Old Growth Yiddishkeit

Polyculture vs. Monoculture

2012-01-05T00:33:00.000-08:00

"Rabbi Meir used to say: He that studies Torah with a single teacher, to whom may he be likened? To one who had a single field, part of which he sowed with wheat and part with barley, and planted part with olives and part with oak trees. Now that man is full of good and blessing. But when one studies with two or three teachers he is like him who has many fields: one he sows with wheat and one he sows with barley, and plants one with olives and one with oak trees. Now this man's (attention) is divided among many pieces of land, without good or blessing."

Avos d'Rabbi Nasan Chapter 8

Growing Food Versus Buying It

2012-01-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

"R' Achai ben Yoshiya says: One who purchases grain from the market [to make his own flour], to what can he be compared? To a baby whose mother died and they pass him from door to door among wetnurses and he is not satisfied. One who buys bread from the market, to what can he be compared? It's as if [his grave] is dug and [he is] buried. One who eats from his own [which he grew] is like a baby who is raised at his mother's breasts.

"He used to say: At the time that a person eats from his own, his mind is settled/tranquil for him. Even one who eats from his father's and from his mother's and from his children's, his mind is not settled/tranquil, and you don't [even] need to mention if he eats from that of others."

From Avos de'Rabbi Nasan, brought to my attention "Food For Thought," the Hazon sourcebook.

Bread - The Staff of Life?

2012-01-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

There is a parodox in the Jewish tradition that has bothered me for quite some time. Bread is considered the perennial "staff of life" and yet bread today isn't particularly nourishing.

If we look at bread in Jewish tradition, we see that it plays a central role and is considered the nourishing food par excellence. Pirkei Avos teaches (3:17) that Torah cannot exist without flour, nor flour without Torah; also,(6:4) the way to acquire Torah is to "eat bread with salt, drink water in small measure," etc. Bread is the only food for which the Torah commands that we bless G-d in thanksgiving after eating it (Deuteronomy 8:10 "Ve'achalta ve'savata u'verachta" etc.), the other brochos having been instituted by Chazal. According to the opinion of R' Yehuda in Brachos (40a), wheat was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. His opinion is because he reasons that "a child doesn't know how to say 'father' and 'mother' until it has tasted of grains."

Also in chapter 5 of Tanya: "[Torah] is therefore called the 'bread' and 'food' of the soul. Just as physical bread nourishes the body when it is ingested and absorbed within it, and when it is transformed there into blood and flesh of one's own flesh, and only then will the body live and be sustained." We see from all these sources that bread is considered to be very bound up with knowledge and learning.

I am particularly fond of stories of Jews of Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, illustrating that many individuals were literally sustained by bread, day by day, week by week. For instance, this excerpt from The Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs (p. 119) describes a simple Jew who lives by bread alone: "Yet, although Shlomo grew up to be so ignorant, he nevertheless had an urge to be frum. . . As he only knew the brachot for bread and water, these were the only items of nourishment he would allow himself." In pesukei dezimrah every morning we read of bread as a metaphor for all food, as for example in psalm 147: "He makes grass grow on the mountains; He gives the cattle its food ("lachma," literally "its bread.")." These sources show how bread has truly been a unique source of nourishment.

In Judaism, a meal is not considered a meal without bread. As Tamar Adler phrases it in An Everlasting Meal, "'Breaking bread' means eating. 'Our daily bread' means food. It is also called the staff of life, which I like: bread there, all life leaning against it. Our lives don't lean against it anymore: we've decided that bread is bad for us." As, indeed, it is.

I'm not going to go into detail, but there is sufficient data to suggest that many of today's breads are actively bad for you in various ways. So is it a staff of life or a cause of disease?

As it turns out, there is no paradox. The bread of Jewish tradition and the bread we have today are radically different from each other (excluding non-yeasted breads).

This revelation started for me when I read Tartine Bread, which is master baker Chad Robertson's paean to bread. As he writes (p. 8), "My strongest inspiration came not from real bread but from images--images of a time and place when bread was the foundation of a meal and at the center of daily life. . . This was elemental bread that sustained generations. To find this bread, I would have to learn to make it. Thus began my search for a certain loaf with an old soul. . . The bread would be a joy to eat fresh and would keep well for a week."

As with almost all food today, industrialization of the bread industry has completely changed what bread is. Here are some of the differences:

Yeast
The single most outstanding difference is yeast. Baker's yeast, also known as bread yeast, used almost universally today for making bread, became widely popular just in the last century. Before then, if you wanted an airy loaf it required a lengthy fermentation period with sourdough cultures.

However, as Robertson points out in Tartine Bread on the topic of French breads, by which we can generalize to all breads, that the introduction of baker's yeast was the beginning of the end of real bread: "As bakers added more yeast to their dough, they found they could inflate their dough quickly and omit the time-consuming bulk fermentation. This made their bakery production more efficient, but the quality of the bread was radically degraded. Bakers were aerating the dough instead of fermenting it, sacrificing flavor and altering the very nature of French bread--the soul of the bread had gone from it. Bread that was once revered around the world now gained the reputation for staling within hours. . . Although bread was still considered the staple of the French diet, historians note that bread consumption in France sharply declined after the 1940s." (p. 125) As French bakers succumbed to "progress" so did bakers around the world.

Flour
Stored as a whole grain, wheat and other grains can remain viable for a long time. But once ground into flour, the same material goes rancid very quickly. For whole wheat the time limit is months and for refined flour maybe a year. The taste and smell of rancid flour is noticeable, but probably only perceivable to those with attuned senses. We're probably all used to the flavor and smell of rancid flour by now since most of the flour products we eat are probably rancid. However, more than the flavor degrades, the nutritional quality of the flour changes.

Additionally, flours of antiquity were probably often made of what we today call sprouted grains, as Sally Fallon states in Nourishing Traditions (p. 112): "In the past we ate most of our grains in partially germinated form. Grain standing in sheaves and stacks in open fields often began to sprout before it was brought into storage. Modern farming techniques prevent grains from germinating before they reach our tables." The nutrient profile of sprouted or germinated grain and non-germinated grain is very different.

Additives
Classical bread was composed of three ingredients: flour, water, and salt. Today you find all kinds of fillers and conditioners in bread, from refined oils to who knows what. Obviously that makes a difference.

So it seems that a fellow like the Shlomo mentioned in the beginning of this post who lived in the 18th century, or the pious individual of Pirkei Avos, were eating what is today considered a delicacy, only available at a small handful of the finest bakeries around the world. That bread was nutrient-dense, flavorful, did not go stale for a week, and even after it had gone stale was an excellent and hearty addition to soups and sauces.

I have not found any commercially available kosher (pas yisroel) real bread, by which I mean bread living up to Tartine Bread's standards.

The closest I have found is Vital Vittles bakery in Berkeley, CA which is pas yisroel and sourdough fermented and organic whole wheat, but the flavor is noticeably sour, there is no crust, and it is rather crumbly and doesn't keep very well. The other closest option is Ezekiel Bread, which is pas yisroel and is made from sprouted grains but is not sourdough fermented and also doesn't keep very well outside of refrigeration.

Kosher Kimchi

2011-12-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

I have noticed a recurring meme on the internet recently of people searching for kosher kimchi (or sometimes kosher kimchee or kosher kim chee), or asking the question, "Is kimchi kosher?" or "Where to buy kosher kimchi?"

Since numerous studies have been completed (see here and here) showing the many health benefits of kimchi, it will be important for the kosher-keeping public to be aware of the kosher issues regarding kimchi as they desire to have access to it. I want to address these issues in this post.

What is Kimchi?
Kimchi is a traditional Korean pickle made through the same process of lacto-fermentation which is used for sauerkraut, beet kvass, and other traditional cultured vegetable dishes.

The minimum legal definition of kimchi, according to the international organization Codex Alimentarius, is a salt-fermented cabbage product processed with red pepper powder, garlic, ginger, and onion (see the full legal definition here (opens as a PDF)). Many commercial variations exist.

Whether or not it is kosher depends on the particular recipe.

Some of the common ingredients you'll find in commercial kimchi are cabbage (Napa cabbage is most common), daikon radish, chili powder or hot peppers, garlic, ginger, and onions.

Variations
In some recipes, you will also find shrimp, squid, or other patently non-kosher ingredients, rendering the dish completely non-kosher. Other recipes include vinegar or "fish sauce" which are suspect without proper kosher supervision. Some companies use laboratory-produced strains of cultures to ferment their product, which is also suspect without kosher supervision. Other recipes include sugar (regarding which I wonder: why ruin such a healthy food with sugar?) or soy sauce.

If It's Vegan, is It Kosher?
These days, you will find many vegan versions of kimchi. There are two main issues with these vegan versions:

1) Whether the producers followed proper protocol for checking the vegetables for shretzim.
2) Whether kosher knives/cutting boards were used, and in particular for the "sharp" ingredients like ginger, garlic, radish, and onion.

Without supervision by someone well-versed in these kosher protocols, it is anyone's guess to what extent even a vegan kimchi is "kosher."

Are There Any Certified Kosher Kimchis?
That being said, there is at least one kosher kimchi on the market right now available from Brassica and Brine (it's called Kimchi Karma). It's available in Los Angeles and retails for $9 a jar, which is 20%-30% less than what you'll find in stores like Whole Foods for comparable organic, small-batch kimchis (which are not certified kosher) and it's delicious. The company is certified by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein's agency Cal Kosher (I know Rabbi Bookstein personally and his reputation in Los Angeles is sterling). If you live in the area and are hankering for some kosher kimchi, go check it out.

Make Your Own Kimchi
Another option is to make your own kimchi at home. For recipes and fermentation tips, I highly recommend the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz which you can either check out from your local library or purchase for long-term use (which you won't regret, if you love traditional fermented foods).

Shehechianu on New Fruits

2011-10-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

"On the second night [of Rosh Hashana] the new fruit should be eaten [immediately after Kiddush and] before the washing of hands for the meal." Kaploun, Uri (Ed.). (1994) Sefer HaMinhagim (English). Brooklyn, NY: Kehot Publication Society, p. 118.

On Rosh Hashana this year I was surprised to hear the rabbi instructing people that, as a rule, we don't say shehechianu on adamah produce (which would exclude strawberries, watermelon, and cantaloupe, to name a few). This instruction troubled me so much that I took out the Shulchan Aruch HaRav and showed the rabbi the section on shehechianu in Seder Birchos haNehenin (11:12) where it says : "[H]e should bless 'shehechianu' first and afterwards 'borei pri ha etz' or 'borei pri ha adamah' etc"*. I showed the rabbi and asked him if he knew a source other than Shulchan Aruch that said you can't say shehechianu on adamah produce. He told me that he was mistaken and then announced that he had been mistaken.

A similar situation happened again just last week. A friend of mine questioned me when I made a shehechianu on Jerusalem artichokes, which are potato-like tubers in the sunflower family, whose harvest season just began (which I was very excited about!). He was doubtful whether you can say shehechianu on adamah produce.

Now, it seems to me that the idea that "we don't say shehechianu on adamah produce" shows a vast disparity between one way of seeing the world, and the way Chazal expect us to see the world. It shows me how far we are removed from intimacy with our sources of food, and, in some ways, from intimacy with the Source of Life.

