stream," or other ultimately divisive word.

But Judaism, while monotheistic, is not monolithic, and as such, certain aspects of it do or do not appeal to everyone. This is not a value judgement, it's just a statement of fact. Where we go from there, is how we deal with the facts.

Let's acknowledge that along the many paths of Judaism that lead toward the same basic truths, there are people who choose different routes. To pretented that there aren't different "walks of Jewish life" is to delude ourselves. Some of us walk together. Some of us cross paths. Some of us walk alone for a while. Whatever the path is, it's quite clear that there are different walks of Jewish life. I'm not sure how that is a depressing resort.

Our Rabbis were able to realize this many centuries ago, most notably in medieval Spain. Perhaps as we approach z'man cherutenu, we should take a look at our history of oppression and see what we truly can glean from it. Otherwise, we are only oppressing ourselves.

[Seth]

Jesse,

If you had a point, then I missed it.

But instead of "Just Jewish," I prefer "Very Jewish."

Seth

[Emma]

Very Jewish and Very Harsh.
And
Does tht mean there are people who are "not very Jewish" or who are somehow "less Jewish" than others?
My guess is we're not going to agree on this one but I'm curious as to your (all of you for that matter) answer(s).