Vacation

Posted on August 22, 2010 by pgold

It has again been some time since I have written in my blog. The past month has been somewhat difficult for us. Avi began camp and had some great days there but then started to have some difficulties when things were not exactly going his way. Unfortunately he reacted by lashing out at other campers and was hitting and pushing. To make a VERY long story short, after four weeks of this we had to take Avi out of camp. So for the next few weeks we had to have him at home. My being out of work made this a little easier for Marsha, but it was very difficult at times, especially when I have been on job interviews or out doing other job searching activity. We have this theory that if I had been at work, Avi would not have been as aggressive at camp and it would have been a very different year. There is no way to prove that, but we hope that next summer we will be able to consider this camp as a possibility again.

On a happy note for Avi, soon after he came home from camp, I was able to get his to learn how to ride his bicycle. That has actually been a real good thing (not only for the skill) because now if he is a little frustrated with something in the house, he can go outside and ride around on his bike (on our street). He and I have gone riding a few mornings and it has been a great experience for him.

Noam and Shayna had a super time at camp this year. Noam was in the oldest bunk at the camp. The camp, at the local Yeshiva, originally only went through the summer following Kindergarten. Then they added an extra year because the parents wanted it and then again this summer they added a year. This however will be the final year, and next year we will have to find someplace else for Noam.

Tomorrow we leave for our family vacation, this year to Washington DC. The kids are really looking forward to the trip. Avi and Noam love learning about American History and they cannot wait to see some of where it all happened. Luckily, Marsha’s mom has a cousin who lives in Gaithersburg, MD which is about 20 minutes outside of DC. We will be staying at his house so the costs will be much less than some past vacations. Smithsonian museums are free as are the capitol building and other places of interest in DC. We hope to make this one of the least expensive vacations we have had which is a good thing, given my employment situation. Hopefully I will be able to blog each night and upload some photos of the kids having fun in DC.

To leave on a happy note, my mother-in-law took Shayna to see the Wiggles the other day at the Izod Center. She had a blast. Here is a photo of her dancing at the concert.

Enjoy!

Photobucket

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The Long and Winding Road

Posted on June 9, 2010 by pgold

Longer time readers of my blog might know that when my posting title is the same as my blog title, it is time for an Avi update. I have not written about Avi is quite some time, and a few things have happened recently to warrant the update.

First off, Avi has, in general been doing very well. His school is excellent and we are so fortunate to have found it. I have explained the school’s point system in the past, so I will just add that he is routinely earning 90 or more points a day out of 100. That is a major accomplishment. He has purchased some great items from the school store with his points, including Lego sets, DS games and other toys. He is excelling academically and is even making friends.

Of course the home life is not as great, but not too bad either. Avi has been seeing a great behavioral therapist, and despite the fact that we are going broke paying for it, we are making great strides there as well.

This past weekend; Avi, Noam and I went to the New Jersey Cub Scout Kinus. We certainly had our moments. Avi at times would be gung ho for a particular activity, but then one thing would set him off right before and he would refuse. It was hard because it forced me to stay with him, and let someone else watch over Noam. Noam being the trooper that he is, did not really mind, but it was really unfair to him. So as you can see there is a ways to go. Last year at Kinus bed time was a difficult time for Avi, but this year it was basically fine. He went to sleep without any major trouble. I have posted some photos of the Kinus on my facebook page.

Some of our friends will be aware that we have been very nervous about this summer. We found a great special needs camp in West Orange called Harbor Haven, but the problem is that the whole summer there will cost just over $7000. That’s quite an expense. Avi’s IEP includes extended School year, but that apparently just means that they are required to give us the month of July. For the first time, Avi’s school is doing extended year, which of course means that they are offering the month of July. We were then sweating bullets because during each of the past two summers Avi did not have anything for August and he ended up the hospital each time. We clearly want to avoid that.

I called our case manager at the school district and tried to find out why they cannot cover the camp instead of the school. The answer, which was repeated over and over, was that Newmark (Avi’s school) is an appropriate placement for Avi. Of course when I asked why there cannot be more than one appropriate placement, I got no response. I then spoke to his boss and asked that they look into Harbor Haven as an alternative. He told me to put our request in writing and get it to our case manager. I did this and even hand delivered the letter. Of course I never heard back. A week later I left a number of voicemails and until finally I got a message on our machine that the director of special services was looking into it.