Why is it such a big deal?
Shehechianu on seasonal foods grown from the earth was instituted as an expression of the immense joy and gratitude a person feels after going six months, nine months, or maybe even eleven months without enjoying a certain food, and now it has grown back, and he's so excited that he must use shem u'malchus to thank G-d for it ("A person is obligated to bless [shehechianu] for every joy of the heart which comes at infrequent intervals to him from the good of this world." Luach Birchos Hanehenin, (11:1)). Why is there an assumption that I'm allowed to be joyous and thankful for a bland, imported dragon fruit on Rosh Hashana, but not on a sweet, flavorful Junebearer strawberry in June?

The idea of saying "Blessed are You... Who kept us alive, and sustained us, and caused us to arrive to this very time" is meant to be an outburst of excitement, of joy, of gratitude. It's the opposite of rote, of the status quo.

Chazal expected us to be so excited, they established the saying of shehechianu upon SEEING a new item of produce in its season ("One who sees a new item of produce that recurs from year to year, or even twice in a year, and he delights in seeing it, he blesses shehechianu even if he sees it in his friend's hand or on a tree; and if he doesn't delight in seeing it, then he doesn't bless until he eats it" (ibid 11:2)). The fact that we say it when tasting the fruit is only an extension of that principle, which is why the Alte Rebbe paskins that, if you are about to eat this new item, you say shehechianu before the bp"e or bp"a (Seder Birchos HaNehenin 11:12).

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine feeling so excited by the absence for nine months of tomatoes or watermelon (both adamah) that when you see the first ripe one, you burst out with gratefulness to G-d for bringing you to this moment in time?

Even more telling, is you can say shehechianu on different VARIETIES of the same species, even if they taste the same but look different. ("A type of produce that has many varieties, you bless shehechianu on each variety" ibid. 11:14) An example: If you already said shehechianu on granny smith apples but not winesaps, you may say it on the winesaps.

Foods associated with the changes of the year are so central to the Jewish understanding of time, that our seasons are named after the foods which are harvested during each season. Cases in point: Aviv, spring, literally means "ears of barley;" it is the time of the barley harvest. Kayitz, summer, according to Rashi is the name of ripe figs gathered for drying during the summer months (Breishis 8:22). Choref, fall-winter, according to Rashi, is named for the barley and legumes which are planted during that time "hacharifin lehisbashel maher" ("which are quick to ripen in a short time") (ibid.).

Now, what I'm saying here is not innovative. Lehavdil, it's like Ruth Stout's crusade for mulch and the no-till method of gardening. She didn't invent mulching, but she showed how such a simple method could have such vast effects in a garden. She took a really prosaic idea and showed how it is a foundation of sustainable gardening.

So here, everything I'm saying is printed very clearly in Shulchan Aruch, it's not a secret or even a diyuk on my part. But living with the seasons and having the awareness that G-d designated different foods for different times of the year, and rejoicing with those seasons and rejoicing in the diversity of that produce, that is the way a Yid is supposed to see the world.

That is the foundation of sustainable Torah ("Im ein kemach, ein Torah. Im ein Torah, ein kemach (Pikei Avos 3:21)," and--notice how the kemach comes first--wheat is an adamah species mentioned explicitly as requiring shehechianu when it is new in season ("If the new season's produce is easily recognizable by its taste and also by its appearance, we bless shehechianu on it, for example ha'rifos (bulgur) which they make from new grains which are easily recognizable as new by sight and also by their taste that they are better ("she'hu le'shevach") (Luach Birchos HaNehenin 11:5).

Now, all that being said, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch does mention (59:17) that "We have the custom that we don't bless shehechianu on yerakos and types of turnips [presumably including other types of root crops] since they remain for a long time [in storage] through burying them in soil and sand, and they're also available, and also there's not so much joy associated with them." That could be the source for people mistakenly assuming that we don't make shehechianu on any adamah produce even though it is clear from the sources above that there is no innate distinction between etz produce and adamah produce with regard to shehechianu. Additionally, we have an explicit instruction from the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l who wrote that, "By us, it is our custom to bless shehechianu also on yerek." (Sefer Hasichos 5749 p. 754)

*All translations in this post are my own, adapted for readability.

Honey on Rosh Hashanah

2011-09-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

*A version of this article also appears in the High Holidays issue of SoulWise Magazine.

On Rosh Hashanah we eat many symbolic foods. The most salient is honey—we eat honey cake, we dip challah in honey, and we dip apples in honey with the request, “May it be Your will to renew a good and sweet year for us.”

The custom of eating symbolic foods on Rosh Hashanah comes from the Talmud: “Abaye said '[A]t the beginning of each year, you should accustom yourself to eat gourds, fenugreek, leeks, beets, and dates...',” each of which symbolizes something good for the coming year.

But why honey? Why not cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or agave syrup? Firstly, because those sweeteners were unavailable or hadn't been invented yet when the custom came about. On a wellness level, honey has antioxidant and antibiotic properties which the others lack. As long as we're asking Hashem for health and wellness, we might as well do our part.

On a deeper level, the Talmud teaches that honey is 1/60^th of the mann which sustained our ancestors in the midbar. This comparison is no accident—it is to remind us on Rosh Hashanah that, like the mann, all of our material “sweetness” comes from G-d.

Even more than it is a symbol, honey is truly a special gift from G-d that many take for granted.

Bees make honey by fermenting flower nectar. On average, bees collect nectar from 10 million flowers to produce a little over four cups of honey. To visit those millions of flowers takes 10,000 hours of combined flight, or over 37,000 miles of travel. And bees don't just make honey. They also make propolis, royal jelly, and beeswax. Just over two pounds of beeswax represents the energy from over 15 pounds of honey.

The elegant alchemy achieved through this chain of events is baffling, mirroring the mystical concept of seder hishtolshelus by which our reality exists.

Plants catch the sun's light (beaming from about 93 million miles away) and convert that energy into nectar. The bees collect that nectar on the brightest days of the year and carry it into the dark depths of their hives where part of it is converted into beeswax. That wax is then harvested by the beekeeper and made into candles, which are then used to illuminate the darkest of our nights (there is a minhag to use a beeswax candle to light the Chanukah menorah).

Despite their historical role, the bees are dying. In the last ten years, up to 80 percent of commercial beehives in affected areas have been lost to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Factors contributing to CCD include exposure to pesticides, mites, and pollution. Almost 90% of wild honeybees have been lost since 1990 due to urban sprawl and destruction of natural honeybee habitat.

Bees do not only provide honey. They also pollinate over two-thirds of our crops which need pollination, including apples, tomatoes, almonds, and cucumbers. If we don't change the destiny of the honeybee soon, we're going to lose more than just honey.

As we dip our apples into honey and pray for a sweet year, let’s be aware that each of us CAN make a difference to ensure that there will be honeybees (and honey, and fruits and vegetables) for future generations. Here are a few simple tips:

*Plant bee-friendly plants in your yard

*Don't use chemicals and pesticides around your home

*If a colony of bees moves onto your property, call a bee rescue hotline rather than an exterminator

*Buy local, raw honey

*Buy local, organic produce

*And you can even become an organic beekeeper yourself!

City Prosecutes Family for Growing Vegetables

2011-07-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Eshes chayil mi yimtza?

A frum family in Oak Park, MI is being persecuted by their city government for planting a vegetable garden in their front yard.

They have set up a blog at oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com and a Facebook group titled Oak Park Hates Veggies.

The poem Eshes Chayil (from Mishlei) comes to mind because one of the themes of Eshes Chayil is that a woman is praised who knows how to appraise a field for agriculture and knows how to produce the finest food from it. In this case, the matriarch of the Oak Park family, Julie Bass, decided to put in a vegetable garden after her front yard was destroyed after some sewage work.

To take a step back for a moment, am I wrong in my understanding that every Shabbos, when we sing Eshes Chayil, we are not indeed praising women and encouraging them to embody these praises ("She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard")? I know it is also a metaphor, but Torah never leaves the p'shat.

There is a common thread here and in Koheles 5:8 where Shlomo Hamelech judges just about every earthly pursuit to be vanity and futility, except, he writes, "The advantage of land is supreme; even a king is indebted to the soil," by which he means that agriculture is one of the highest pursuits since every person, even a king, cannot survive without food.

Even though one of the greatest kings and thinkers of world history (as well as, lehavdil, many, many other great thinkers) thought that agriculture is one of the highest pursuits, it has largely fallen out of favor among frum Jews (and many in Western society) in favor of more rarefied pursuits like lawyering and accounting, or any other job which involves as little physical labor as possible and as much income as possible, without regard to whether or not said pursuit benefits humanity. Not that lawyering is bad, but a Jewish mother should be just as proud to say that her son became an organic farmer as to say he became a lawyer. But I digress.

The Oak Park city officials have used lies and deception to try to win their case, while Ms. Bass has made every effort to be a good and honest citizen. The very fact that a city would persecute a family for growing food in their yard rather than resource-hogging, useless grass or ornamental shrubs is madness.

It is very heartening for me to see a frum family fighting to grow food in their front yard and I wish the Bass family hatzlacha rabba in fighting the city of Oak Park. I hope that they will be an inspiration to frum yidden all over the world and to people in suburbs across the United States.

Fermentation and Pesach

2011-03-27T00:23:00.000-07:00

*This article also appears in the Pesach issue of SoulWise Magazine.

Pesach is the one holiday on which Jews are required to become obsessed with food. This is actually a unique opportunity, since as modern Americans we usually do not have to think about where our food comes from or the far-reaching effects of our food choices. For instance, when I buy a hamburger, I don’t think about how the grain which fed the cow was grown on a vast monoculture farm using synthetic fertilizers. I don’t dwell on how the runoff from these fertilizers and the waste from the cow farm are creating an oceanic dead zone the size of New Jersey off the coast of Texas (http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/). I don’t even want to think about how my hamburger bun is made from those same grains. In short, most of us don’t usually analyze our food choices.

Which brings us back to Pesach.

On Pesach we are commanded not to eat any leavened bread or even to own any leaven (Shemos 12:15). Some people don’t eat any processed food during Pesach for fear that a small amount of leaven might have inadvertently entered the food production process.

But what is leaven exactly? The leaven of Pesach is yesteryear’s yeast, or as Henry David Thoreau described it in Walden, “[T]he soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue.” (Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience, Harper and Row 1965, p. 46) More accurately, leaven is yeast and bacteria in the form of a wet, bubbly mixture of flour and water used to make traditional leavened bread, or what we today refer to as sourdough. Coincidentally, the ancient Hebrew word for leaven is “se’or,” which sounds very similar to the word “sour.”

However, it is interesting that the yeast which ferments dough into leavened bread is basically the same yeast that turns grape juice into wine. Yet leavened bread is forbidden during Pesach, while fermented grape juice (i.e. wine) is an essential element of the Pesach Seder. (Indeed, the consequence of eating leavened bread during Pesach is kares, while drinking fermented grape juice at the Seder is a mitzvah d'rabanan.)

