rosh hashanah | pull up a chair

the new year calls for sweetness. the Jewish new year, i mean. it’s encoded, in fact, in the Talmud, the nearly-as-old-as-time, all-you-need-to-know guide to living Jewishly, a sacred compendia of rabbinic discourse, debate, and back-and-forth covering ancient teachings, law, and theology, and it gets down to the nitty gritty of what to eat when, and certainly on Rosh Hashanah, one of the highest of the high holy days. it’s spelled out, right there in tractate Keritot 6a (truth be told, i am not quite sure what a tractate is, but i’m surmising it’s something like a bullet point), where a certain sage named Abaye in the second century suggests that eating certain foods might bring on good things in the new year (this might explain the thinking behind the famous sheet cake scene with tina fey from saturday night live*). these sacred foods for the new year are called simanim, and while the Talmud explicitly names fenugreek, dates, leeks, and beets, it merely points broadly to sweetness. honey wended its way into the Rosh Hashanah traditions way back in the seventh century. which means the jews have kept the bees in business for a long, long time. and the dipping of apples in honey is a tradition that waited till the 16th century, which means we’ve been dipping now for 500 years.

and i realize i am steering well off course here, but i find myself in a rabbinic hole of infinite delight and must let you know that jews, known as lovers of wordplay, have prayers to accompany each of those prescribed foods (derived from the shared linguistics in the hebrew root), and the way it worked was that the particular prayer was prayed, followed by the eating of said foods, and this whole shebang was known as the simanim seder. here are a few of the foods and the prayers they inspired:

personally, i think we should all be loading up on dates and beets. but now i am really off in the ditch, and shall return myself to more linear thinking. . .

we were musing about honey, or at least i was. and since this is ultimately going to be a story about honey cake, i’m in the midst of explaining how we got there. how i wound up shoving a bundt pan of sumptuous honey-doused batter into my unreliable but deeply lovable ancient commercial-grade oven.

i tend to be someone who gloms onto traditions. and, given that these days, i spend a lot of time musing about time and the passing of years, i was suddenly struck—even though i am the farthest thing from a baker—with the question of whether there was some heirloom recipe for the holiday that i might have been missing. so i struck out to the best family baker, my brilliant and beloved sister-in-law brooke of the upper east side, and before the text with the query could possibly have registered in her wee little phone, she shot back the recipe she’s been baking for years. she noted that it was a super hit, and she noted that it was a family heirloom not in the traditional since, as her mother/my mother-in-law staked her claim to feminism by not knowing her way about the kitchen, and thus might not have baked in her life, dear brooke had made it a family tradition, one that secured its position the very first year she baked it when all that was left was a plate full of crumbs.

that’s all the convincing i needed, so i (practically as inept a baker as my late, great, mother-in-law) leapt aboard. i wheeled my grocery cart wildly through the store, plucking spices off shelves, fresh-squeezed OJ from the cooler, stocking up on fresh bags of flour, baking soda, baking powder (for the ones currently on my shelves had likely turned to clay, the subjects of years of idle waiting), and i set myself to baking. words being more my thing, i immediately gave it a name, this honey cake of famed repute. since dear brooke had clued me in its familial origins with this trademark hilarious note —”Considering that Mom’s recipe for the New Year was attending someone else’s party, this is our (1 generation = me) tradition.”—i immediately dubbed it Gen One Honeycake, and so it’ll stick. i also informed my boys they’d best follow along, for it was now incumbent upon them and their children’s children to crank the ovens every Rosh Hashanah, and pull out the whiskey and OJ.

excuse me, you say? where does the whiskey come in, and why are we talking cocktails so early in the morning? well, this famed honey cake, so dense it shall bulk your biceps as you ferry it to the table, is loaded: whiskey (or rye), OJ, a cup of coffee, a cup of honey, and a shuk‘s worth of spices. (a shuk is the israeli name for an open-air spice market)

aunt brooke continued, holding my hand (long-distance) the very whole way:

“It’s Marcy Goodman’s honey cake and it’s a fan favorite. Use the whiskey and use the sliced almonds in the recipe. And if you have whole wheat flour, sub in 1/2 c wheat flour for 1/2 c white flour. Make it in a tube pan. It’s a big dense cake.”

much to my amazement i found it pure delight to stand at the counter dumping in this and that, and stirring as directed. as the smell rose from the bowl, i began to understand the soothing powers of baking. and now wonder if it’s seductive enough—and sufficiently sedative—to carry me through the next 1212 days (inauguration 2029).