You have to realize that at this point things were getting late. We were fortunate that our local Jewish Federation was offering scholarships for special needs summer camps. They had offered us $1200, but we told them that we would not be able to send him if they only gave us $1200. A bit later they upped it to $2500! Now all we were waiting for was the school. Finally, yesterday, we got the call that the school district would pay only $2800 towards the camp. Since the school was an academic program, they would pay for all of it, but for the camp, which only has a portion that can be called academic; they could only pay a portion.

Today we worked numbers and made sure that the Federation money was still available to us (thank God it is!) Some money will be coming from our Synagogue and with the generous help of parents; we will be able to send Avi to Harbor Haven. Now we just have to pray that he has a good summer there.

Posted in Autism, Avi | Leave a comment

Unemployment

Posted on May 13, 2010 by pgold

This past Friday my boss had me come in for a meeting at 8 am and when I got there he told me that they were going to let me go. I knew this was coming for a number of reasons, but I did not think it would be so soon. It’s actually a funny story and I will share it with you.

In early March I got an email from some guy saying that he was very upset with this person who works there, MJ. It seems MJ called him to ask if he was still interested in coming in for an interview. In his email he talked about how unprofessional she was and how bad she treated him. He just wanted to get more information and really wanted to know why it took them so long to get back to him (he had sent the resume in January and it was now March). He asked if he could have the name of who would be meeting with him and of the IT director etc. She would not give him much info, and I suspect it was because he was being very rude. Anyway, after the call he did a whois search on the domain name of the firm. This search gave him a technical contact for the domain, namely me. So he sent me the email. I deduced from his email that he was called in to interview for my job since mine was the only IT job in the firm. I confronted the managing partner about this, and he told me that no decisions were being made, that they wanted to see what else was out there, and that my job was not in jeopardy. However, due to the economic issues, they were considering cutting a few positions. He told me I would have ample notice should anything change. From the way he said all of this, it was clear to me that they wanted to replace me with someone who would cost them a lot less money. Next to the attorneys I was probably one of the highest paid people there.

So at that point, I began looking for another job, and got a couple of good prospects, but nothing firm. I assumed that nothing would change until the summer. Then last Monday I was told to compile a list of inventory of laptops, printers, usernames and passwords, etc. Well, this got me thinking that the end was nearer than I had thought. I was continuing my search, but hopeful that I had more time. On Thursday I was told to come in at 8 am for that meeting on Friday. All in all, they gave me a nice severance package (2 months pay and 3 months of the health plan), but I still wish I were still employed. I had a good interview last Thursday (the day before I got the bomb) and I was hopeful that I might not have a long unemployment period.

On Tuesday I got a call from the HR director at this company and he asked if I could come in to meet again. I quickly got on my suite and went right to the train. I got there and they told me that the engineer job I had interviewed for was filled, but they had another position on the same level that they wanted to offer to me. The only problem was that for much of the time I would be on a client site in Brooklyn. I don’t have a problem with Brooklyn per se, but taking public transportation to this location would be horrible and take over two hours. I would have to drive (which without traffic would be about 30 minutes) which would be more expensive than mass transit. The HR director (also the finance director) asked me to give him a salary figure that would make this a comfortable position. I went home, did the math and came up with a figure that was much higher than they wanted to pay. He got back to me later that day with an offer that was $7000 less than I was making in my last job, and with much higher health care costs and a more expensive commute, it would cost me almost $15000 a year extra to take this job. He told me that he would be able to reimburse some of my travel expenses to and from Brooklyn and it would be in the offer letter.
The offer letter came a few minutes ago, and it did not include anything about the travel expenses, so I wrote back to him about that. I am now waiting for more info. I am guessing that although it would be a job, I will not be able to accept it. If I did take the job, I would have to continue looking for work while I was there which would be very hard in a new job. It is also not totally ethical to take a job knowing that you will be looking for something else and it is just not fair to everyone. I need to get at least what I was making if I want to be able to make ends meet (not that we were, but you know what I mean).

So there you have it. I am unemployed and looking for a new job. If anyone has any leads or ideas, please let me know. If you think I should take this job, let me know, and give me some good reasons to take it. I am still waiting to hear back from them anyway.