As an avid fermentation hobbyist, having a deeper understanding of bread and wine helps me understand this difference. Leaven is constantly bubbling as the yeast within it metabolizes the simple sugars in the mixture into carbon dioxide. Bread dough holds in these bubbles, and this is what causes bread to rise. On Pesach, we approach this air-filled bread as a metaphor for our own egos, while the flat matzah represents humility. There is a well-known phrase from the opening of Koheles: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (1:2) In Hebrew, the word for vanity (hevel) also means breath or breeze, emphasizing the connection between vanity and airiness. On Passover, we try to rid ourselves completely of any self-serving ego.

On the other hand, the winemaking process is a process of refinement. Yeast produces carbon dioxide bubbles during the wine fermentation process as well, but those bubbles escape. What remains is a cultured drink, much more complex and refined than the original grape juice. For this reason, our sages teach that the four glasses of wine we drink at the Pesach Seder are in memory of the four phrases of redemption that G-d used when taking us out of Egypt. Out of these four phrases, wine is especially connected to the fourth when G-d said, “I will take you to Me as a People.” The fulfillment of this level of redemption only came about at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, an event for which we had to prepare and refine ourselves.

Paradoxically, the same yeast affects both the bread and the wine, but engenders a totally different change. And perhaps this is the message. Our sages teach that we have a powerful energy within us, which naturally pushes us in the direction it wishes to go. If we feed into it, we end up with a bloated ego. If, on the other hand, we use this energy for our own self-refinement, we develop fine character traits and we merit that the Torah should be given to each one of us personally.

This message is fitting when we look deeper into the role of leavened bread and the chagim.

If bread is bad and represents an inflated ego, why does the Torah require two loaves of leavened bread to be offered in the Bais Hamikdash on Shavuos – only 50 days after Pesach? Because Shavuos commemorates the giving of the Torah, which corresponds to the fourth phrase of redemption, “I will take you to Me as a People.” On Shavuos, the bread is synonymous with self-refinement to the point that even the ego itself has been refined and is now used for holiness.

This Pesach, may we experience our own personal redemption from any and all parts of ourselves, especially from those negative emotions which hold us back from achieving our full potential. May our personal redemption lead to the full and final collective redemption of our people with the coming of Moshiach very soon.

How Much Hashem Loves Trees

2010-09-22T02:22:00.000-07:00

This story is printed in "A Treasury of Chassidic Tales on the Festivals," compiled by Rabbi S.Y. Zevin, translated by Uri Kaploun.

Depends who Your Great-Uncle was

"For man is a tree of the field" -Devarim

An epidemic raged through Nadvorna as Sukkos was approaching, and the physicians warned the towns-folk to take all possible hygienic precautions for fear of contagion. The local judge, an unusually evil man, was told that Reb Mordechai of Nadvorna had just built himself a sukkah. He at once dispatched a messenger with a court order to demolish it forthwith, because it supposedly contravened the municipal health regulations. Reb Mordechai ignored the message.

Within minutes a squad of police arrived at his doortep to warn him of the consequences of his defiance. He replied: "I built my sukkah in order that it should stand, not in order that it should be demolished."

This time the judge sent the tzaddik a summons. When this too was ignored, the judge decided to descend on his victim himself. He ordered the tzaddik in harsh terms to dismantle the sukkah immediately, and warned him of the severe punishment which any further disobedience would earn him. These threats and warnings did not shake the tzaddik's equanimity in the slightest. He simply answered coolly in the same words that he had told the policemen -- that he had built his sukkah in order that it should stand, not in order that it should be demolished.

The judge was incensed.

But the tzaddik merely added: "I would like you to know that Reb Meir of Premishlan was my great-uncle."

At this the judge flew into a rage: "Who cares who your great-uncle was? Just demolish that thing, and that's all!"

Reb Mordechai now repeated what he had just told the judge, then asked him calmly to wait a moment; he wanted to tell him an interesting story.

The judge obliged, and Reb Mordechai began: "Once there lived a priest who had ten sons, all of them as robust and strong as cedars. He owned a beautiful big park, full of trees that delighted God and man alike. One day he decided that he would add grace to this grove by planting a little flower garden next to it. So he uprooted a few of his trees, and in their place he planted fragrant flowers. But no sooner had he finished this work than his sons fell ill, one after the other. First the oldest weakened and died, then the second -- and so on, until the very youngest fell ill. The priest was at his wit's end. He summoned the most expert doctors, and even consulted sorcerers -- but to no avail. At this point several people advised him to make the journey to visit Reb Meir of Premishlan. Who knows? Perhaps salvation might come through him, for he was reputed to be a holy man. By now there was no alternative open to him, and he was desperately eager to save the life of his last surviving son. So with a heavy heart he traveled to Premishlan.

"Arriving there he told the holy man of all the trials that had befallen him -- and now even his last son was mortally ill, and no physician could cure him. Heaven alone could help him now.

" 'You had a beautiful garden full of goodly trees,' Reb Meir told him, 'but because you wanted a flower garden as well, you chopped down the trees of God. And that is why He has now chopped down your trees, for 'man is a tree of the field.' But since you have already come here, and your time has not yet run out completely, I promise you now that your youngest son will be helped from Above, and will soon be cured.'

"The holy man then prayed that the Almighty heal the priest's son, in order that His Name be sanctified wherever people would hear of his story. This prayer was accepted, and the son grew up to be a man.

"I want you to know," Reb Meir concluded his story to the judge, "that you are the son of that priest... Tell me, now, is this the way your repay the kindness that my great-uncle showed you by saving your life?"

The judge fell at his feet, and wept.

"True, true, I know it all!" he sobbed. "Forgive me now, rabbi, for what I've done to you. You can build even ten of those things -- but only promise that you will forgive me!"

The promise was given, and the judge went his way in peace.

A Maaseh About Raw Goat Milk, From the Besht

2010-04-29T13:02:00.001-07:00

I recently read this story in Yitzhak Buxbaum's "The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov," and the rendering which I have included below is from Chabad.org (full story available here). One of the reasons this story stood out most to me is the explicit acknowledgment that raw goat milk from healthy goats has the power to cure. Obviously there is more to that going on in this story, but that's what I wanted to point out.

When I [the Baal Shem Tov] was a young man of twenty, recently after being accepted as a member of the society the hidden tzaddikim, several of us came to the city of Brody.
It was there in Brody that I saw the most amazing thing. I was standing in the market place speaking to a large group of locals when I noticed from the corner of my eye an older man walking in the distance, bent under the burden of a large sack he was carrying on his shoulder. His face was covered with sweat and there was nothing unusual about him except for the fact that over his head floated a brilliant pillar of spiritual fire!

Obviously none of the other townspeople saw it. A few of them even yelled jeeringly, "Keep going Herschel Goat" and, "Carry, Herschel, Carry!" And he called back with a smile "Thank you! G-d bless you!"

I could not believe my eyes. I called two of the elder tzaddikim who were with me, Rabbi Yechezkel and Rabbi Ephraim. They, too, saw the pillar but also couldn't explain it. For all appearances this Herschel was just a simple old Jew trying to make a living. What connected him to such a great revelation?

For several days I observed him and tried to understand the reason for this holy fire, but I still had no idea. The people told me that he was a widower, his wife having died some ten years ago. He earned his meek living by carrying things on his back and doing odd jobs, and as far as everyone knew he used all his money to feed a few goats he had because he loved goat milk. That is how he earned the name "Herschel Goat".

So I decided to fast the first three days of each week, only drinking water at night, until I understood what this man did that was so pleasing to G-d.

I had just finished the first three days and was leaving the Shul when by Divine providence, there was Herschel walking down the street. He had a big smile on his face as I approached him. I told him I was very weak from having fasted and asked if he could give me something to eat.

"Of course! Of course!" He said joyously. "Please, just follow me to my home! I'm so happy to help."

We walked for about an hour till we came to an old run-down hut near the woods. Nothing seemed unusual until he opened the door and we entered.

Suddenly four or five goats jumped from all corners of the hut at him. They lovingly licked his hands and literally pranced with joy about him.

I had never quite seen the like of it. Herschel quieted the goats told me to sit down, took out a large metal pail, milked one of them, and poured me a cup to drink.

"Nothing's more healthy than goat's milk! Here, have another," he said with satisfaction as he handed me a second cup.

When I tried to pay him he refused. "G-d forbid! Money? No! No money, no money! It's my pleasure! I'm the one that benefits! What, I should take money too?" he said with a smile on his face.

Then he looked at me seriously and said, "I want to tell you a true story. You have no idea how happy I am that you came here. Please listen." He sat down opposite me waited a few moments collecting his thoughts, and began.

"My wife, of blessed memory was a truly righteous woman, always helping people. Any time anyone lacked anything she was there, doing everything she could to help. She collected money for charity, cared for people when they were sick; everything she did was for others. Shortly after she passed away, after the seven days of mourning, she appeared to me in a dream.

"She told me that after she died, instead of going through the painful and frightening purification processes of 'the slingshot' and 'the trashing of the grave,' she was received warmly by the souls of all those people she had helped and led directly to one of the highest heavens.

"She told me that nothing is valued in heaven more than brotherly love and beseeched me to also begin a life of charity and good deeds.

"That is why I bought these goats. I give free milk to whoever needs it and it has done wonders for people, simply wonders, and I am so happy I can help.

"Since then my wife never appeared to me again. It's been ten years since then, but today, just before I woke up, she came. She told me that this morning I would meet a holy man and he would change my life, and I'm sure she was talking about you. Please stay with me for a few days and teach me Torah."

I stayed with Herschel for several days and watched the way he lovingly cared for his goats and how he dispensed their milk to dozens of people that needed it, everything done with a simple, contagious joy and with no egotism whatsoever. But on the other hand he was a complete ignoramus and could barely read.

I discussed it with the tzaddikim and we decided to take him under our wing and teach him Torah. For three years we taught him the most basic books and then one day his mind simply opened. He suddenly understood and remembered everything we taught him, even the most difficult concepts in Talmud and in Kabbalah, but he never lost his simplicity.

After five more years he became a great hidden tzaddik and mystic in his own right, moved to the city of Ostropol, and for the next ten years helped and even saved hundreds of Jews with his prayers and blessings.

Lacto-Fermented Borscht and Pesach

2010-03-16T19:22:00.001-07:00

When my grandfather, alav hashalom, was nearing the end of his long and fruitful life, I had the opportunity to make dinner for him once (usually my mother cooked dinner for all of us). He requested borscht, a dish that I was altogether unfamiliar with, but which was an essential part of the Eastern European Jewish food tradition my grandfather had grown up with. In my good intention to fulfill his request, I opened a jar of sterile canned borscht from the supermarket (Ingredients: Water, Beets, Sugar, Salt, Citric Acid) and served it with sour cream, and love.

Flash forward to 2010. Today I avidly lacto-ferment in my spare time and am very interested in traditional Jewish foodways. And I've come to learn that, traditionally, borscht is not a sterile and denatured product sold in a jar, but a lacto-fermented, probiotic food produced in the home.