because my oven is, as i’ve mentioned, a recalcitrant behemoth, i’ve no idea whether it rose to the necessary 350-degrees Fahrenheit, and suspect it was probably my fault that the cake, despite its extra five minutes in the oven, decided to collapse round the middle (a flub fixed first by dumping extra almond slivers into the hole, and then duly disguised by brooke’s suggestion of stuffing the hole with rosemary sprigs, which i happened to have growing out back).

by the time i carried it to the table, where eager forks awaited, i felt my chest puffing out just a bit, swelled with pride at picking up the family slack. we now have ourselves a tradition. and my boys, by edict of their mother, shall carry it on, far into the next and the next and the next generation. may it always be so.

with no further ado, for i’ve tarried long enough here, i offer you the famed aunt brooke gen one honey cake, courtesy of one marcy goldman, reigning queen of the honey cake whoever she is. the version here was posted on deb perelman’s smitten kitchen site, and comes along with notes at the end, worth reading for their spicy humor.

Gen One Honeycake, from famed family baker BJKR, courtesy deb perelman’s Smitten Kitchen, courtesy marcy goldman (a cake with lineage!)

SERVINGS: 16
TIME: 20 MINUTES TO ASSEMBLE; 1 HOUR TO BAKE
SOURCE: MARCY GOLDMAN’S TREASURE OF JEWISH HOLIDAY BAKING
See Notes about recipe changes at the end of the recipe.

3 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons (445 grams) all-purpose flour (see Note)
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder (see Note)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt (see Note)
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup (200 grams) vegetable or another neutral oil
1 cup (320 grams) honey
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (110 grams) light or dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (235 grams) warm coffee or strong tea (I use decaf)
1/2 cup (120 grams) fresh orange juice, apple cider, or apple juice
1/4 cup (60 grams) rye or whiskey, or additional juice
1/2 cup (50 grams) slivered or sliced almonds (optional)

Pan size options: This cake fits in two (shown here) or three loaf pans; two 8-inch square or two 9-inch round cake pans; one 9- or10-inch tube or bundt cake pan; or one 9 by 13 inch sheet cake.
Prepare pans: Generously grease pan(s) with non-stick cooking spray. Additionally, I like to line the bottom and sides of loaf pans with parchment paper for easier removal. For tube or angel food pans, line the bottom with parchment paper, cut to fit.
Heat oven: To 350°F.
Make the batter: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Make a well in the center, and add oil, honey, granulated sugar, brown sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee, juice, and rye. [If you measure your oil before the honey, it will be easier to get all of the honey out.]
Using a strong wire whisk or in an electric mixer on slow speed, stir together well to make a well-blended batter, making sure that no pockets of ingredients are stuck to the bottom.
Spoon batter into prepared pan(s). Sprinkle top of cake(s) evenly with almonds, if using. Place cake pan(s) on two baking sheets, stacked together (which helps the cakes bake evenly and makes it easier to rotate them on the oven rack).
Bake the cake(s): Until a tester inserted into a few parts of the cake comes out batter-free, about 40 to 45 minutes for a round, square, or rectangle cake pan; about 45 to 55 minutes for 3 loaf pans; 55 to 65 minutes for 2 loaf pans (as shown), and 60 to 75 minutes for tube pans.
Cool cake: On a rack for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan. However, I usually leave the loaves in the pan until needed, as they’re unlikely to get stuck.
Do ahead: This cake is fantastic on day one but phenomenal on days two through four. I keep the cake at room temperature covered tightly with foil or plastic wrap. If I want to bake the cakes more than 4 days out, I’ll keep them in the fridge after the first 2 days. If you’d like to bake them more than a week in advance, I recommend that you freeze them, tightly wrapped, until needed. Defrost at room temperature for a few hours before serving.

