Bread and soup for Toledot

וַֽיִּגְדְּלוּ֙ הַנְּעָרִ֔ים וַיְהִ֣י עֵשָׂ֗ו אִ֛ישׁ יֹדֵ֥עַ צַ֖יִד אִ֣ישׁ שָׂדֶ֑ה וְיַֽעֲקֹב֙ אִ֣ישׁ תָּ֔ם ישֵׁ֖ב אֹֽהָלִֽים: וַיֶּֽאֱהַ֥ב יִצְחָ֛ק אֶת־עֵשָׂ֖ו כִּי־צַ֣יִד בְּפִ֑יו וְרִבְקָ֖ה אֹהֶ֥בֶת אֶת־יַֽעֲקֹֽב: וַיָּ֥זֶד יַֽעֲקֹ֖ב נָזִ֑יד וַיָּבֹ֥א עֵשָׂ֛ו מִן־הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה וְה֥וּא עָיֵֽף: וַיֹּ֨אמֶר עֵשָׂ֜ו אֶֽל־יַֽעֲקֹ֗ב הַלְעִיטֵ֤נִי נָא֙ מִן־הָֽאָדֹ֤ם הָֽאָדֹם֙ הַזֶּ֔ה כִּ֥י עָיֵ֖ף אָנֹ֑כִי עַל־כֵּ֥ן קָֽרָא־שְׁמ֖וֹ אֱדֽוֹם: וַיֹּ֖אמֶר יַֽעֲקֹ֑ב מִכְרָ֥ה כַיּ֛וֹם אֶת־בְּכֹרָֽתְךָ֖ לִֽי: וַיֹּ֣אמֶר עֵשָׂ֔ו הִנֵּ֛ה אָֽנֹכִ֥י הוֹלֵ֖ךְ לָמ֑וּת וְלָֽמָּה־זֶּ֥ה לִ֖י בְּכֹרָֽה: וַיֹּ֣אמֶר יַֽעֲקֹ֗ב הִשָּׁ֤בְעָה לִּי֙ כַּיּ֔וֹם וַיִּשָּׁבַ֖ע ל֑וֹ וַיִּמְכֹּ֥ר אֶת־בְּכֹֽרָת֖וֹ לְיַֽעֲקֹֽב: וְיַֽעֲקֹ֞ב נָתַ֣ן לְעֵשָׂ֗ו לֶ֚חֶם וּנְזִ֣יד עֲדָשִׁ֔ים וַיֹּ֣אכַל וַיֵּ֔שְׁתְּ וַיָּ֖קָם וַיֵּלַ֑ךְ וַיִּ֥בֶז עֵשָׂ֖ו אֶת־הַבְּכֹרָֽה:־

The youths grew up. Esau was a man skilled at hunting, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, a tent dweller. Isaac loved Esau because he provided game to eat, but Rebecca loved Jacob. Once, Jacob was making a stew when Esau returned from the field exhausted. Esau said, “Feed me from that red, red [אָדֹם] stuff, for I am tired.” (Because of this, he was called Edom [אֱדוֹם].) Jacob said, “Sell your birthright to me this very day.” Esau said, “I am close to death. What good is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Promise me today,” and he promised him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and then left. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:27-34)

Explanation for Jacob’s inheriting from his father despite not being the first born? Yep. Morality tale about decisions made in haste? Of course. Parable on the superiority of the settled, agrarian lifestyle over nomadic hunting-gathering? Check. (For thousands of years hunter-gatherers actually ate better than their farming neighbors, but we’re not going to worry about that right now.)

Bread (and patience with our own desires) for Ki Tetze

כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹֽיְבֶ֑יךָ וּנְתָנ֞וֹ יְ·הוָֹ֧ה אֱ·לֹהֶ֛יךָ בְּיָדֶ֖ךָ וְשָׁבִ֥יתָ שִׁבְיֽוֹ: וְרָאִ֨יתָ֙ בַּשִּׁבְיָ֔ה אֵ֖שֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּ֑אַר וְחָֽשַׁקְתָּ֣ בָ֔הּ וְלָֽקַחְתָּ֥ לְךָ֖ לְאִשָּֽׁה: וַֽהֲבֵאתָ֖הּ אֶל־תּ֣וֹךְ בֵּיתֶ֑ךָ וְגִלְּחָה֙ אֶת־רֹאשָׁ֔הּ וְעָֽשְׂתָ֖ה אֶת־צִפָּרְנֶֽיהָ: וְהֵסִ֩ירָה֩ אֶת־שִׂמְלַ֨ת שִׁבְיָ֜הּ מֵֽעָלֶ֗יהָ וְיָֽשְׁבָה֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ וּבָֽכְתָ֛ה אֶת־אָבִ֥יהָ וְאֶת־אִמָּ֖הּ יֶ֣רַח יָמִ֑ים וְאַ֨חַר כֵּ֜ן תָּב֤וֹא אֵלֶ֨יהָ֙ וּֽבְעַלְתָּ֔הּ וְהָֽיְתָ֥ה לְךָ֖ לְאִשָּֽׁה: וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א חָפַ֣צְתָּ בָּ֗הּ וְשִׁלַּחְתָּהּ֙ לְנַפְשָׁ֔הּ וּמָכֹ֥ר לֹֽא־תִמְכְּרֶ֖נָּה בַּכָּ֑סֶף לֹֽא־תִתְעַמֵּ֣ר בָּ֔הּ תַּ֖חַת אֲשֶׁ֥ר עִנִּיתָֽהּ:־