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Kosher

Posted on April 28, 2010 by pgold

My friend Tori Avey at the Shiksa blog wrote a wonderful piece titled How the Shiksa keeps Kosher. In the post she discusses her path to Kashrut and her personal “style” of kosher. She asked for people to comment with their own feelings about Kashrut and their own personal observance of these laws. So here is my attempt to write down my path to keeping Kosher and how I feel about it today

When I was kid, my family kept a Kosher home. According to my mother this was mainly because my father told her that if they did not have a Kosher home, his mother would never eat in the house (an interesting side is that today we often see the opposite, children who have become observant not eating in their parents’ homes). My father may have believed that, but we did find that later in life my grandmother did eat in other relatives’ non-Kosher homes. I also think that since my mother came from a Kosher home, it was something that she was comfortable with. Whatever the reason, growing up we had a Kosher home. Out of the house, on the other hand, was a total different story. Anything was available for us to eat, and this was a common practice (and still is) among less observant families keeping Kosher homes. We would eat at any fast food restaurant, any Chinese restaurant, or any restaurant for that matter. To this day, I still remember how much I like veal parmesan!

At some point after my grandmother passed away, my mom decided that there was no real reason to keep a Kosher home anymore. The main reason was no longer valid and we were eating treif out of the house anyway (including pork and shellfish!). So she started to buy non-Kosher meats and other treif things. I think this lasted for a few months when she realized that she was still buying Kosher poultry (because it tastes better) and still not mixing milk and meat etc. At this point she realized that we might as well have a Kosher home. Perhaps this was all a way to get new sets of dishes and pots and pans, but we went back to the way things were: keeping a kosher home and eating treif out.

All this time, I was going to a Solomon Schechter Day School, which are Jewish school affiliated with the Conservative Movement. I did fine there until I got to the 6th and 7th grades. I had a lot of issues during those years, and ultimately, my parents took me out of Schechter and I started to go to public school. Now I was able to eat whatever they served in the cafeteria, which I did, but I still refrained from mixing milk and meat. We also were synagogue people, so despite the loss of the Jewish school, I was getting some Jewish experiences from Synagogue and from the observance of the holidays like Passover and Sukkot.

Along came USY. United Synagogue Youth is the youth group of the Conservative movement and many Conservative Synagogues have local chapters. I started going to USY at my Synagogue in Union, NJ and during my Sophomore year in High School, someone convinced me to go to a Regional Kinnus. I attended mid-winter Kinnus which was in Highland Park, NJ that year (coincidentally where I live now!) I had a great time and met some great people (some of whom I am still in touch with today). One of the people I met was a Junior named Pam Jay (now Rabbi Pamela Jay Gottfried) who was on the regional religious education committee. She found that I had some knowledge and ability and got me involved in the regional level. At the Spring Convention she was elected to the Regional Executive Board as the Religious Study Vice President, and she had me help with planning services and other religious activities at regional events. This was my junior year in High School, and by the end of it, I was running to take her place as Religious Study Vice President, and during that year, I made the big decision to keep Kosher fully, both in and out of the house.

This certainly put a strain on my parents, as going out for meals was somewhat more difficult. But I was (and still am) ok with eating dairy and fish out, so generally there was not too much hassle. I went to Rutgers University and had no difficulties keeping Kosher there, especially since I had an apartment with friends for my Sophomore through Senior years. After that I went to the graduate school of the Jewish Theological Seminary and again had no major issues.

Fast forward a bunch of years and now I have a family (wife and three kids) and we keep a strict Kosher home. Here are a few areas where I might differ from a standard Orthodox approach.

We only purchase products that have a Kosher supervision symbol on it. Unlike the Orthodox world I do not judge any supervision agency. If a Rabbi is supervising the product, that is good for me. One of the biggest problems in the Orthodox world today is the business of Kashrut supervision. First off, there are so many competing supervising agencies, and often people will follow one and not another (and if you think it is bad in the US, in Israel it is totally out of control!) Second, Kosher supervision should not be only about the letter of the law. As can be seen with the fall of the Rubashkin company just because someone is “very Orthodox” does not mean that they are doing ethical business and as such should not be producing kosher food. On the other hand, just because a Rabbi is not as “frum” as some would like, does not mean that they cannot be relied on to supervise Kosher food production. So if a local Conservative Rabbi is supervising a restaurant and says it is Kosher, I’m going to eat there.

We have separate dishes and pot and pans for meat and dairy. In this way we are very much like our Orthodox friends. We keep these utensils as separate as possible. This law is Rabbinic as opposed to Biblical. Tori, in her blog, talks about Biblical Kashrut which really makes little sense to me because (AND NO QUOTING ME OUT OF CONTEXT HERE!!!!) when it comes to how to live a Jewish life, the Torah is mostly irrelevant. All of our understanding on how to live comes from the Talmud and the codes, not from the Bible.