Now, I have realized from my conversations with people that lacto-fermentation is a generally unknown and mysterious process in modern society, and yet it is one of the oldest, safest, and most nutrient-enhancing forms of food preservation on Earth. Jewish mothers used to lacto-ferment various vegetables the way they toss food in the microwave today. It was just a part of living.

However, as Pesach approaches, those who want to be well-prepared are stocking up on overpriced, over-processed packaged foods from the ubiquitous "Passover Section" at the local supermarket, jars of sterile "borscht" included. (As an aside, please be informed about the ingredients in those kosher-for-Passover products. Avoid disease inducing ingredients like partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils, vanillin, and MSG--heimish companies love to add these ingredients to their products.)

But a generation or two ago, as part of that preparation, Jewish mothers would have been putting up a jar of beets and water to lacto-ferment for a couple weeks before Pesach, to be enjoyed either cool (like gazpacho) and probiotic, or hot and sour with meat and spices. That was the dish that nourished my forbears, that my grandfather's body would have intuitively recognized as nourishing and good.

It is approaching ten years since the dinner I served, and I wish that I could have made the nourishing, delicious, live-culture meal that my grandfather must have grown up on. But I am grateful for the renaissance in traditional Jewish foodways that is just beginning, and hopeful that I will be able to pass these traditions down to my own children some day.

Here is a recipe for "beet sour" adapted from Leah Leonard's Jewish Cookery, published in 1949. It can be drunk in small quantities as a digestive aid, used as a salad dressing base, or used as a borscht soup base, as it was traditionally:

BEET SOUR (Rossel) (renders one quart)
Remove tops and scrub beets thoroughly. Cut in halves or quarters and place in a glass quart-sized pickling jar that has a cover (you can buy these at your local hardware store). Add about a tablespoon of sea salt per two medium or three small beets. Fill the jar with lukewarm purified water (or the water should at least be chlorine free). Screw on lid and let stand, covered, in a warm place (64-74 degrees F) from one to four weeks to form soured beet juice for Passover borscht. Unscrew lid slightly about once per week to release pressure. A white mold bloom may grow on the surface of the rossel... this is completely normal and may simply be skimmed off. The liquid underneath will be unaffected.

Also, here is one of Leah Leonard's borscht (Rossel) recipes:
Meat Rossel Borscht (Serves 6)

Ingredients:
1.5 lbs brisket of beef
4 cups cold water
1 onion
2 bay leaves
3 cups beet sour
Salt and pepper to taste
Lemon juice (optional)
Sugar to taste
6 egg yolks

Directions:
Cook the meat, onion, and bay leaves in water at a slow boil until meat is tender when pierced with a fork. Add the other ingredients, except egg yolks, and boil 15 minutes longer. Serve hot with 1 beaten egg yolk per serving (depending on taste), for thickening, and garnish with parsley, sliced hard cooked egg and plain boiled potato.

This post is part of the Real Food Holidays Passover Recipe Blog Carnival.

Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains

2010-02-10T21:08:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago during Shabbos I read "Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains" (Indiana University Press, 1995). It is what the title suggests, the memoir of Rachel Calof, a Jewish woman who "took the road less traveled," literally. She left the Old Country in 1894 to meet her husband-to-be in America, and they moved to North Dakota prairie land to stake a claim, start a farm, and raise a family. Needless to say, it's almost impossible for me to imagine the difficulties the two of them and their children experienced on the frontier. They arrived with only the shirts on their backs, but they eventually prospered. One passage moved me deeply, and I want to share it here. I know it's a little long, but it's worth it:

My spirits rose with the promise of spring and the improvement in my health. I began casting about for something to do which would improve our lot. One of our big problems was our water supply. We had dug three wells, each to a depth of seventy-five feet with poor results. Now our water supply was so scant that I decided to find some usable water in some low place on the prairie where the snow melt might run together. I did discover such a place about a mile away. I carried two pailfuls from that place, but when I got back to the shack I saw that the water was full of worms and grass. The water would have to be boiled to be usable. The solution to the problem was not so easy as we had just run out of fuel. There was nothing with which to start a fire. I was determined though, and again went out into the prairie which held many provisions if one only knew where to look. I took with me only a rope and my huge [pregnant] belly.

About two miles distant I came across a place where new grass was growing through a bed of dried-out grass. The dried grass was plentiful and looked dry enough to burn. I was delighted with my find. My pleasure, though, was tempered with a certain dread. I knew little of the wildlife of this country, and i became fearful that I would encounter a snake in the beds of dried grass. I hesitated, but soon my stomach informed me how hungry I was, and the child within me needed food too. My husband labored in the field removing rocks and I knew that he too must be hungry. I needed that boiled water to prepare some kind of a meal and I said to myself, "Don't be a spoiled person. You must risk it. Even if there is a snake there, you must try." I stepped into the area. No snake bit me and soon I was enthusiastically gathering the dried grass. Quickly I gathered a great bundle and tied it into a compact bundle with my rope.

According to the sun it was already midmorning and Abe would be coming in from the field not long after noon. I had to get home quickly but the food left in the shacks was only a little flour, some barley, some soured milk, and a little butter. A really daring idea came to me. I decided to spend a little more time looking around the place to see what else it might offer. Promptly, my further exploration brought results. I found what appeared to be wild garlic. I was delighted and ate a kernel. It tasted wonderful and didn't seem to harm me, so I gathered quite a number of bunches. My ambition by now was really on the rise. Bread and garlic alone make a poor meal. I enlarged my search area and before long I came across plants which unquestionably were wild mushrooms. Now I knew that some mushrooms were deadly poisonous. Still I thought that this was a good time to take a chance. I bit into one and held it in my mouth. It didn't burn or taste bad, so I swallowed it. I waited a while for something to happen. Nothing did, and I gathered an apronful of the mushrooms, and with my garlic and the bundle of dried grass on my shoulder, I started for home happy with my accomplishments and eager to see how I could put them to use.

Arriving at the shack, I immediately began my preparations. First I sieved the water through the fabric of a flour sack. I kneaded the dough and put it in the oven. I cleaned the mushrooms and steeped them in hot water. I then chopped up the garlic, put butter (we had our cow back) in the pan, and fried everything together. This meal made in large measure with food gathered from the wild prairie was simply delicious
. . .
My husband would soon be coming through the door. I was so happy, truly in seventh heaven, and very proud. I had used my brains an my nerve and as a result my husband would soon sit down to a fine dinner, just the two of us alone.
. . .
Never was there a more delightful dinner than that one. The food was delectable and our shanty was filled with happiness. After we finished our meal, Abe insisted on knowing all the details of my accomplishment. As he listened, his gladness became tinged with a sadness that our condition was such that I was reduced to searching the prairie for food. But nothing could destroy the magic of that hour. . . So ended a charming interlude in the harshness of our lives. It was a great moment for us and its memory has been a sustaining treasure to me over the years.
pp. 41-43

Talk about eshes chayil!

The Potential for Growth

2010-02-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I learned a Tu B'shvat sicha from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. One of the lessons the sicha focused on is what can be learned from the fact that the regalim correspond to the crop cycle (Pesach is the time of barley, Shavuos is the time of reaping the wheat, and Sukkos the in-gathering). While the Rebbe analyzed the spiritual insights to be gained from the physical growth of crops, I personally took a powerful message on physical soil management out of his spiritual analogy. Here is the excerpt from the sicha:

[I]t's possible to learn about the manner of avoda of Neshamos Yisroel from the growth process of crops.

The growth of a grain crop does not originate from the wheat seed itself which is planted in the soil; rather, it comes through the decay (riqvun) of the wheat seed which is planted. By way of planting, the seed decays and becomes botel to the potential for growth (koach ha'tzomeach) in the soil. This, in turn, arouses that very potential for growth which is in the soil to cause stalks of wheat to grow. And from this another concept is understood--that the addition which comes about through the growth is not strictly an addition in quantity (that from one wheat seed comes about quite a number of seeds), but rather it can be said that it is like a new creation, something wholly different.

The yerida and aliya of the soul is a similar process. The way to achieve "growth" of the soul through "being planted on the earth" is that through a person being in a movement (tenuah) of bitul (similar to the concept of decay)--like we say in davening, "May my soul be like dust to all," which means avoda in a way of kabalas ol (which is "the beginning of avoda and its principal and root," as is written in the holy Tanya)--and then through the subsequent ascent of the soul and its "growth" it achieves an aliya completely beyond measure, and then that soul becomes like a new existence, literally.

(Likutei Sichos Chelek 36) (translation and adaptation for readability my own).

In other words, the process of a seed being planted down in the soil and then arising out of the soil, strong and bearing fruit, is analogous to the descent of the soul in this world and the potential for "spiritual growth" (a concept encapsulated in the chassidic maxim "yerida l'tzorech aliya").

But what caught my attention was the concept (as I understood it) that there is something in the soil that a seed needs in order to realize its full potential (which was referred to in the sicha as the "koach ha'tzomeach"), and that the soil "reacts" to the desire of a seed to grow. The Rebbe is presenting a piece of traditional agricultural wisdom as a matter of fact. I wonder how many people who learned this sicha completely glossed over this idea. This touches on the argument I made in my first post that there is a whole layer of understanding that we're missing in our learning because we've become separated from the land, despite the fact that the Torah and much of Jewish thought throughout the ages is rooted in an agricultural view of the world. Sure, there is a lot of content to absorb in a single sicha, and this was probably not the most important concept. It's true, there are many lessons to be learned and angles for each person to connect with. But the point is, an idea like the koach hatzomeach and similar themes in Jewish thought are not amorphous, lofty concepts. They are very real facts of life, and without knowing and understanding something so basic, like the Rebbe did, how can we really expect to plumb the depths of any Jewish literature?

So that we can start to appreciate our traditional wisdom, I will start to break down what I understood the Rebbe to have been referring to. "One tablespoon of soil contains more than one million living organisms . . . Soil isn't just dirt. A square meter of topsoil can contain a thousand different species of animals." (Keith, Lierre. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. PM Press, 2009, p. 18.) Ecologically speaking, soil is a living organism that interacts with plants and helps them reach their full potential. The community of microorganisms in soil "slowly breaks humus [topsoil] down into the chemical elements plants need to grow, elements including, but not limited to, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. This process is as much biological as chemical, involving the symbiosis of plants and the mycorrhizal fungi that live in and among their roots; the fungi offer soluble nutrients to the roots, receiving a drop of sucrose in return." (Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma. Penguin Books, 2006, p. 147.) In fact, some plants, like many legumes for instance, have clearly-established symbiotic relationships with these microscopic communities. If you pull up the roots of, for instance, a lupine plant, you'll most likely see little white clumps interspersed on the roots. Those are nodules where bacteria are working to fix nitrogen from the air and make it accessible to the plant. Without those bacteria, in other words, without the soil reacting to the needs of the plant, it would certainly not grow to its full potential, and it is doubtful whether it would grow at all.

A counter-argument might be: "But plants can grow without soil! What about hydroponics?" It's true, a seed can grow without soil. However, a plant that grew in rich, active soil is more complete, in a deeper way, than one grown with chemicals in a sterile hydroponic medium.

As farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka writes in his opus The One Straw Revolution, "Gravel culture, sand culture, and hydroponics are getting more popular all the time. The vegetables are grown with chemical nutrients and by light which is filtered through a vinyl covering. It is strange that people have come to think of these vegetables grown chemically as 'clean' and safe to eat. Foods grown in soil balanced by the action of worms, microorganisms, and decomposing animal manure are the cleanest and most wholesome of all." (New York Review of Books, 1978, 2009. p. 66)

The same can be said of the soul--A soul can exist basking in G-dly light without coming down to this lowly world, but you can't compare the completeness and advantage it attains in this world to before it came when it was basking in G-dly light.

Throughout history, plant agriculture was conceived of as more or less a magical and miraculous process (which, in fact, it is). Indeed, as Yidden, every single day we acknowledge that plant growth is beyond our power when we daven that G-d should bless us with "all the varieties of [the year']s produce for good." (Siddur Tehillat Hashem. Merkos L'Inyonei Chinush, 2003, p. 48.) But farmers work hard, don't they? Shouldn't we give them a lot of credit? Well, they do work hard, but they have no control over the fact that a seed wants to grow and the soil wants to help it. A very hard-working farmer I know once wrote, "Nothing we do has anything to do with the fact that a tomato grows. We may seed, transplant, hoe, water, thin, sucker, tie up and clip, and harvest--but ultimately, the fact of a tomato at all is completely beyond us."

But today, in large part, we don't think about agriculture. We don't think about where our food comes from, and as a People, many of us have forgotten about facts of life like the koach hatzomeach, and when, for instance, the Rebbe refers to that concept (or the Gemara or Halacha), we lose out. We also lose out when we use our money to support agricultural practices that either kill the soil or deplete the rich topsoil layer that has been built up by hardworking microorganisms for hundreds or thousands of years. That should suffice for the discerning.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Tu B'shvat and is getting excited for Adar, as I know I am.

Chicken Feet Or the Sole

2009-12-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

Part I. In Theory

Chicken feet. Many people will probably feel a little sick just reading those words, and yet for most of our bubbies, chicken feet were an essential ingredient for a rich, nutritious soup stock. And according to nutrition writer Sally Fallon, it was with good reason. "Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons--stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain." Maimonides prescribed chicken soup for a range of maladies (Rosner, Fred. The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides. KTAV Publishing House, 1998, p. 243). The American cooking classic The Joy of Cooking also has high praise for the humble foot and calls it "perfect for stock." (Rombauer, Irma, et al. The All New All Purpose Joy of Cooking. Scribner, 1997, p. 579) (For studies on positive health effects of chicken soup, see, e.g., here).

Besides the general health-fortifying qualities of chicken soup, chicken feet are full of gelatin. "Gelatin acts first and foremost as an aid to digestion and has been used successfully in the treatment of many intenstinal disorders, including hyperacidity, colitis and Crohn's disease. Although gelatin is by no means a complete protein, containing only the amino acids arginine and glycine in large amounts, it acts as a protein sparer, allowing the body to more fully utilize the complete proteins that are taken in." (Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. New Trends Publishing, 2001, pp. 116-117). So if chicken feet are so good, how did they disappear from our soup?

Well, one answer is that convenience became the catchword of the latter part of the 20th century. People took less time to prepare their own food and depended more and more on the burgeoning industrial food complex. Traditional soup stocks at home and even in most restaurants were replaced by less expensive synthetic flavorings and vegetable oils, and for soup this meant soup mixes and instant soups, which did make life more convenient, but at what cost? Food producers totally embraced those changes, and heimish food producers were no different.

For instance, someone recently gave me a pack of Manischewitz Vegetable Soup Mix. The company's tag-line is "Quality Since 1888"... sounds wholesome and traditional, right? Just like Bubbe made. But among the ingredients are: partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oil, and corn starch. Back in Bubbe's day, soy oil was used in the US in the manufacture of paint and glue products, not as food. (Lierre, Keith. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. PM Press, 2009, p. 224). And soybean oil and cottonseed oil are both extracted from two of the four main genetically modified crops grown in the world. Cotton is not even classified as a food crop and therefore more potent pesticides are applied liberally to it. It sounds like the definition of "quality" has changed a little around Manishewitz since 1888. But, life is more convenient. All I have to do is drop that soup mix in a pot of boiling water and let it simmer for two hours, and it tastes pretty good.

Real chicken soup is, however, still a Shabbos-table staple, although without the feet. And why is that? Well, when our society embraced synthetics, chicken feet became kind of gross and the market was lost. Today, you can't get ahold of chicken feet even if you try. When you buy a whole kosher chicken at Trader Joe's, the word "whole" is qualified; it comes with a chicken body and maybe a neck if you're lucky, but no gizzard, no heart, no liver, and certainly no feet. In fact, you can even buy your kosher chicken with no skin or bones, in a nice little plastic package, if you want, without all the stuff that's great for making stock, and they charge more for it.

So what do they do with the feet that belonged to all these chicken bodies? They export them to people who still value chicken feet. According to documentation on the USDA website, $64 million worth of chicken feet were exported to Hong Kong in 2005 alone. I have read one estimate that the chicken foot export business to China is today worth over $380 million per year. Meanwhile, they're taking all those good chicken feet in exchange for lead-laden toys for our children.

That being said, those chicken feet are from factory farms and maybe there is some wisdom in avoiding factory-farmed chicken feet. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the effects of factory farming "include groundwater contamination, air contamination, respiratory disease, and the creation and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." Yum. Taking into consideration that those effects are just on the community around the farm, I don't really want to take the risk of eating the feet of the chickens who lived on the farm. Fine, so send them to China.

Part II. In Reality

I want to contrast factory farm conditions to a polyculture farm, where, rather than approaching farming from a factory model, it is instead approached as an ecosystem, similar in the way it functions to a forest or plain (and similar, I imagine, to the farming practices that the Alte Rebbe encouraged his brethren to take up). Yesterday I spent the day on such a farm in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's called Green Oaks Creek Farm and about thirty of us were gathered for the shechting, plucking, eviscerating, and salting of a number of poulet rouge chickens. The chickens were raised entirely on pasture, specifically, on a fallow field which was at rest between growth cycles. The chickens ate bugs, rodents, seeds, and whatever else they found in the field, in addition to certified organic feed, and in exchange they left their droppings as manure and their thighs became plump. They were not treated with antibiotics or growth stimulants, which are de rigueur in factory farming.

We were there working with Caleb Barron, the actual farmer who had raised the chickens, Naf Hanau, a compassionate shochet who is a personal acquaintance of mine, and Rabbi Seth Mandel as the mashgiach, overseeing the process for the Vaad HaKashrus of Northern California. I was particularly impressed by Rabbi Mandel's knowledge and experience in the industry, and his down-to-earth and approachable manner. I also was thankful to Anna Hanau, under whose tutelage I worked as an organic farmer during the summer of 2008. She was slated as the event "mentor," and indeed she gave me a couple tips on evisceration. The event was organized by Hazon in conjunction with the Hazon Jewish Food Conference taking place over this weekend in Northern California, and I am very thankful to have been a participant.

Was it beautiful? In a certain way, yes. Although the most accurate descriptor for me at the time was "natural." However cheesy it sounds, it felt like I was back in place, back in the "Circle of Life." I was back with Adam haRishon who named all the creatures, when he slaughtered his first animal and was thankful to G-d; back with Avraham Avinu, raising flocks in the pastures of Bethel. For one morning, I was back in that circle, and it felt natural, and because of that it was beautiful. Please don't misunderstand--there is nothing innately beautiful in taking another creature's life; nor about watching a chicken's body flail as its blood drains and its dying nerves fire hotly; nor is it innately beautiful reaching inside a chicken's carcass and pulling out a handful of guts. But to know that it can be done with respect, that we can raise G-d's creatures with respect, and respectfully kill them as G-d allowed, that is beautiful. The process was flanked by explicit praise of G-d as halacha prescribes, al pi r'tzono yishtabach shemo.

Needless to say, I took a bag of feet home and I will be making some gelatinous soup stock.

Basic Sauerkraut Recipe

2009-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

This post is a follow-up to my Fermentation and Jewish Culture post.

Recommended tools:

Cutting board
Knife
Grater/shredder
Bowl
A jar made out of either glass or earthenware (like a ceramic crock) (you can also use food-grade plastic if you must)
A rock, or small jar that fits in the bigger jar, or plastic bag
Square of cloth to cover mouth of bigger jar (optional)
Rubber-band to hold cloth over mouth of jar (optional, but highly recommended)

Ingredients:

Cabbage (preferably organic and locally grown) (about 2.5 lbs. of cabbage should render about 1/2 gallon/2 liters of sauerkraut, so plan your jar size accordingly)
Sea salt (or any type of salt except chemically iodized salt)

A word on lacto-fermentation and ingredients: Sauerkraut depends on the action of bacteria present on the leaves of cabbage to provide the pickling magic, and you want to encourage them as much as possible. Pesticides may kill or restrict these naturally-occurring bacteria, which means the sauerkraut may not pickle if using non-organic cabbage. Similarly, iodine definitely kills bacteria and that's why I suggest not using iodized salt.

A word on checking cabbage for bugs: One of the methods the OU recommends for checking cabbage is to peel off the first few layers of leaves (approximately six leaves) and check each leaf on both sides under a bright light for bugs. If only one or two bugs are found among all those leaves, the rest of the head may be used without checking "provided the remaining leaves of the head are very tightly packed together." If three or more bugs were found, it's necessary to check an additional layer. If that one is clean, you're good to go without further checking. But if more bugs were found there (which is highly uncommon), it's necessary to check the whole head. (The OU Guide to Checking Fruits, Vegetables, & Berries, 2nd Edition, Orthodox Union 2007, pp. 21-22)

Directions:

Chop the cabbage in half from top to bottom and cut out the core. You can eat the core right now if you want... it's crunchy and tastes fresh and usually a little spicy, kind of like kohlrabi, or you can shred it and throw it in with the sauerkraut. Or you can throw it in the compost bin, as you prefer.
Shred the cabbage. You can achieve this a number of ways. I often just use a knife and chop the cabbage into the smallest pieces I am able. You can also use a hand grater, and grate the cabbage to the grade you like. Or, the fastest and easiest method is to shred with a food processor. Use what is available to you or what you prefer, and gather the shredded cabbage into a bowl.
Add salt to the shredded cabbage at about a 1:1 ratio, one tablespoon of salt per head of cabbage. It doesn't really matter whether you're using large or small cabbages because about one tablespoon of salt will be fine for either. Mix the salt and shredded cabbage well.
You will notice that the mixture is starting to get wet. This is very good. The salt is beginning to extract juice from the cabbage leaves, and that juice is essential to the sauerkraut-making process. You need to rough up the cabbage a bit at this point. Punch it and knead it for a couple minutes like you would to bread dough. This aides the juice-extraction process.
Start transferring the shredded cabbage mixture to your jar. As you fill in every couple inches, give it a good few punches. Some people use a wooden tool instead of a fist to do this packing down, which is easier and more convenient, unless you don't have such a tool.
Once all your cabbage is packed in, or the jar is getting full (remember that you will need to leave enough headroom for the liquid to rise, and for a weight, and a little airspace under the optional cloth cover), you need to use something heavy to weigh down the cabbage and make sure it remains under the liquid which will be extracted. This can be achieved a number of ways. You can use a rock (make sure you wash and boil it first), or a smaller jar filled with water, or a plastic bag filled with water (or create your own method). Either way, the point is that when the salt extracts enough liquid from the cabbage, you want the cabbage to remain submerged under the liquid, and the weight will do this. The worst thing that will happen if the cabbage floats to the top and is exposed to air is that the top layer will get moldy, and even then, you can just remove that top layer and eat what's underneath it.
Let it sit with the weight on about twelve to twenty four hours, and check to make sure enough liquid has been extracted. There should be about an inch or two of liquid above the cabbage. If there is not enough liquid to cover the cabbage, add a well-dissolved mixture of water and salt at about a 1:1 ratio, one tablespoon salt to one cup water.
If you want, attach the cloth cover with rubber-band and let it sit in a cool, dark place for between two weeks to three months. You can taste it as it ages, and when it tastes best to you is when it's ready. At least visually check it every few weeks to make sure too much water hasn't evaporated, otherwise the cabbage will become exposed. The cloth cover is optional, but I think it's a good idea just to keep out dust and bugs.
When it's done, you can move the whole jar into the refrigerator, or pack the finished product into smaller jars and refrigerate those, and then start a new batch in the big jar. The refrigeration essentially freezes the fermentation process where it is, although it is actually still occurring at a much slower pace. This sauerkraut should be fine for at least six months to a year, if not longer.

