Author: Old Man With Candy

 

It’s funny what happens when I start on one of these little essays- sometimes it goes just as planned, but often while researching a topic, I get sidetracked and write about something entirely different than what I intended. This is one of those times. We’re in the midst of the Jew holiday rush, with Rosh Hashana (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkos (something about plants and booths, don’t ask) in a Centipede-like series, with the first two sort of lumped together as the High Holidays and Sukkos being an afterthought. So I figured, let’s do a history of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and discuss their decidedly non-Biblical nature, and contrast it with Sukkos (the white people of Jewish holidays), which is culturally rather minor but is actually Biblical.

And there I made my fatal mistake: I googled local High Holiday services at the nearest shuls and that sent me down an unexpected path.

The first shul that came up was Beth Emet (House of Truth) in Evanston. They bill themselves as “The Free Synagogue.” This is a (((Jew))) trick, there’s nothing free about it.

Wow, a synagogue with no fees? We tease, but the word “free” in our names holds a strong significance that shapes the foundation of our congregation. It means that we unequivocally support the freedom to express a full range of ideas from our bima (pulpit) and within our community. More than half a century ago, our founding members chose a name that symbolized a commitment to truth and open expression.

Attending High Holiday services will set you back $500 per head, no reserved seating. Of course, members will get a hefty discount, assuming you’ve coughed up the $1200 per person that they charge as the introductory rate for membership (the website appears to be silent on what the yearly fee is after the first year).

I note the the Catholic church down the street here doesn’t charge to join. Silly goyim, you’re leaving money on the shulchan!

But the “full range of ideas” they espouse seems to be directly lifted from the Democratic National Committee and, judging from their website and their rabbi’s blog, spans the full gamut from left to extreme left. Here’s a sample of a sermon by their rabbi (female, of course, a few millennia of traditions cannot substitute for woke-ness, and CS Lewis’s gate is all oppressive and shit):

Racism in the United States may no longer be de jure, but with statistics such as these can we claim with confidence that it has been eradicated? This summer the Supreme Court’s undermining of the Voting Rights’ Act and George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin exposed the still raw wound of racial tension in our country. After the verdict, President Obama, in his most candid remarks about race, spoke about the racism that he has faced in his life. He talked about purses being clutched and car doors locked as he walked by. He acknowledged that racial profiling by the police has undermined their trust in the black community, making them less effective in reducing violence. And he spoke about the importance of people of different races engaging in dialogue with one another in order to gain greater understanding and empathy of what it’s like to walk in a black person’s shoes.

As President Obama challenged us, we need a real conversation on race in our country that allows us to develop relationships and understand one another better before we cast aspersions and affix blame.

They also affiliate with other similarly-minded organizations. From their site:

Bend the Arc
Bend the Arc is building the power and passion of the progressive Jewish movement in America by bringing together Jews from across the country to advocate and organize for a more just and equal society. It is the only national Jewish organization that is focused solely on promoting these values here in the U. S. Two community meeting shave been held in the Chicago area. Work groups have been established along three distinct strategies:
• Supporting endangered populations– Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ communities
• Encouraging Democrats and approachable Republicans to resist the Trump agenda
• Working for a shift in power by mobilizing for the 2018 and 2020 elections.

I’m sure they’re big on separation of church and state, right? Yes, clearly they take a strong stand against religion being involved in partisan politics. It makes (((me))) proud. They also link to something entitled “Jewish Tradition Speaks to Need for This Proposed Law”

In the 114th Congress, I-VAWA was re-introduced by Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). The bill, which received bipartisan support, mandated that an Office of Global Women’s Issues be instituted by the Secretary of State and led by an Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues. The bill would have inaugurated a Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The goal was to push the U.S. government to swiftly propose and enact creative solutions for violence prevention and that those plans be revised annually for five years.

Whew, for a moment I thought they were going to say that Judaism mandates taxpayer-funded sinecures and luxury travel for some well-connected bureaucrats and academics.

I suspect that their inclusivity and diversity would not include me.