Notes:
Size: These days, I bake this cake in two filled-out loaves, as shown, instead of 3 more squat ones. My loaf pans hold 6 liquid cups; they’re 8×4 inches on the bottom and 9×5 inches on the top; if yours are smaller, it might be best to bake some batter off as muffins, or simply use the 3-loaf option.
Flour: After mis-measuring the flour many years ago and baking the cake with 2 tablespoons less flour and finding it even more plush and moist, I’ve never gone back. The recipe now reflects the lower amount.
Baking powder: The original recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of baking powder, but I found that this large amount caused the cake to sink. From 2011 through 2023, I recommended using 1 teaspoon instead. But, after extensive testing this year, I’ve found that a higher amount — 1 3/4 teaspoons — keeps this cake perfectly domed every time, and even more reliably than the 1-teaspoon level.
Salt: The original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon but I prefer 1 teaspoon.
Liquids: This is address the question that comes up in at least 30% of the 1115 comments to date: “What can I use instead of whiskey?” and/or “What can I use instead of coffee?” The original trifecta of liquids in this cake [coffee, orange juice, and whiskey] is unusual and wonderful together, and I still think the perfect flavor for this cake. But if you want to omit the whiskey, simply use more orange juice or coffee. If you want to omit the coffee, simply use tea. If you don’t want to use tea, use more juice. If you don’t want to use orange juice, my second choice liquid here would be apple cider (the fresh, not the fermented, kind), followed by apple juice.
Apples and honey: It’s a whole thing!
Sweetness: The recipe looks like it would taste assaulting sweet but you must trust me when I say it doesn’t. But, if you reduce the sugar, any one of them, you will have a cake that’s more dry. You can still dial it back, but do understand what the adjustment can do to the recipe.
Flavor: Finally, this is every bit as much of a spice cake as it is a honey cake. Honey isn’t the most dominant flavor, but it’s one of many here that are harmonious and wonderful together. It smells of fall in a way that a simmer pot of $60 candle could never. I hope you get obsessed with it too.

that’s it, sweet friends. certain we could all use a little sweetness at this turn in the year, where did you find sweetness this week?

*as promised, the tina fey sheet cake scene. (nod to faithful chair reader sharon of twin cities!)

15 Comments

October 4, 2024

tefillah (תפילה) for a sweet new year in the season of awe

it is the soft dawn of a new year here, the jewish new year, an ancient calendar i’ve been drawn into, enfolded by, graced by, for all the decades since i met my beloved. he was the one who caught my eye back in the long ago, leaving the newsroom before sundown on friday nights to go to synagogue. i was moved by that devotion. leaving the newsroom on a friday night, back in the days when the big fat sunday newspaper was being “put to bed,” all the sections laid out, the stories edited, photos cropped and captioned, leaving the newsroom before deadline on a friday night meant you were breaking a mold. and you’d better have had a very good reason.

he broke my mold, all right, that tall bespectacled fellow loping toward the door. broke open a love of sacred creation, broke open an ancient text, the poetries and prayers that rose from the rocky, dusty, sometimes fertile terrain of a land indeed holy.

it would be a couple years before i found out the reason the bespectacled fellow was heading out to synagogue early on those friday nights: that was the hour of the singles’ shabbat service. he was looking to meet a nice jewish girl, and theirs was the six o’clock service. oh, well. that didn’t quite work the way he’d intended.

nor did i ever expect to be so deeply entwined with the religion of ancient ancient times. though there were hints. way back in high school, i asked a jewish friend of mine if i could come to her family’s seder, the passover meal at which the story of the exodus is told and retold. she answered that her family didn’t really mark the occasion, but maybe that year they’d make an exception. so there i was at their table, turning the pages of the exodus story, searching for the hidden matzah at the end of the meal. i came back year after year.

and all these years later, i’m the one who opens the jewish cookbook as the holidays near. over the arc of time, we’ve inscribed customs into the trace of the year: rosh hashanah, the new year, is when lamb stew (a middle-eastern iteration with chickpeas, and raisins, and apples and rice) is on the stove, though this year, just the two of us, we opted for the modern-day jewish classic, chicken marbella from the silver palate cookbook.

i crack open the prayer book too. crack it open weeks and weeks ahead of time, for the prayers are what draw me deep into the currents of the great river of judaism. awaken me to the mysteries and sumptuous beauties all around. remind me to see the miraculous in the most ordinary: the dust mote wafting by, the shadow of a tree, the call to pray “in the moments when light and darkness touch.” sometimes it’s the language, a simple line chiseled over time, that breaks me wide open, like this one: “prayer is our attachment to the utmost.”

let that one filter in…

sometimes i think my blessing is that i am still new to all this, so the way the words are unspooled is still fresh enough to catch my attention, my breath. i am often the one quietly gasping in the pews. or here at my kitchen table.

one last thing before i unfurl my prayer, my tefillah, for the new year: the other night at synagogue, just before the prayer for healing, the rabbi told of a midrash taught over time. she began by pointing to the eternal light that hangs above the arc where the Torah scrolls are kept. she noted that in the ancient temples the light that burned was from a wick floating in oil, specifically olive oil, the only oil allowed to burn in the eternal light. and then she went on to talk about the olive, the abundant small but ubiquitous fruit of the hillsides of the holy land. she noted that the oil from an olive is released only when it’s pressed, and crushed. and then, in that majestic humble way of hers, she taught us a lesson i’ll never forget: “when the olive is crushed it’s brightest light comes forth.”

ponder that the next time you feel the world pressing in from all sides, when you feel crushed. your brightest light might soon be burning.