Other tips:

You can mix in liquid from old batches of sauerkraut into new batches, which is not necessary but it acts as an inoculation of the new batch.
When you get comfortable with sauerkraut making, you can get creative with ingredients. Some traditional and modern sauerkraut flavorings include: apples, fennel, juniper berries, seaweed, and hot peppers. You would add these flavorings at the beginning of the fermentation process.
Like the ecosystem in a forest or meadow, different communities of bacteria "rise and fall" the longer the sauerkraut ages. Like Sandor Katz says, "Bacteria called Coliform start the fermentation. As the Coliform produces acid, the environment becomes more favorable for Leuconostoc bacteria. The Coliform population declines as the population of Leuconostoc builds. As acids continue to be produced and the pH continues to drop, Lactobacillus succeeds the Leuconostoc. The fermentation involves a succession of three different types of bacteria, determined by the increasing acidity." (Katz, Sandor. Wild Fermentation, p. 40)

Kasis L'ma'or

2009-12-09T18:39:00.001-08:00

"The most excellent way to fulfill the mitzvah is to use olive oil for Chanuka candles... and similarly... to take wicks of cotton or linen... We have the custom that the "shamash" should be a wax candle." (Shevach HaMoadim, Kitzur Hilchos Chanuka, 3:1-5) (translation my own).

In order to be mehader the mitzvah of neiros Chanuka this year, I sought out the nicest locally produced organic olive oil I could find, which happens to be Tehama Gold's Mission extra virgin olive oil, based in Northern California. It is a family owned operation and is certified kosher by the Vaad HaKashrus of Northern California, based in Berkeley, which is supervised by Rabbi Welton, with whom I am acquainted. I also bought a bag of Maxim organic cotton to use for wicks (they also claim their cotton is free of pesticides, herbicides, chlorine, and viscose), and pure beeswax candles made by Honey Candles of Canada for the shamash. Needless to say, I did feel like a yuppy at the check-out counter, what with buying all these luxury items.

Objectively speaking, these pure and high-quality ingredients are mehudar materials to use for the mitzvah of neiros Chanuka, as they are the most mehudar of the general category of materials that suffice for "mitzvah min hamuvchar" (namely, olive oil, cotton wicks, and beeswax). But subjectively speaking, I wondered if "organic" or some of the other standards I was seeking "count" as a hiddur as well.

The concept of hiddur mitzvah comes from the Gemara in Shabbos 133b, which discusses the passuk "zeh keli v'anvehu" (lit. "this is my G-d and I will glorify Him") (Exod. 15:2). R' Yishmael asks "Is it possible for a person to add glory to his Creator? What it really means is: I shall glorify Him in the way I perform mitzvos. I shall prepare before G-d a beautiful lulav, a beautiful sukkah, beautiful tzitzis, beautiful tefillin, a beautiful shofar, etc." But is the standard for beautification objective? In an essay on hiddur mitzvah, Rabbi Josh Flug notes, "The requirement to have 'nice' items used for the mitzvah clearly has no objective standards. There can be two sukkot that look nothing alike and the construction of both can be a fulfillment of hiddur mitzvah." For instance, in some communities to beautify the sukkah includes decorations and hangings, while in other communities, the hiddur is mainly the guests who sit inside the sukkah, their singing, and the words of Torah spoken there, with no hangings.

Rabbi Flug also cites there the idea to spend one-third more for the sake of hiddur than you would spend for the baseline product. Granted, organic and local definitely doesn't necessarily equal higher quality for hiddur mitzvah, and paying more for an inferior item is not a hiddur by any means. But let's say there are two olive oils of, as far as you can tell, equal quality, but one is organically grown four hours away from you and it costs one-third more than the non-organic which is from Turkey (and thus required a large amount of oil to be burnt in transporting it, and pesticides may have been applied, and the workers may have been treated worse). Is it considered a hiddur at that point? It seems like it depends on your personal and community standards. So for me, yes.

But, if you'll indulge me, I think there is a deeper reason for the choices I made, and that is that they make it more possible that my great-grandchildren will also be able to fulfill the mitzvah the same way that I am. There is a beautiful story in the Gemara in Taanis, 23b about Choni Hamaagal. If I remember correctly, Choni didn't understand what the first line of Shir Hama'alos (which we say before benching when no tachanun is said) meant. "A song of ascents. When Hashem will return the captives of Zion, we will have been like dreamers." This line is referring to the 70-year exile between the First and Second Temples, and Choni didn't understand what it meant to dream for 70 years. He later encountered a man planting a certain fruit tree, and Choni asked when the tree would bear fruit, to which the man replied "in 70 years." "But you're already a grown man, you won't be around to see it bear fruit," Choni wisely responded. [The man paused from his shoveling, wiped the sweat from his brow and took a good long look at Choni. Then he said,] “Just as my fathers planted for me, so will I plant for my children.” (I added the part in brackets for dramatic effect.) That was a partial answer to Choni's question.

To me, this story illustrates the idea in Yiddishkeit that we are meant to support sustainable farming practices for the sake of future generations, that we are meant not only to dream for ourselves, but to imagine those who will come after us and what world we want to hand down to them. I personally would like to pass on a world filled with trees and fruit, a world with clean air and clean water. Cotton, for instance, is responsible for "25% of global insecticide releases—more than any other single crop." (also see GM Cotton Fiascos). That includes not only common cotton used for Chanuka wicks, but also in mostly all cotton clothing. Honeybee populations are also threatened by the use of pesticides and spreading colony collapse disorder (CCD), which if continued unchecked will majorly limit the way we produce food in this country and the amount and variety of food we have access to.

The Honey Candles company claims to have a "commitment to sourcing from ethical beekeepers... [and] organically managed hives in the Peace River Region of Northern Alberta."
Also, unlike soy and parafin candles, "beeswax is used essentially in its native state. There is no bleaching or hydrogenating and does not require large amounts of agricultural land. Beeswax is the purest of all waxes (including vegetable waxes such as soy) with the least processing and no additives." And they burn slower with a beautiful flame, which makes up somewhat for the extra cost.

So, has it come to that, that my hiddur mitzvah is the baseline for ensuring that my great-grandchildren will have a beautiful world to beautify their mitzvahs in? Let's hope not. It is a Chassidic idea that a little light dispels much darkness. Happy Chanuka to all, and may we spread abundant light this year in every way possible.

Fermentation and Jewish Culture

2009-12-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

I was reviewing some of birchos hanehenin last week and came across a particularly interesting piece of information. In his Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 205:3, the Alte Rebbe notes the following:

There are types of vegetables that it is not customary to eat them raw (even with bread) but rather cooked (or cured, or pickled which have the same status as a cooked food). For example, cabbage, gourd, and beets and other similar things, you bless "she'hakol ne'hiya bidvaro" on them when they are raw, and if they are cooked or pickled, "borei pri ha'adamah." (emphasis mine) (translation mine).

It's obvious from this that, at the Alte Rebbe's time at least, it was so foreign to eat raw cabbage that if you did eat it, you would make a she'hakol! No one that I know today would dream of making a she'hakol on cabbage. But the point that I want to emphasize is how cabbage often was consumed, namely, fermented (pickled) as sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut was not only common in the Alte Rebbe's time. Historically, one of the most common ways of consuming cabbage (indeed, perhaps for all of history until recently) was as lacto-fermented (pickled) sauerkraut ("zauerkraut" in Yiddish--literally, "sour cabbage"). The method of producing sauerkraut is actually one of the oldest methods of food preservation, having enjoyed documented popularity as far back as early Roman society, up until 18th century Europe, and even playing a vital role in preventing scurvy among sailors (see, e.g. Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History. Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 148-151). For obvious reasons, it was reputed to have health-fortifying effects.

Today, we have more than intuition to guide our understanding of the health benefits of sauerkraut.

"Cabbage and other Brassicaceae family vegetables ... have long been recognized as rich in anti-carcinogenic nutrients. According to a new Finnish study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, fermentation breaks down glucosinolates in cabbage into compounds called isothiocyanates, which are already known to fight cancer. 'We are finding that fermented cabbage could be healthier than raw or cooked cabbage, especially for fighting cancer,' says Eeva-Liisa Ryhanen, one of the paper's authors." (Katz, Sandor. Wild Fermentation. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2003, p. 40) (See also Sauerkraut Packed with Cancer-Fighting Compounds)

Additionally, fermentation enhances the digestability of cabbage and increases vitamin levels and, upon consumption, encourages the growth of "healthy bacteria throughout the intestine." (Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. New Trends Publishing, 2001, p. 89).

And yet, in large part, this aspect of our culture has been lost. A fixture of shabbos tables today is the cabbage salad or coleslaw, no doubt sprayed with pesticides and shipped some great distance and purchased at Costco... not exactly the local, organic, lacto-fermented health-fortifying food that the Alte Rebbe would have been familiar with. Even what most of us know as 'sauerkraut' today is not real sauerkraut. If it's not in the refrigerated section at the grocery store, that means it was either pasteurized or bathed in vinegar, effectively killing the live-cultures that sauerkraut is praised for.

But there is unquestionably an appreciation at the shabbos table for fermentation, the magic transformation of the mundane and perishable into the magnificent. How is that? The two cornerstones of the shabbos meal are fermented foods, wine and bread (specifically, the kiddush wine and the challah). In fact, I've heard it told that these two foods (among others) were built into creation as special shabbos foods, as a little exploration of their gematrias implies: wine=yayin=10+10+50=70, 7+0=7 (the 7th day); challah=8+30+5=43, 4+3=7.