We generally wait three hours between eating meat and dairy. This is a weird one. The Orthodox world waits six hours (or most often five hours and a few minutes into the sixth). There is no Talmudic source for waiting six hours. It is a custom that became so powerful that it is like law today. Surprisingly enough, there is also no source for waiting three hours. The only custom that has any basis in Jewish literature is waiting one hour which is what the Dutch do. We have adopted three hours which is very common in the Conservative movement.

I hope that my ramblings have helped to teach something to someone. I welcome comments and questions.

Enjoy!

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Eleanor Rigby

Posted on April 20, 2010 by pgold

Twenty Four years ago today the Beatles began to record one of the more significant songs in their catalog. Eleanor Rigby is significant for a number of reasons. First off, it is a song where you can clearly see the transformation from pop act to a serious experimental studio band. The song is about loneliness with very striking lyrics. Pop bands were not recording songs like this in the 60s. The song was written mostly by McCartney, and unlike much of the other Lennon/McCartney songs, when Paul played this for the group, they all made contributions to the lyric.

The song is the only Beatles song on which none of the Beatles played their instruments. Paul had been introduced to the work of Antonio Vivaldi and fell in love with the music. He came up with the idea of a song with string backgrounds, and together with producer George Martin came up with the octet that can be heard on the recording. Eight studio musicians (four violins, two cellos and two violas) preformed a score composed by Martin.

As was normal with the Beatles songs at the time, both a stereo and a mono mix were recorded. In the stereo mix, McCartney’s vocal was put on the right side while the octet was put to the left. At the Chorus everything was brought to the center. This made for a very distracting recording (IMHO). The mono mix, of course, did not have this problem. The song was also featured in the movie Yellow Submarine but again with the original stereo recording. In 1999, the movie was re-released with digitally re-mastered audio and a cleaned up video (they did not digitally re-master the video). In the process of re-mastering the audio, the decision was made to not only re-master but remix the album, and to date is really the only album of the Beatles to be remixed (in the 80’s Help! and Rubber Soul were remixed but did not sound much different from the original versions). In this remixed version of Eleanor Rigby, the vocals are now centered through the entire recording.

Finally, on the album Anthology 2, take 14 of the strings recording (from April 28th) was included.

This has always been one of my favorite albums. I am linking three You Tube videos here. The first is the original stereo recording and the second is the soundtrack remix. You can choose what you like better. The third is the strings recording from the anthology album.

Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCXKKVp7oc8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzW_zMHkn48]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgv-C7yE8RA]

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Passover Seder

Posted on March 25, 2010 by pgold

Four days and counting! Not a lot of time left, and a ton of things to do. I think we are probably either on schedule or just behind to get everything done. Of course that means more late nights coming up, but we will finish it all. Tuesday night we made the first pot of soup. By pot, of course, I really mean vat, because I think the pot we use is an 18 quart pot, but it could be bigger. Carla is going to make the Matza Balls which is good because we always seem to forget to make them until the last minute. Last night we made a 2nd vat of soup and I mixed up the Gefilte Fish. I shaped the fish into logs, wrapped them in wax paper and froze them. On Sunday I will make the broth and cook the fish.

We have a couple of big things left and some smaller ones. We make two turkeys, and Carla is making one and we are making the other. Ours will happen on Sunday. Tonight we are making the pot roast. After that, it is basically side dishes left. Here is our full menu, and then I will talk about the roast.

Gefilte Fish
Chicken Soup with Matza Balls
(we serve these before the Seder actually starts so we can start with Kiddush after nightfall)
Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Turkey with Stuffing
Pot Roast with Orange and Dates
Herbed Quinoa with Vegetables
Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows (first Seder – we cannot get away without making this!)
Traditional sweet Tzimmis (Second Seder)
Cranberry Sauce (from Suzie Fishbein’s Kosher By Design Entertains)
Apple Slaw (my mother-in-law does this and it is amazing. I need to find out where she got the recipe!)
Green Beans Almandine
Cauliflower Popcorn (from one of the Suzie Fishbein cookbooks)
Strawberry ice
Matza Toffee

As I said, tonight we will make the Pot Roast and maybe the Quinoa also. The roast came from Bon Appetit from April 2007. I used to have a subscription to Bon Appetit and I still have quite a few of the magazines in the house. Every year they have what I call the Passover issue (they might refer to it as the Easter issue, but who cares!). They at least have one article about the Seder with a bunch of recipes. Sometimes they even have more than that. In 2007 we saw this recipe and have been making it ever since. One note about roast at the Seder. It has become traditional in Ashkenazi homes not to roast meat for the Seder. This is because roasted lamb was the major part of the Seder in antiquity, and since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem we can no longer bring the sacrifice, so we refrain from roasting meat. In the Sephardic world customs differ (there are some communities who will specifically eat roasted lamb, and others that do like the Ashkenazim). Some people have taken it as far as to not have meat at all at the Seder, but I disagree with that for sure. I do not see any major problems with roasting meat for the Seder. Since we are so far removed from the sacrificial system (and I do not believe that it will ever be reinstated), it is ok to eat roasted meat at the Seder. Of course, a pot roast is not really roasted but braised, so there is no problem anyway.