When you go to war against your enemy and Adonay your God delivers him into your hands, and you take captives, if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you desire and take her as a wife: you shall bring her into your home, and she shall shave her head, cut [lit. "make" or "do"] her nails, cease to wear the clothes she wore when she was captured, and dwell in your home and mourn for her father and mother for a full month [lit. "a moon of days"]. After this, you shall go to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you are no longer pleased by her, you shall let her go her own way. You may not sell her for money, nor may you treat her as a slave, because you have already humbled her. (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)

I hope this passage disturbs you. It does me. It’s one of those legislative sections in the Torah that seems intended to regulate a behavior that people were not yet ready to give up. (The most obvious parallel would be the various passages on slavery.) I don’t know anyone who thinks taking a P.O.W. as a bride against her will is a good idea, and I hope I never meet anyone who does; fortunately, I don’t think Torah endorses that, either.

Erratum: Pesticides and Organic Produce

After my most recent post went up, my friend Joel sent me a message pointing out that I had incorrectly implied that organic-certified fruits are guaranteed to be free of pesticides. That’s not true, of course. According to the USDA’s standards, a whole slew of non-synthetic pesticides may be used on organic produce, where “pesticide” means any substance that kills, inhibits the growth of, or repels pest animals. (Fun fact: Methyl anthranilate, better known as artificial concord grape flavor, is listed as a pesticide because it is sprayed on fruit trees to repel birds.) Substances that have been extracted from plants without major chemical changes may be used on organic produce, as may naturally occurring pesticides such as ethanol (a.k.a. ethyl alcohol, a.k.a. vodka). Oddly enough, some of the permitted “organic” sprays out there are, from a chemical standpoint, inorganic; elemental copper is used by many organic farmers to prevent fungus growth.

It’s the most bountiful time of the year

Well, dear readers, today was an exhausting and exciting day. We’ve been keeping this quiet and up to now have only told a few close friends and relatives, but I am pleased to announce that my wife and I have welcomed a wonderful new addition into our family.

What? No, it’s not a baby. A lot of you know us personally—don’t you think you’d have noticed if Terri were nine months pregnant? We bought a CSA share. Sheesh.

CSA, short for Community-Supported Agriculture, is a business model developed to support small-scale, local farming operations. (That picture of a farm you’ve been carrying around in your head since grade school? It barely exists in the United States. Most American farms are enormous, highly mechanized operations that grow only two or three crops. The major intent behind CSA is to preserve, and encourage the growth of, the other kind of farm.) Rather than grow produce and then try to sell it, CSA-reliant farmers sell shares of their produce well before the harvest begins. They then distribute the fruits (and vegetables) of their labors to investors as the various crops reach maturity. Here’s how it looks from a consumer’s perspective: You throw money at a local farm in March, and then from June through, say, November, that farm returns the favor by giving you all sorts of great veggies on a weekly or biweekly basis.

Aside from the obvious pay-now-collect-later aspect, there are a few notable differences between being a CSA member and buying all of your produce at a supermarket:

“Guilty pleasures”

Every now and then a confluence of events and ideas takes place such that the only possible human reaction—the only reaction anyone could imagine ever since we emerged from the trees and stood upright—is to blog about it.

Event the first:

About a month and a half ago, a friend who is recovering from an eating disorder posted the following on Facebook:

Eating has no moral valence. You are not “good” or “bad” for eating, or not eating one thing or another, and while there may be better and worse choices, there is no inherently morally good or morally bad food. (And this from someone who keeps Kosher.)

Eight “likes” and 84 comments later, the posting had turned into a series of parallel debates about the nature of morality as applied to food. Some of this was the result of ambiguous language, leading my friend to clarify that “what prompted this is the fact that I’m constantly surrounded by women who imagine themselves to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on whether or not they have a piece of the cake brought to school for someone’s birthday, how many days a week they eat nothing but salad, and the fact that eating disorders are the most deadly of all mental illnesses, disproportionately affect women, and are continually fed into by the media.”