Some chassidic groups actually still observe a specific minhag to eat pickled products on shabbos. They call it in Yiddish "zoyerlach" (lit. "sours" or "ferments") and say it sounds like "azoi erlech" (lit. "so honest"). (Meisels, Dovid. Shabbos Secrets: The Mysteries Revealed. Israel Book Shop, 2003.) Indeed, shabbos "is based on a profound truth, the word of G-d." (Sperling, Abraham. Reasons for Jewish Customs and Traditions. Bloch Publishing Co., 1968, p. 147). Coincidentally, the gematria of sauerkraut in Hebrew also adds up to seven (kruv kavush=20+200+6+2+20+2+6+300=556, 5+5+6=16, 1+6=7).

The deeper lesson to take from the process of fermentation, indeed, a lesson applicable to every single parsha in the Torah, is internalization. The way fermentation works is that these microorganisms in the air and on the skin of, for instance, cabbage leaves and grapes, are waiting to get inside, to get at the starches or sugars inside, and to transform them. When we crush the cabbage leaves and the grapes, we allow those microorganisms access and they, in turn, create a whole new product, much more valuable and special than cabbage or grapes on their own, and yet at the same time, the cabbage and grapes had the spark of potential waiting to be expressed the whole time.

In chassidus, there is an emphasis on taking the external and superficial in our learning and making it real, to internalize it so that it transforms us, affecting us deeply in actuality. Last week, when we read that Yaakov "laid down in that place," the Midrash emphasizes, "Bamakom hahu!" In that place he laid down to sleep, but for the 14 previous years and the 20 following years, he didn't lay down to sleep. Why? Before he went to Charan, he was learning and internalizing the Torah that he would take with him to the house of Lavan. He was so focused that he didn't have time to sleep. Once there, he had to remain steadfast in his dedication, take care of his family, and raise his children with a strong Jewish education, and this also did not allow him to sleep. He was so successful, that when he left, he could honestly say, "Im lavan garti" ("I sojourned with Lavan") which Rashi notes, "The numerical value of garti is six hundred and thirteen, as if to say, 'I sojourned with Lavan, the evil one, yet I kept the six hundred and thirteen commandments and did not learn from his evil actions.' " (Artscroll Sapirstein Edition Rashi, p. 360, on Gen. 32:5). May we also internalize all that we learn, as the Rebbe Rayatz taught (in yesterday's apropos Hayom Yom), "A fundamental principle of Chabad philosophy is that the mind, which by its innate nature rules over the heart, must subordinate the heart to G-d's service by utilizing the intellectualization, comprehension and profound contemplation of the greatness of the Creator of the universe." The spark is there inside each one of us, we just need to draw it out through our own fermentation.

On a last note, I've been producing my own lacto-fermented foods for over a year now. I eat homemade sauerkraut usually every day. If anyone has any questions regarding how to make sauerkraut or how to find a lacto-fermented variety in the local market, don't hesitate to contact me.

Shepherdess

2009-11-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

"[Yaakov] said to [the shepherds], 'Do you know Lavan the son of Nachor?' They replied, 'We know him.' And he said to them, 'Is it well with him?' and they replied, 'It is, and behold, Rochel his daughter is coming with the flock.' [...] While he was still speaking with them, Rochel came with the flock which belonged to her father because she was a shepherdess." (Gen. 29:5-9)

This post is dedicated to the first explicit mention of a woman farmer in the Torah, namely, our third matriarch Rochel. In her honor, I will spotlight a modern, Jewish, woman-owned and operated farm called Jacob's Ladder Farm, which is coincidentally named after Rochel's husband, Yaakov (or Jacob).

I have to be honest, I don't know that much about this farm, but they have consistently appeared in Google searches over the years, and I've read enough on their website to be very impressed. It is a traveling farm with the primary purpose of connecting children and adults with traditional knowledge and appreciation of Hashem's world, and in particular, to do it in a holistic way. In their own words,

"To see our precious new generation caring for Hashem's creatures with breathtaking sureness is to re-encounter the process through which our Jewish leaders--Yaakov, Moshe, Shaul, David--developed their compassionate shepherding of flocks and so were chosen, later, for compassionate shepherding of Bnai Yisrael. So, too, is ecological training at the child level-in a Torah context--a worthy start for future Jewish leaders."

I love their compassionate approach to teaching about animal husbandry. For instance, they offer a class on "How the Animal World provides us with 'gifts,' and how we harvest those gifts without hurting the animals we care for. Activities may include: milk a goat, shear a sheep, feel the down on a duck, learn how to hypnotize a goose for down- gathering, pluck a molting Angora bunny, balance a peacock feather, and (in season) put baby birds down for a nap!"

It is interesting to point out that, despite their impressive goals and programming and being a women-run business, I can't find the above reference to Rochel on their website, e.g.

"[The] Jewish nation began as shepherds and animal owners: Just about anybody you can think of in the Torah had flocks--Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, 12 brothers, Bnai Yisrael in Egypt, Moshe, Shaul, David. Very early on we see our Avot being kind to animals: Rivkah includes the camels when she gives Eliezer water; Jacob builds Sukkot to shelter his flocks; Jacob and David fight off predators to save sheep; Jewish leaders are chosen based on their mercy developed as shepherds (Moshe, David)."

The farm is based out of Maryland, so if you're ever in the area, think about showing them some support. This is really an amazing and necessary endeavor, and I hope they will be successful and that many more similar farms will develop in Jewish communities across the US. Their point is very well taken, and it is the same point that inspired me to start this blog. Dai l'meivin.

Kosher Kombucha Culture

2009-11-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that I have kombucha cultures available that I synthesized from a certified kosher source, namely GT Dave's Organic Raw Kombucha, which is certified kosher-pareve by Rabbi Eli Frankel at the Kosher Certification Service of Los Angeles (see Kosherquest for more information). I'm happy to mail them out for free, as long you pay shipping costs. And please only contact me if you're a person who keeps kosher and wants to secure a culture from a certified kosher source.

Despite the fantastic rise in popularity of kombucha in recent years, I have seen nary a peep about it in kosher and Jewish forums, neither online nor in print, and believe me, I searched. I even sent a request to the people at Kosher Blog quite a while back asking them to address kombucha, in particular because it is becoming quite common for people to brew kombucha at home (and it's so expensive to buy), and as long as Kosher Blog is covering pickling, canning, home stock-making, home salami-making, and home cheese-making, I thought home kombucha-making would be quite relevant. Obviously I was a little disappointed that they didn't cover it.

So, I did my own research. I spoke with three different halachic authorities about kombucha, two of them being representatives of their respective kosher certifying agencies, namely the KSA and the KCS (previously mentioned). I understood from my conversations with these three authorities that a kombucha culture is kosher and pareve by nature. Halacha's conception of it is more similar to beer or bread yeast, than to, for instance, wine yeast or bacterial cultures for cheese (yeast (other than wine yeast) doesn't need kosher certification according to Rabbi Eidlitz at KosherQuest, see here, although the Star-K takes a more machmir stance and requires kosher supervision; although, based on the fact that all major kosher certifying agencies don't require kosher supervision for domestically brewed beers, and all beers use yeast, the logical conclusion is that yeast doesn't require kosher supervision either).

A word on the kombucha making process: Kombucha brewing is an artisanal process. The utensils and ingredients must be very clean and pure or else the scoby will be likely to get moldy. The culture is never exposed to hot temperatures, as that would kill it as well. When a batch of kombucha is starting out, the scoby, a saucer-like symbiosis of bacteria and yeast is placed in a room-temperature mixture of water, tea, and sugar (none of which require kosher certification on their own), and is left to ferment for about a week. That being said, because of the dearth of information about the kosher status of kombucha in general, I decided to provide a secure source for people seeking kosher peace of mind.

I personally started brewing kombucha over a year ago. These days, the only liquids I drink on a regular basis are water and kombucha. Why? Besides for the fact that I feel kombucha generally boosts my immune system and gives me energy (I have never been sick as long as I have consumed kombucha regularly, keineina harah) it also coincided with the sudden retreat of a virus I was experiencing prior to when I started brewing kombucha. It was nothing serious, but the virus completely subsided within two months of drinking kombucha on a daily basis.

If anyone has anything at all to add here, or if anyone feels that I was misinformed about anything, please don't hesitate to let me know. And if you want a kombucha culture that was synthesized from a certified kosher source, I'm here for you.

Men of Tents, Men of the Field

2009-11-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

"And the youths grew up, and Eisav was a man who understood hunting, a man of the field, whereas Yaakov was an innocent man, dwelling in tents." (Gen. 25:27)

And so the story goes that Eisav became evil and murderous, and Yaakov was a good yeshiva bochur, his head in the books all day. But I thought it was a virtue to be "a man of the field"? Afterall, didn't Moshe Rabeinu and King David spend significant time in the field tending their herds before their fated rise to leadership? Also, many of the mitzvahs assume we will be farmers and regulate how and what can do in our fields--how we sow our crops, when we can harvest certain crops, what we are to do with the harvested crops, etc. So what gives? Are we meant to be "of the field" or in the books?

There are two points that I want to make here. Firstly, we have to define "man of the field" in context and distinguish it. Something is lost in translation when we simply say "man of the field." The implication for Eisav was that he was a shark, he had street smarts from the very fact that he was out in the field (or as we would say today, out on the streets), not that he was 'one with nature' as the phrase connotes in English. He was not a farmer nor a shepherd. Rather, he was a hunter and a con-artist (see Rashi there).

On the other hand, Yitzchak was a farmer, as the Torah says, "Yitzchak sowed in that land, and in that year he reaped a hundredfold; thus had Hashem blessed him." (Gen. 26:12). The midrash refers to him as an "olah temimah" ("blemish-free offering") (Rashi on Gen. 26:2) who was so holy that Hashem didn't want him to leave Eretz Cana'an. Yitzchak was holy and a farmer at the same time. So that sufficiently establishes that we can be men of the field and men of the book at the same time. But is there an argument that we should only be men of the book?

There seems to be a genuine disagreement among the sages on whether we are meant to farm (what I would colloquially call "of the field") or learn 24-7 (be "tent-dwellers"). For instance, in Perek Shishi of Brachos, the Gemora records:

The Rabbis taught: "And you shall gather your grain..." (Dev. 11:14) Why does the Torah say that? Because it says elsewhere, "Do not remove this book, the Torah, from your mouth." (Joshua 1:8) Is that meant to be taken literally, as it is written? The Torah comes along and says "And you shall gather your grain" to show that one who follows the words of Torah has an occupation (derech eretz); these are the words of R' Yishmael.

R' Shimon ben Yochai says, is it possible that a man would plow at the time of plowing, and sow at the time of sowing, and harvest at the time of harvesting, and thresh at the time of threshing, and winnow at the time of the winds... What would become of his Torah study? Rather, understand it this way: At the time that the Yidden are doing the will of Hashem, their labor is done by others, as it says, "Foreigners will stand up and herd your flocks" (Isaiah 61:5). At the time that the Yidden are not fulfilling Hashem's will, their labor is done by themselves, as it says "and you shall gather your grain." (Dev. 11:14) And moreover, at such a time they also have to work for non-Jews as it says "and you shall serve your enemy" (Dev. 28:48). (translation my own) (Brochos 35b)

That's the discussion, and the Gemara rounds off that sugya by saying the proof is in the pudding, namely that many who followed the way set forth by R' Yishmael succeeded, and many who followed the way set forth by R' Shimon did not succeed. And so this seems like good proof that we are not meant to have our heads in the books all day; not only is farming, generally speaking, the right thing to do, but it's required of us by the Torah. We are meant to be both in the books and in the field!