In the menu above there is a link to the Recipe, but I will put it here as well. We are doubling this recipe.

Pot Roast with Orange and Dates
Bon Appétit, April 2007
by Evan Kleinman

Yield: Makes 8 servings

This recipe calls for two small roasts instead of one big one. They are easier to cook, and make for prettier slices.

 

2 (2 ½ pound) boneless beef chuck roasts, each about 7x4x2 inches

4 t sugar

3 T olive old, divided

1 lb onions, thinly sliced

6 T red wine vinegar

½ t ground allspice

2 C low-salt chicken broth

1 C orange juice

½ C tomato sauce

2 C pitted dates

½ C chopped fresh Italian parsley

 

Preheat oven to 350°

 

1. Sprinkle roasts on each side with salt, pepper and 1 t of sugar.

2. Heat 2 T oil in a heavy wide ovenproof pot over medium-high heat.

3. Add roasts and cook until brown, about 8 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.

4. Add 1 T oil and onions to the pot and sauté until dark brown, stirring often, about 10 minutes.

5. Mix in vinegar and allspice; boil until reduced to glaze, scraping up brown bits.

6. Add broth, orange juice and tomato sauce; bring to boil.

7. Return roasts and accumulated juices to pot. Scatter dates around roast; sprinkle with parsley.

8. Cover pot; place in oven. Braise roasts for 1 hour, turn roasts over, cover and braise until tender about 1 more hour.

9. Skim fat from top of liquid and let cool uncovered for 1 hour.

10. Transfer roasts to board, scraping sauce into pot. Cut crosswise into ½ inch thick slices; overlap slices in a baking dish.

11. Spoon Sauce over, cover; re-warm about 25 minutes.

 

The recipe suggests that you can make this up to 2 days in advance and keep in the refrigerator. Since we are doing it 4 days early, we will freeze it and take it out of the freezer Sunday night. If you are going to freeze, I suggest freezing the meat and the sauce separate, and combining when heating.

 

Enjoy!

Posted in Cooking, family, Judaism | 1 Comment

Your Mother Should Know

Posted on March 23, 2010 by pgold

How to make Gefilte Fish that is! I just had to throw in another Beatles title. If there ever was a dish that was quintessentially Jewish, Gefilte Fish is probably that dish, or at least in a very small list. To understand why we this is true, you need to know a little about the dishes history. Back in Eastern Europe, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jews were kept poor by the governments and mostly living in little villages we call shtetlah, or simply the shtetal. Despite this, they would try to purchase the best that they could for Shabbat and holidays. That often meant fish as it was less costly than beef for chicken. In poor societies it became common to use as much of the animal as possible when cooking it. Thus Gefilte Fish was born. The women would bone the fish, grind up the fish with eggs, matza, sugar and spices, and shape into balls or patties. Then the ground fish would be stuffed into the fish skin with the head still attached so it looked like a whole fish. This would be cooked in a broth made from the fish bones and onions, carrots and other vegetables. The fish would be cooled slightly and sliced into pieces. This way the entire fish was used. It was called Gefilte, because this is the Yiddish term for stuffed. Depending upon where you came from in Europe, you may have not used the sugar and made a more savory version. The sweet fish was usually found in southeastern Europe and the savory in northeastern.

Today, you don’t often find the fish stuffed into the skin and head, but the basic recipe has remained the same. The main fishes used were usually whitefish, carp and pike as they were the cheapest fish and not often used for other things. As the eastern European Jews moved to America, they brought this recipe with them, and I know many people who remember their grandmother having a carp or two in the bathtub on Friday morning waiting to be made into Gefilte Fish.