Don’t fear the fryer

This past Sunday morning we received a surprise text message from an out-of-town friend. She was in New York for the Japan Day Run for Hope, and wanted to know if we could get together for brunch before she got on her bus to head home. After a few rounds of phone tag, we decided to meet at Peacefood Cafe. I’d never been to Peacefood before. The one other time I was invited there, I had to decline due to a high fever and no desire to eat, but my dear spouse went without me (at my insistence, not hers) and reported good things. It seemed like a nice idea.

You know how some restaurants are able to plan for regular fluctuations in business, but not irregular ones? I’m thinking of one of the local kosher pizzerias (pizzerie?), which is not owned or operated by Jews but which knows about the Saturday night rush. They’re even reasonably well-equipped for the post-Pesach mega-rush. What they never seem to get is that they are a major destination and take-out source the day before Tish’a Be’av, so they are usually so overrun, and therefore so slow to serve, that we just don’t bother on that day.

Peacefood had that problem, but instead of the pre-Tish’a Be’av rush, it was the slightly less predictable Mother’s-Day-that-happens-to-coincide-with-the-first-really-beautiful-summery-day rush. It took us a while to get a table, and as our friend had to leave in 45 minutes we didn’t take a lot of time to chew the menu. While I was ordering my seitan pannini (pannino?), my eyes darted to the side dishes, and without even thinking I asked for the chickpea fries as well. I had no idea what these were, but I couldn’t think of any possible meaning that I wouldn’t like. Fried chickpeas? Check. Potato fries coated in chickpea batter? Sounds good! A falafel-ish creation? You had me at Shalom. I could have asked for a detailed description, but that sort of behavior just takes the fun out of being an omnivore.

The Kugel Confusion

The most recent Mixing Bowl post at The Jew and the Carrot contains a link to a very silly article in TIME Magazine by food writer Josh Ozersky. “Silly” would appear too weak a term for some people, and most of the ones represented in the comments section might opt for something like “offensive” or “deeply misguided.” Really, though, it’s just silly. Let’s examine why.

Ozersky’s titular kugel conundrum, as far as I can tell, is Ashkenazi Jews’ ability to be passionate about their (our) awful cuisine. Chief among his complaints is “dry and flavorless brisket, cooked in a salty fluid of Campbell’s beef broth and Lipton onion soup mix,” and I’m at a loss to explain why. Presumably a food writer knows a thing or two about cooking, so why doesn’t it occur to Ozersky to replace the Campbell’s with some homemade stock and the onion soup mix with some actual spices (and maybe a vegetable or four)? Would that cease to be Jewish brisket? In the author’s mind, is reliance on MSG—a chemical that has only been commercially available since 1909—an inherent part medieval Jewish foodways? His other objections, while not quite as detailed, tend to be similar: it’s not that matzo balls are bad, but that the ones he’s been served have been flavorless; he doesn’t like dense kugels and apparently can’t be bothered to try making lighter ones. (I’ve always thought density was part of the charm, but such is taste).

By the time I’d finished reading his article I wanted to call him up on the phone and suggest, as politely as I knew how, that he might just have grown up surrounded by bad cooks. It seems never to have occurred to Ozersky that the food wasn’t supposed to taste bad, and that people were attached to it because genuinely delicious versions exist. In fact, despite his assertion that “[n]obody is giving Jewish food the Torrisi treatment, raising up to a world-class level and celebrating its flavor profiles,” there’s been a recent swell of haute cuisine aspirations among traditional Jewish cooks, largely inspired by the Kosher by Design series. While my reactions to those books are generally mixed,* I have to applaud anyone who is at least trying. (It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Mr. Ozersky has never heard of Susie Fishbein. We’re talking about a guy so out of touch with American Jewish eating habits that, despite writing about food for a living, he only discovered this week that hummus can taste good.)

The curious case of matzah ashirah

Boxes of matzah have all sorts of interesting things written on them. Streit’s puts a message on its package telling consumers to “restore crispness” by placing the product in a warm oven, something I’ve never heard of anybody doing. (They also helpfully inform the consumer that the product must be removed from the box prior to the aforementioned recrisping maneuver, which is terrifying insofar as it implies that somebody once tried to heat up a cardboard box of Streit’s matzot in an oven.) Yehuda, which refers to its unleavened bread product “matzos” despite being an Israeli company, brags about the number of taste test awards it has received from the San Francisco Chronicle. (Incidentally, if you’re in a public space then you might not want to click on the Yehuda link without first turning off your speakers. What made San Francisco’s favorite matzah firm decide that their site should more closely resemble someone’s MySpace page?)