Ah well, let me try the next hit on Google, which is Beth Am (The People’s House) in Buffalo Grove. And to their credit, they don’t claim to be “free.” And indeed they’re not, with yearly memberships running $3000-4000, which makes the People’s House some pricey real estate. Want to go to services for the High Holidays? $500 per head for Rosh Hashana, another $750 each for Yom Kippur. I don’t know what Easter Sunrise services cost at our local Catholic church, but I suspect that it’s a whole lot less- likely free. I may have my foreskin sewed back on.

And once again, the congregation is led by a female rabbi who is as woke as it gets. Here’s a delightful excerpt from one of her sermons:

This sermon will not be a rebuke of conservative political ideology or sentiment. Let’s be clear, there has been a virtually unanimous voice from the Conservative establishment decrying the overt or covert support of racist fringe movements and this is a sermon purposed on the necessity for us to Wake Up and Rise Up during a period in our history where white supremacists have a direct line to the Whitehouse (sic).

Whew, for a moment I thought she might get partisan. Here’s her morning-after-the-election sermon:

The feelings of anger and despair I have will in time morph into action and revolutionary love. We are strong and courageous and in this together and right and there are too many people who need us. We need us. It is not easy, but I don’t think we have any choice but to F.E.A.R: Face Everything And Rise. This is the only answer now and always…one breath at a time.

I searched in vain for her denunciations of Keith Ellison or Al Sharpton, as well as the rabbi’s exposure of the fake hate crimes she cites. I suppose I need more Jew in me to understand that there’s Nazis at the door, and that we’re only inches from being sent to American concentration camps.

Today I speak words of protest, joining hundreds of my Reform rabbinic colleagues across the nation in fulfillment of our sacred obligation. We will not be silent. We will, without hesitation, decry the moral abdication of the President who fuels hatred and division in our beloved country. This is not a political statement.

Of course it isn’t. And of course, the good rabbi sermonized about The Women’s March:

My 12 year old says she doesn’t feel well and is not going to march. Her sister says the same thing and their brother says they must go. He yells at them, “All our rights are at stake!”
…We get to the rally. We get pins that say, “Girl Power” and “Love Trumps Hate” and other slogans that I won’t write here…. (OMWC: The photo on her post shows that her son was wearing a button with the very spiritual slogan “FUCK THE PATRIARCHY!”) The kids are excited to be a part of this historic event, proud to be speaking up and out! Periodically, my son spontaneously yells into the crowd “I’m mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore!!” He gets applause and high-fives. He smiles and keeps on walking. My daughters chant about immigration rights and each feels free enough to shout her own slogans about rights and freedom and we walk together with hundreds of thousands of people.

You know who ELSE had hundreds of thousands of marchers shouting slogans… By the way, I note that the good rabbi is silent about the exclusion of Jews from Chicago’s Gay Pride parade, but I suppose that’s consistent with her silence about leftist BDS. It’s all about Team. I’m guessing that you wear a pink pussy hat instead of a yarmulke during services.

I can’t leave this topic without linking this classic.

OK, to wrap this up, now the serious part. These really were the first two things to come up when I was looking for a shul for the High Holidays. It’s distressing to me that a 4000 year old tradition has been perverted and co-opted as a partisan political movement, that as a religious obligation, (((we))) are expected to cheer the yielding of power, autonomy, and agency to government.  It distresses me that not only have synagogues become overtly political, they are also exclusionary- there is no room for classical liberalism, conservatism, or libertarianism, not to mention people of limited financial means. There seems to be no dissenting voices allowed. Nor is there any hint that perhaps religion ought to keep itself focused on Yahweh and not on Nancy Pelosi. If one of the goals of organized Judaism is to bring the non-observant and secular back into the fold, the synagogues around here are certainly doing the opposite for those of (((us))) who believe in liberty and would like to have some part of our lives separate from partisan politics.

First, at the request of several of our beloved commenters, a Mom update: “We were eating English muffins, but then the power came back. Arlene and I went down to Publix, but they were out of roasted chicken. Can you imagine? Well, they’ll have more this afternoon, that’s what they told me. And it’s sunny and beautiful here, I don’t know what all this fuss is about. No, I haven’t seen any alligators coming out of the pond, I don’t know why you keep asking me about that.”