I tried to make Gefilte Fish once, but I failed because I tried using a modern recipe that really strayed from the classic recipe. Since then we have always bought the frozen logs that you can get in the grocery store, which you boil in water with vegetables, sugar, salt and pepper. This year I decided to try again, and I am working with a very classic recipe. I got this recipe from our friend Beth Newman who has been working as a personal chef for the past year or so. She tells me that she gets rave reviews from this recipe and I trust her totally. She in turn got the recipe from a website called recipezaar and it was posted there by a woman named Sarah Chana and is called “My Mom’s Legendary Galicianer (Sweet) Gefilte Fish. Galicianer is a term used to describe Jews from Galicia which is the western Ukraine and southeastern Poland where the food tended to be prepared on the sweet side.

The recipe says that is makes 16 servings and calls for two pounds of whitefish fillets. The fist counter will only sell whole fishes to grind, so I asked how much whole fish I need. I was told that for two pounds I need at least four pounds of whole fish, and I believe I ordered between eight and nine pounds and whatever I get I will work with. The recipe also calls for all whitefish, but I ordered a mix of whitefish and carp, since carp is a very traditional fish to use and it is much cheaper.

Gefilte Fish

2 lbs whitefish fillets, ground
3 large onions
6 extra large eggs
2 ½ t salt
3/4 – 1 C sugar
black pepper
2 – 2 ½ C Matza Meal

Broth

2 small onions, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
salt
pepper
sugar
fish bones
water

1. Mix together the fish, onions, eggs, salt, sugar and pepper until well blended.
2. Add Matza Meal slowly, mixing well until it is almost thick enough to hold its shape.
3. Cover bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour, up to overnight.
4. Shape into balls, patties or loaves, which can all be frozen at this point.
5. In a large pot add the broth ingredients, bring to boil and simmer for at least thirty minutes. Broth should be almost golden in color. Taste to adjust seasonings. Broth should be sweet and a little bit salty.
6. Add the loaves, balls or patties to the broth.
7. Bring back to boil and lower to a simmer for about 1 hour 15 minutes. If you put frozen loaves in the water, cook for 90 minutes.

That is what I am going to do, increasing the ingredients based on how much ground fish I have. I will be preparing the fish tomorrow night and then I will form loaves and wrape them with parchment paper. On Sunday I will remove the parchment from the frozen loaves and cook in the broth. The fish will stay find covered until Monday night.

Finally, here are two great Passover youtube videos.

Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMSEFCQCKPo]

My kids never tire of this next one!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og1pdFGMUMg]

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Passover, the holiday of eating

Posted on March 22, 2010 by pgold

It’s a week before Passover and everything is beginning to come together. The house is being cleaned and by tonight our oven (and half of our kitchen) will be kosher for Passover and read for cooking. Tonight’s job is to bring up from the basement all of the Passover cooking supplies and pot and pans, etc. If there is time, maybe even cook something!

When people talk about Passover, the first things that are usually discussed, are how many people were at your Seder, or what did you cook? Passover, over all other holidays in the Jewish calendar is always discussed in terms of food. Although food is a big part of other holidays, you don’t have big conversations about what you cooked for Rosh Hashanah dinner or Shavuot lunch. Why does Passover get such a treatment? My Rabbi gave out a sheet recently that contrasted the different aspects of the holidays. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are Synagogue and prayer based. This is not to say we don’t go to Synagogue or pray on the other holidays, but the central aspect of these holidays are going to shul and prayer. Sukkot is community based. We construct sukkot outside of our homes and we invite in the community. Shavuot is study based. We spend the whole night of Erev Shavuot studying. Finally, Passover is home based. The main ritual occurs in the home, with the family and close friends. This home/family based holiday speaks to people more than going to Synagogue, more than studying text and more than inviting in your community. It is probably why the Passover Seder is the most “observed” Jewish ritual today. More Jewish people attend some sort of Passover Seder than any other ritual. There are more printed versions of the Haggadah than any other Jewish book, the bible included. This, I believe is all due to the fact that the holiday is a home based one. Plus who would not like a holiday where you sit around the dinner table for a few hours!

When reading my new blogging friend Tori Avey’s blog I realized that in all of my years writing food columns on the web, I have never written about the Haroset recipe that we have used for many years. She posted two recipes for Haroset, one based on a traditional Ashkenazi Haroset and one more Sephardic (of course she has beautiful photos of her food, which I do not). I prefer the more Sephardic style for a few reasons. First off, I love the taste! Haroset has to taste good, and the recipe below has always gotten rave reviews. But more importantly, the Haroset combines the two Talmudic reasons for Haroset. The Mishna tells us that Haroset is on the Seder plate even though it is not a Mitzvah. The Talmud then asks (obviously) what is Haroset and why is it not a Mitzvah. The Talmud tells us that it reminds us of the apple and of the mortar. Rashi comments that the Apple is because when Pharaoh decreed that the men and women should be separated, the women would entice the men to lie with them under the apple trees in the heat of the day when they did not work. This is why the later decree to kill the male babies came about since separating the men and women did not work. The other idea is that the mixture should be made thick to resemble the mortar. Rambam later wrote that the word Haroset comes from Heres, meaning clay. Sephardic Jews, who tend to always follow what Rambam wrote, make their Haroset so that it looks like mortar, which Ashkenazi Jews tend to base it on the apple.