“How to Save a Trillion Dollars”

I’m tempted to look for a way to set up a direct link between Mark Bittman’s Opinionator columns and this blog, since I seem to agree with almost everything he says. His most recent column makes a good case for bipartisan coöperation to improve America’s food supply. (If you’re not familiar with Bittman’s work, along with Michael Pollan’s, here’s the lowdown: We have more than enough food; what we need is better food.)

The Spirit of Modesty

I would be remiss not to mention the recent New York Times article about eating disorders among young Orthodox Jewish women. There are many things to be said about this piece, and I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t think that a line-by-line analysis is likely to be very productive or interesting. I’d like to focus instead on one point that appears early in the article:

While no one knows whether such disorders are more prevalent among Orthodox Jews than in society at large, they may be more baffling to outsiders. Orthodox women are famously expected to dress modestly, yet matchmakers feel no qualms in asking about a prospective bride’s dress size—and her mother’s—and the preferred answer is 0 to 4, extra small.

The easy thing here would be to cry “hypocrisy!” Hiding the women and then objectifying them anyway! It would find a gleeful audience too, since everyone loves a religious hypocrite. I’m sure that reading isn’t entirely mistaken, but at the risk of repeating myself, it’s not very productive, and only an ugly kind of interesting.

Traditional Jewish attitudes toward modesty are a complicated thing to discuss, and that complication is compounded by the fact that they appear at first glance to be quite straightforward. Just look at the Wikipedia page on tzniut. As of this writing—who knows what it will say tomorrow?—it contains a collection of technical details about formalized rules of conduct among Jews that is surprisingly comprehensive for a general interest encyclopedia: modesty of dress, covering of hair, concerns about a woman’s singing voice and physical contact between the sexes, all discussed at length. Lots of rules, but nothing complicated about them if you’re good at rote memorization.

Wikipedia isn’t meant to be a reliable academic source, but it does tell us something about what is and is not on the minds of its writers and editors. The people who collectively wrote this article have devoted a great deal of time and effort toward the details of modesty, but the page lacks a more-than-cursory discussion of why these rules exist. All we get is:

In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Elazar Bar Tzadok connected the injunction at Micah 6:8 to “walk humbly (hatzne’a leches)* with your God” as referring to modesty and discretion in dress and in behavior (Tractate Sukkah 49b).

This is not really an explanation, just a quick and dirty citation of a longer passage:

א”ר אלעזר מאי דכתיב הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָה־ה֞’ דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱ•לֹהֶֽיךָ׃ עשות משפט זה הדין ואהבת חסד זו גמילות חסדים והצנע לכת עם אלהיך זו הוצאת המת והכנסת כלה לחופה והלא דברים ק”ו ומה דברים שדרכן לעשותן בפרהסיא אמרה תורה הצנע לכת דברים שדרכן לעשותן בצנעא על אחת כמה וכמה

Rabbi El’azar said: Why is it written “He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does Adonai ask of you? Only to do justice and love kindess, and walk modestly with your God”? (Micah 6:8) “Do justice” means judgment; “and love kindness” means acts of kindness; “and walk modestly with your God” means accompanying the dead and welcoming the bride to the chuppah. Are these not the makings of an a fortiori argument? The Torah said “walk modestly” regarding public affairs; all the more so for things done in private.

This, too, only goes so far. It never mentions the type of modesty that God requires of us, and never ventures to guess why. More to the point, the thing about prooftexts in Jewish legal discourse is that they rarely introduce new ideas. Far more often they are used to support an idea that somebody already accepts. So what is the fundamental reason for modesty of dress in religious society? A religious argument that often makes its way into secular and secular-influenced circles is surprisingly modern in that it wasn’t really viable until the emergence of third wave feminism: By carefully controlling the extent to which their bodies are displayed, women are able to limit the degree to which they are made into sex objects within a culture—the broader, secular one—that is hell-bent on doing so to every piece of flesh available. As with so many other ideas from the Jewish tradition, this interpretation is not universally espoused, but there is something compelling behind it. After all, less than a month ago a Jewish mother made waves by worrying aloud about the alternative in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. There are many worse things in the world than an ideology claiming that when one human being objectifies another, both are damaged.

But I can’t help drifting back to the bit about dress sizes. If—and that’s not a rhetorical if since it may not be true—if the underlying goal is to avoid objectification, then how do we get to a matchmaking system where thinness, and a genetic predisposition to remain thin through the childbearing years, is of such importance? Even setting aside the danger of a particular ideal of beauty encroaching on a society whose phenotypes often don’t match it, it is clear that there’s a disconnect between methods and stated goals. The spirit of the law may have little meaning without the letter, but the reverse is also true. What steps would be needed to bring forward the spirit of modesty?

* There shouldn’t be a glottal stop in the first word. Just thought I’d mention that.