OK, now to the Jewsday. In this week’s Torah stories, Moses is still rattling on, but we’re getting close to the part where, mercifully, he dies. So instead of the Torah crap, I want to talk a bit about culture and food. I’ve made no secret about my utter contempt for those who fret about “cultural appropriation.” I had always attributed my attitude to being American, and having been raised in an immigrant household where assimilation was considered a virtue. But perhaps it runs deeper in my DNA than that. Maybe that’s why yesterday I was delighted to see my next-door neighbor (an immigrant from Honduras) working with an immigrant from Bulgaria to crush and destem a few hundred pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from California to make a Bordeaux-style wine…

Anyway, here’s how all of this line of thought started: I wanted to post a recipe for one of my favorite Jewish dishes, shakshuka, which is part of the Holy Trinity of Israeli cuisine (I covered falafel, another of the trio, a few weeks ago). In researching the variations of this wonderful dish, I stumbled upon a trove of controversy, which led me to research some of my family background as well. So, let me start there, and no more Publix roast chicken references in this post.

The (((world))) is often thought of as comprising two sorts of us, Ashkenazim (generally, descendants of people who hailed from Europe, with “ashkenaz” associated with an area in the Holy Roman Empire ) and Sephardim (generally descendants of people who came from Spain, “sephard” in Hebrew). But as with everything else, it’s not that simple. Although we all originated from the Middle East, our exit paths when we were expelled by colonizers took multiple directions and timing. So despite the fact that Jews who escaped to (for example) Morocco never saw the Iberian shores, they are lumped in as Sephardim.

My own family went eastward and north, eventually settling in Trebizond, a Turkish port on the Black Sea, planted on the trade route between the Middle East (especially Persia) and Europe. Because of the influences of Persians, Turks, Arabs, Italians, and actual Caucasians, the mixing of language, culture, and cuisine was extreme. For some reason, people of that era and place weren’t terribly woke, so no-one seemed offended by the mingling of ideas, literature, food, and music. No-one whined that something was “stolen” from their heritage. Because of these circumstances, my family was Sephardic even though they never got within a thousand miles of Spain.

As if this weren’t enough to rev my family’s appreciation of cultural intermingling, in the mid-19th century, most of the Jews of that area were expelled by the always-tolerant Muslims. My family escaped by skirting along the Black Sea and ended up in a Jewish refuge in Ukraine or Russia or Poland, depending on the month, called Kupel (or variously Kupil, Kipl, or Kippel). Things have to be pretty bad when Czarist Russia is an improvement. But not much of one. Frankly, even the local Jews, who were Ashkenazim, looked down on us, and renamed us with a Yiddish term that roughly translates as “Your shit’s all retarded and you talk like a fag,” likely because we weren’t Yiddish speakers and they figured we wouldn’t know better. Anyway, shortly after my family arriving in Kupel, my great grandfather was born. Forty years later, my grandfather was also born there, and at that point, the family had enough of the Czars and the asshole Ashkenazim who tagged them with a funny name, so they packed up my grandpa and did the Ellis Island thing in 1900. I’m not sure what possessed them to hie south and end up in Baltimore, but let’s just say we didn’t have a great track record of picking places to live. So that is how I became one of the rare Sephardim to have ended up in the US of A. (Trivia: one other escapee from Kupel was a fellow named Chomsky, whose son you may have heard of…)

What is not well-appreciated by Americans is the predominance of the Sephardim (especially the so-called Mizrahi) in Israel, mostly because the vast majority of American Jews are Ashkenazi. What most Americans think of as stereotypical Jewish food (knishes, bagels, brisket, chicken noodle soup, kreplach, cholent, kishke…) are adaptations of Eastern European peasant food, and hence remarkably dreary. Despite the leftist sneers about European colonialists in Israel (ignoring that the Ashkenazim were also Middle Eastern in origin, they just went right instead of left), the majority of the Israeli population was Sephardi until just a few years ago. Israeli Hebrew is Sephardic, not Ashkenazi. And so is Israeli food, thankfully- Sephardic food is vibrant, flavorful, and spicy, reflecting the tastes of the region whence it was influenced. Real Jewish food, with flavors and ingredients from our homeland, not the crappy pseudo-Polish stuffed cabbage shit that those fucking Ashkenazis call food.