My mother began making this Haroset many years ago and has never stopped. My parents ALWAYS bring the Haroset to our Seder, and we still need to make more for the second Seder because no matter how much is brought it is all eaten! The recipe originally came from a Mizrahi Women cookbook. The Mizrahi Women’s Organization of America (now known as AMIT) was founded in 1925 to promote and support religious Zionist education and social services for Israel’s children and youth. At some point my mother bought a cookbook which was done as a fundraiser for a local chapter. The book has numerous Haroset recipes, but this one seems to have been the winner with us.

This recipe says it make 8 portions, but that is way off, we make 4 or even 8 times the recipe at a time. Below is the original recipe as it appears in the cookbook, and after that I will explain what we do different and some possible variations (which are not in the cookbook, but should be yummy nonetheless.

Haroset

2 apples
½ C pitted dates
½ C raisins
¼ C shelled walnuts
¼ C shelled almonds
1/3 C sweet wine
1 t ginger
1 t cinnamon

1. Peel, core and quarter the apple.
2. Grind apples, dates, raisins and nuts.
3. Add ginger, cinnamon and wine
4. Mix well

Pretty easy right! Well, being the post modern era, we used a food processor for the entire recipe. I put the dates in the bowl first and try to get them processed a bit as they are the hardest to do in the machine. Then I will add the apples and the raisins. After I process that for a few pulses, I will add the nuts. Today we can easily get chopped or even ground nuts for Passover. I will usually use ground nuts because we will often have other recipes calling for them. Often we but the nuts chopped and I will grind them myself in the processor first before I do any of the cooking. I still use the same amounts, even though ground nuts will probably have more in a measure than chopped. Finally I add the spices and the wine. Process it all for one or two pulses and then you are done. It stays a few days find in the fridge. I don’t really know how long it will keep, as we never have any left after a few days beyond the Seder!

In terms of variations, you can put in almost any fruit or nut. Try prunes or dried apricots or even fresh pears! Hazelnuts will work nicely in this Haroset. There is also a tradition of using all of the fruits and spices mentioned in Shir HasShirim (Song of Songs). These are apples, figs, pomegranates, grapes (the wine), dates, walnuts, saffron and cinnamon. You could easily add all or any of these to the Haroset to make your own recipe. I also found a reference on Wikipedia about a mixture called halegh, and is used by some Middle Eastern Jews instead of Haroset. Here is a link to that “recipe” which uses forty ingredients!

Enjoy!

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The Long and Winding Road

Posted on March 19, 2010 by pgold

Some of my longer time readers may remember what was going on in my family’s life last year around Passover. Avi had become so unstable, that we moved him to a partial hospital program which then transferred him to an inpatient facility called Summit Oaks. Avi was an inpatient there for almost a month, which included all of Passover. It was a very hard month for us because not only was our son in crisis, but our family was split apart for what is perhaps the most family based Jewish holiday. You can go back and read some of my posts from March and April of last year. This year I can report that things are much better. Avi is in a better place than he was and we are learning as a family how to cope with his autism and navigate that long and winding road that is our life.

One of the biggest problems we are now facing is that since Avi have been out of Schechter for two years, his Jewish education is next to nothing. He is very aware of this, and will sometimes say things like “I am not Jewish” or “I hate Jewish things.” Of course two minutes later he may talk about things he likes about being Jewish. I have been looking into some computer programs that we can use to try to work on his Hebrew. I would like to get him reading Hebrew well by next Passover. Avi also likes doing art projects so I am hoping to do a couple of Passover art projects with him that he can display at the seders.

So all in all, things are getting better all the time. I had not updated about Avi in a long time and I wanted to let people know how things are going. Next week I plan to post about our Passover plans, including some great recipes! Stay tuned!

As a treat, here is a photo of the three kids. We actually got them all to stand together for a photo at the photo studio we have been using. The photographer could only snap two photos, so thank God one was good!

Enjoy!