I understand a counterargument would be that the Torah is speaking of labor in general, and most people happened to be farmers back in those days, and the real maskana is that a person needs to work (even as a doctor, or lawyer, or whatever) in addition to Torah study, and I agree with that. But I would add that there is something special about farming.

I think Rabbi Shmuel Simenowitz (the freilich farmer), who is also a gentleman maple syrup farmer in Vermont, hit the nail on the head when he spoke about some of the lessons that are essential to farming and how they relate to integrating the lessons in Yiddishkeit:

"And what you really see in a Jewish agrarian setting, and what I teach, is process. You know, where does maple syrup come from? It doesnt come from a jar. Somebody went out, cut a trail, tapped a tree, hung a bucket, and collected sap. And all things are connected, the seasons, the harvest, the holidays, how we treat the animals and use the land. So I use the process of making maple syrup as a metaphor for teaching Torah."(Wolfson, Paula. "Jewish Fathers: A Legacy of Love", pp. 59-60)

May Hashem bless our efforts like those of Yitzchak, that we should gather me'ah shearim (100x portions) b'gashmius u'b'ruchnius!

The Roots of Eastern Religion

2009-11-10T20:27:00.000-08:00

"Avraham gave all he had to Yitzchak. And to the children of the concubines of Avraham's, Avraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from Yitzchak his son, while he was still alive, eastward to the land of the east." Breishis, Parshas Chayei Sarah. (Gen. 25:5-6 in the Sapirstein Edition of Rashi: The Artscroll Series, pp. 266-7).

The question is asked, if Avraham just gave everything he owned to Yitzchak, then what did he give to his other children? Rashi addresses this by saying, "Our Rabbis explained, he gave over to them a name of an impurity. " (Id.) In other words, it was a spiritual gift. What was the nature of this spiritual gift?

The Gemara, in Sanhedrin 91a goes on to explain that it was "A name by whose pronunciation they would be able to perform sorcery. The 'gifts' here do not refer to property, for Avraham had already transferred ownership of all of his property to Yitzchak." (Id.)

To summarize: Avraham sent his children to the east with powerful spiritual gifts, and those children presumably became the progenitors of the spiritual traditions of the east that we have today.

I understand why American Jews are often dissatisfied with the experiences they've had in organized Jewish life growing up, and seek something more spiritually satisfying as adults. But I have wondered why these Jews are so attracted to Eastern religions specifically.

This source makes a good argument for why that is. Apparently, the root of those spiritual traditions is in Torah and in the acknowledgment of the One True G-d, however obscured those roots have become today. There is obviously still residual power from that original spiritual energy that Avraham sent, enough so to draw spiritual seekers to attempt to slake their thirst there.

Over the course of this week I'm going to see if I can find any further information on this subject.

Land of Milk

2009-11-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

"[Avraham] took cream and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and placed these before [the visitors]; he stood over them beneath the tree and they ate." Breishis, Parshas Vayeira (Genesis 18:8).

This is the first time milk is mentioned in the Torah. It is interesting to note that here we are in the fourth parsha since the beginning of the creation of the world, and out of all the things that G-d wished to convey to us, G-d chose to enumerate the foods that Avraham served to his guests, the first of them being cream and milk.

Needless to say, this was raw, unpasteurized cream and milk. There were no refrigerators back then (obviously) so if you wanted milk, you went out and milked your cow (or goat, etc.). Additionally, as Rashi notes (id.), "As he prepared each food, he brought it near and presented it to them." Presumably, it takes less time to milk a cow than to slaughter a calf and cook it. This post will be the first in a series dedicated to milk.

First of all, raw, unpasteurized milk seems to be a tradition in Judaism, if only by default. It's what Avraham served, after all. "But isn't unpasteurized milk poisonous?" you ask.

Pasteurization is a modern process, discovered by Louis Pasteur in the 19th century. Before that era, all milk was consumed raw. The idea behind pasteurizing milk is that you heat up the milk above a specific temperature for a specific period of time in order to kill most micro-organisms, especially the ones that cause disease and make milk go bad, which is good, right? We don't want any dangerous bacteria in our milk. Well, then how come in Avraham's time (or even in our great-grandparent's time) they could drink raw milk without getting sick? What changed?

Pasteurization proved itself in bolstering the burgeoning food industry of the 19th century. It allowed for a more consistent taste and standard production method in fermented food products like beer; a consistent product allows for better branding and marketing. It also allowed food to be preserved for longer periods of time and shipped farther distances, which allowed for a broader consumer base. These benefits to industry were often at the expense of nutrition and ultimate quality for the consumer.

As industry expanded, production of any particular thing was concentrated and put on a production line; the same was true of the dairy industry. What happens when you take the factory model and apply it to farming? The advent of the factory farm.

Today, in concentrated dairy operations, thousands of cows live in a confined square of barren land and dwell in their own drek day in and day out. They may spend their entire lives never tasting a blade of fresh grass, the food that is called their "bread" by King David (Psalm 147); additionally, G-d designed their stomachs with a rumen specifically to digest grass, and it is by that digestive process ("rumination") that they are designated as kosher animals in the Torah (Lev. 11:3; Deut. 14:6). Normally diseased conditions and lack of grass in their diet would eventually kill a cow, but they are kept alive with antibiotics and other methods. I got to see the workings of such an industrial dairy farm firsthand (a kosher one, in Israel), the cows marching to the milking machines with dung hanging from their overly swollen udders. With such cows and such milk, it's true, their unpasteurized milk is infested with harmful bacteria and would be poisonous to drink. (Never drink unpasteurized milk from cows raised in factory farming conditions!)

However, such was not the state of Avraham's herds. As was noted in last week's parsha, Parshas Lech L'cha, Avraham's herds were free-range and ate grass and were, presumably, superbly healthy. Indeed, there was not enough grass near Beth-el to support Avraham and Lot's herds, and so they had to part ways. (Gen. 13:6-7) These were healthy cows, living well as G-d intended them to live, producing healthy unpasteurized milk.

I personally drank raw goat milk that I milked myself almost every day during a three-month apprenticeship I did on a small, sustainably run farm on the East Coast, and enjoyed robust health during that time. Apparently, not only can raw milk be safe, but it can be abundantly more nutritious than pasteurized milk. According to the Campaign for Real Milk, "Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity."

Before I end, I want to note that I have noticed a vociferous aversion to farming among a number of my teachers and peers over the years, based on the misguided argument that Jews are meant to be businessmen or professionals, and chassidim are meant to be on shlichus, and you can't do shlichus on a farm. I don't know what these opinions are based on. As a bit of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, the life of Zusik Rivkin, a Lubavitcher chassid and dairy farmer who lived in Kfar Chabad in Israel, is illustrative. The following is a patched-together accounting from a couple articles about his life:

[As a youth, his] family made it to Israel, where Zusik was sent to study in the Central Lubavitcher Yeshiva-Tomchei Temimim in Lod. Unlike the other students, the young Rivkin did not pursue rabbinical studies, instead following the personal directives of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson of righteous memory, who instructed the boy to take up agriculture. “He believed it was part of his mission as a Chasid to show the world that a religious Jew works hard on the field and at the books,” recalled one of Rivkin’s family members in an interview after his passing. Until his very last day, Zusik, as he was known to his friendly neighbors, saw dairy farming as his "mission in the world," lording over a herd of some 130 cows that collectively produced more than 1,500 liters of kosher milk each day.
(see the full articles here and here.)

Hopefully this will provide something for you to think about.

It is a Tree of Life for those who hold fast to it.

2009-10-20T17:31:00.001-07:00

So many of our metaphors and analogies in Judaism are rooted in an agricultural perspective of the world, but I'm afraid that many of us have forgotten or become estranged from the real thing from whence the metaphor sprang. At one time we were well connected with the natural world--we were farmers, shepherds, craftspeople. At this time around 3,000 years ago, we would all be arriving back in our cities, towns, and hamlets after having spent a week celebrating the harvest festival of Sukkos at the Beis HaMikdash in Jerusalem, praying for the coming year's rain and for the strengthening of the land with vegetation. To this day, we pray for salvation for "the cattle from miscarriage[,] the granary from the palmer-worm[,] the olives from rotting[,] the wheat from the grasshopper[,] the wine cellar from the canker-worm [...]" (Siddur Tehillat Hashem, 2003, p. 372).

And yet, last week, when it started to rain, many of us grumbled. Why should we care about cattle, granaries, and wine cellars today? The supermarket shelves are always stocked with food, more food than we know what to do with. Meat comes in a nice plastic package. Who still knows how to do melicha on their own, much less raise a sheep and have it slaughtered (how many people today have even seen or touched a live sheep?)? And yet we still can throw around a good sheep metaphor. It is noted in the Alte Rebbe's biography that when he was a youth, he would "encourage his brethren to engage in agricultural pursuits." (Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi: A Biography by Nissan Mindel, p. 7). Undoubtedly, when he compared a certain personality type to the sheep, it was because he had observed how a sheep acted (for instance, see the ma'amar in Likkutei Torah, Vayikra, which begins "Adam ki yakriv mikem"). For many of us, we only have the archetypal sheep - the sheep itself has become a symbol, a caricature.

"And what's the matter with that?" you might ask. Afterall, whether or not we have known real sheep, we still "get the idea." But that's exactly it, maybe we don't completely get the idea. On a number of occasions, I have overheard the bemoaning of our generation's ability to learn, or rather lack of it, compared to previous generations. But maybe it's because we have been alienated in large part from the substance of our great Tradition? For example, when we learn Perek Shishi in Brachos, page 36a, when Shmuel says, "Oh yeah, it's like the raddish that becomes hard in the end," how many of us understand that comment immediately which was so rational to Shmuel? Presumably, not many of us. Shmuel, on the other hand, lived in an agricultural world and he applied his knowledge of how things function in the natural world to his study of Torah. We are exactly the opposite: we learn about the natural world from Torah.

Obviously there is what to be learned about the world from Torah, but Shmuel (which is just an example of any pre-Industrial Age Jew) came into his learning with a certain appreciation for how things work. So what does it mean "a raddish becomes hard in the end"? Most root vegetables and many fruiting bodies of other plants (e.g. beans), become hard and woody and lose their flavor if left to their own devices. But if we grew up on ripe red bulbs from the supermarket, how do we know what happens to that plant later in its life? Many of us would not even recognize a raddish still in the ground.

One of the poet-farmer Wendell Berry's well-known quotes is that "eating is an agricultural act." Once a person realizes what that means, she will begin to realize how distant she has grown in state-of-mind from her ancestors, and will begin to return; and that is truly living the age old wish "to renew our days as of old."