OK, all that past us, let’s return to shakshuka, a great Sephardic dish which is basically eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce. Like so many great Jewish foods, there’s no lack of controversy about its origins. The name is claimed to derive from the Hebrew term for “shaken up,” but is also claimed to be Arabic for “mixed together.” And as with falafel, politics intrudes, and there’s no shortage of controversy. The Moroccans say that they invented it and that the Jews stole it. The Tunisians claim that they invented it and that the Jews stole it. The Turks say they invented it (“menemen”) and that everyone stole it. And almost the same dish is found in Italy (“uova in purgatorio”), so I’ll say that (((we))) invented it and the dirty wops stole it.

Of course, two of the main ingredients, tomatoes and peppers, originate from the New World, so any claims to antiquity are automatic bullshit. Shakshuka is inherently appropriation, and that’s a great thing, but it does tangle up the origins. Without going into the details of the research I did, it appears most likely that it was originated by Mizrahi Jews in Tunisia, who brought it to Israel after they fled Muslim persecution in the late 1940s. As with many dishes from the region, the Sephardic Israelis adopted it with gusto. And also as with many dishes from the region, everybody has a different version, and everyone claims theirs is the Real Deal. Of course, everyone is wrong- MINE is the one and true correct way to do things. And I’ve done a few different versions recently just to convince myself that mine really is the best. And it is. I have eschewed the commonly-used onions to let the flavors focus on the tomatoes and peppers. And no way I’m going to tart this up with eggplant, olives, crumbled cheese, or other horrors to which I have seen this dish subjected. The flavors here should be direct, strong, and focused, not a mish-mash.

Fair warning: don’t even think about using shitty grocery store tomatoes, use late summer fresh-from-the-farmstand tomatoes. If you absolutely can’t find those, you could substitute Muir Glen whole peeled fire-roasted tomatoes, poured into a bowl and broken up with your fingers. Avoid the pre-diced canned tomatoes or you’ll get a shitty texture.

Old Man With Candy’s Only True Shakshuka

4-5 cloves of garlic, minimum (more is better) thinly sliced (not chopped)

more olive oil than you think is healthy

1 red bell or red ancient pepper, diced (I also will add some hot chiles like fresh arbol, but admittedly, I have an asbestos anus)

1 tsp freshly ground cumin

2 tbsp paprika

1/2 tsp smoked paprika or pimenton

2-3 tbs harissa

4-5 fresh ripe tomatoes, diced

salt and pepper

6 eggs

1 tbs chopped parsley

Heat the olive oil on low. When it’s up to temp, stir in the sliced garlic- the oil should be hot enough to see some mild bubbles but not to sizzle the garlic too quickly. We’re trying to extract and mellow the garlic, not really fry it (if you’ve made aglio e olio properly, that’s the idea). Let the garlic cook for 10 minutes or so, giving it a stir now and then, until it’s soft and aromatic and oh-so-slightly golden. Then increase the heat to medium, add the cumin, paprika, and pimenton, and cook for a minute or so. Then add the harissa, cook for half a minute, and add the diced bell pepper. Cook while stirring until the pepper has softened a bit, then dump in the tomatoes. Salt generously, increase the heat to medium-high, and stir. Continue stirring from time to time to prevent burning and cook until the tomatoes are falling apart and the sauce has thickened a bit. Check for salt and seasoning- feel free to add some hot chile powder at this point if the harissa didn’t raise the heat level to where you want it.

Reduce the heat to a simmer, then using a large spoon, make a dent in the top of the sauce and crack in an egg. Repeat for the other five eggs, then cover the pan and cook until the whites are set, the top of the yolks has filmed over, but the yolks are still runny. Remove the pan from the stove, sprinkle the chopped parsley on top, then serve from the pan, sopping things up with nice crusty bread.

My great grandpa Itzhak would approve.

OK, I had a really great theme for this week. The best theme, really. But it got away from me because it led me down some unexpected paths which need to be researched carefully. And then I got high.

Jewsday will be back next week with my really great theme all finished. Sadly, no sex or Bible stories, but still, a really great theme, believe me.

 

Anyway, here’s a video to hold you for the next week.