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Passover Conundrum

Posted on March 18, 2010 by pgold

Alright, maybe not a real conundrum, but after a post about the more well known (and controversial ) topic of Kitniyot, I wanted to talk about something a little less well known outside of Orthodox circles.

But first, I want to make mention of a great new blog that I started reading yesterday called (believe it or not) A Shiksa in the Kitchen! Before anyone starts getting up in my face about the use of the word Shiksa, although I rarely use it, I think that in this case it is sort of ok. Read her blog (and website) and you might agree. Anyway, Tori Avey describes herself as an author, blogger, journalist, screenwriter, her family’s resident chef and a Shiksa (despite becoming a Jew by Choice recently – welcome to the Mishpaha!) Her blog is mainly about Jewish cooking and gives a wonderful mix of Ashkenazi and Sephardi cooking and other interesting Jewish entries. She is blessed with some wonderful friends of different Jewish backgrounds who guide her through learning traditional cooking. I recommend reading her blog, joining her fan page on Facebook (The Shiksa) or following her on Twitter (@theshiksa) or all three! She also makes mention often of a great Jewish organization called the Jewish Outreach Institute which is run by my friend Rabbi Kerry Olitzky and I also recommend visiting their website.

So now back to today’s main topic. To Shiur or not to Shiur, that is the question. At the Passover seder we have four main Mitzvot (perhaps another time I will write about the amazing appearance of the number four throughout the seder). The first is of course to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The other three are all food related, maybe that is why we love this holiday so much! We are told to drink four cups of wine, eat Matza and eat Marror. The problem is, like many Mitzvot that come from the Torah, we know we need to drink four cups of wine, but we don’t know what that exactly means. How much is one cup of wine? I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that the Rabbis of the Talmud and beyond did discuss these issues and came up with what we call Shiurim.

Most people might recognize the word שיור Shiur as the word for lesson. Often when people give a lecture on Jewish topics it is called a shiur. But Shiur can also mean measure, size, scale or proportion, which is how we are using it here. Each of these food based Mitzvot have a shiur assigned to it. So for the four cups, the Rabbis determined that one cup of wine is 3.3 fluid ounces. To fulfill the Mitzva, one needs to drink the majority of this measure, which was also determined to be 2/3. Sooooo, one should fill their cup with 3.3 ounces and drink at least 2.2 for each of the four cups. On Shabbat the amount was determined to me a little more, so when Passover coincides with Shabbat, the first of the four cups needs to be 4.4 ounces.

I am not advocating whether one should follow these rules or not, but the wine shiur is actually pretty easy to follow. The Rabbis did not want people falling asleep or getting drunk at the seder, so the amount was not set very high. Plus you can use low alcohol wine or even grape juice if you want. The real problem comes from the shiurim for Matza and Marror. Without going into some major Halakhic sources, the basic understanding is that the amount of Matza is that of k’zayit, or the size of an olive. This means that if you crushed up the matza the amount you need to eat would pack together to the size of a large olive. This is generally understood to be about ½ of a large round hand matza or 2/3 of a machine matza. There is also the opinion that you need to eat two times this when you say hamotzei because one for that blessing and one for the blessing “on eating the matza”! Now that is a lot of Matza! Again, I am not advocating any position here, but I will tell you that I generally do not eat that much Matza at the correct time.

Marror also has the shiur of k’zayit. If you use ground horseradish this has been defined as just less than 2 tablespoons. If you use lettuce leaves you should eat a quantity that covers an area of 8×6. Again, it is quite a lot!

We also eat the Korekh, which also has that pesky k’zayit shiur of both Matza and Marror! BTW, I use lettuce for the eating of Marror (since it is easier to dip) and use grated horseradish for the Korekh (easier to put between two pieces of Matza).

Finally we also need to eat a k’zayit of matza for the afikoman!

Again, I am not a Rabbi and do not suggest anything here. I am just reporting. However, if you do want to use the shiurim, you can find this nifty card at most Judaica shops

A friend from when I was at JTS, Rabbi Brad Hirshfield (now President of Klal) suggested at a study session on Shabbat that you make a mini seder plate for each guest and on it should be the proper shiurim for each item. This way when the blessings are said, the leader can pass a small amount from the main matza and marror and the guest can then eat the proper amount, having it in front of him or her.

Now for something completely different! We also have the custom of reclining to our left when we eat the items at the seder. Here is a great you tube video about this. It is in Hebrew but you will get the idea (I will post a basic translation in a comment to the blog post).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygL8t4A-ToM]

Here is another fun one for Passover

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgeX_8tBCY]

Enjoy!

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