here is my prayer for the new year. . .

tefillah for a sweet new year in the season of awe…

O One who robes this world in threads of crimson and bronze, who reaches in the paint pot for persimmon, goldenrod, and concord grape, the palette of autumn ablaze,

under newborn moon, under deep black dome of night, i bend my knees and pray…

i ask for blessing abundant. i ask stingily, you might think.

but then, you look around the world, see the tally from which i draw, and realize i’m barely beginning.

i pray first for forgiveness, for the sins of this selfish, self-obsessed culture of course, but more immediately and closer to the bone, for the sins of my own failings: my unwillingness to stray too far beyond the comfortable, to not muster the radical courage to cut a bold swath, to heal what’s deeply broken; for my inability to see my own blind spots; for the flippant dismissals i sometimes make too quickly; for being afraid, to the point that it occludes my seeing and breathing, my being.

i pray for peace, peace of nations and peace of each unsettled heart.

i pray for wisdom to discern that which lasts and that which crumbles over time.

i pray for grace which i define as radiance that will not fade in the face of shadow, will not step aside when life inflicts sharp elbow.

i pray for the hand that reaches out to dry the tears of the one whose cheeks are splotted, streaked, and sodden. even when, especially when, those cheeks belong to a someone we do not know. yet the simple presence of those tears signals how deep, how stinging, the hurt must be, the pain. i pray for the woman who sat beside me at synagogue and could not stanch her tears.

i pray for those who go through life fists clenched, driven by a fury that won’t allow unfurling. won’t release the tendons taut, won’t uncoil the hands God gave so we could do the work of loving, of reaching, and cradling in times of turbulence and tumult.

i pray for the echo of laughter’s peals rising from the kitchen tables, the diner counters, the park benches, those flat plains where good souls congregate to dig down deep and tell their stories.

i pray for morning light to rush in before eyelids flutter open so that when they do all is golden, nearly blinding, in its insistence to start the day awash in luminescence.

i pray for mothers who buried their children this week. i pray for the papas whose hearts were hollowed by deaths too soon, too impossibly inexplicable. i pray for memory to fill in the cracks, to begin to piece together the jagged edges of the shattered vessel that is the grieving heart.

i pray and i pray for the children––afraid, broken, scared out of their wits, looking into a night sky not for stars but for rockets’ red glare.

i pray for silence from the bombs and the hell screech of rockets.

i pray for those pummeled by rain — be it the rain of those rockets or the deluge of storm and hurricane winds.

i pray we see You in the sparks that animate the woods, the streams, the darkened skies. i pray that all the cosmos becomes as if a light-catching prism of holy wonder and wild astonishment that points to the One Creator God.

i pray we see You, too, in the gentle murmur of kindness, of tenderness, of heavenly mercy that is certain trace of Holy Presence.

i pray, dear holy, holy God, for these days of awe to fuel us for the long winter to come. let us stock the larder, fill the shelves that line the walls of heart and soul. let us go forth, each and every blessed day, fully awake to the miracle of those we love, and those we don’t yet know whose lives, like ours, contain untold tragedy as well as untrumpeted triumph, and whose wholeness any day just might depend on the goodness of those who do not pass them by unnoticed.

amen. and thank you.

what lines would you add to our prayer, communally or privately?

the gull above is diving into lake michigan to gather up a chunk of bread one of us has tossed into the water, a symbolic casting of our sins into the lake in an act of absolution.

the line, “prayer is our attachment to the utmost,” is from rabbi abraham joshua heschel, and the full line is: “unless we aspire to the utmost, we shrink to inferiority. prayer is our attachment to the utmost.”

24 Comments

September 18, 2020

since the beginning, awe

across the years, i’ve been swept into the river of an ancient time. i wear it, almost, like a prayer shawl. wrap myself in its silken threads. inhale the sweet spice rising up from earth’s release, as summer breathes its final breaths and autumn rushes in.

it’s in the morning air, the chill that makes me pull the covers tight round my shoulders; it’s in the thin bronze light that casts its amber shadow, long across the floorboards. it’s in the withering of the garden, the last green tomato clinging, holding on for just another ray of sunlight. will it turn before the freeze?

all around, you can feel the shuddering of season folding into season, of the turning of the prayer book page.

when the new moon, in its indigo darkness, rises tonight, a holy people — the blessed jews — all around the globe will spark the first flames of the new year’s light in the kindling of the rosh hashanah candles. i will strike the match at this old house. and only two of us will bless the light, the wine, the spiraled raisin-studded challah.

we need the new year prayers more than ever, this gasping year. the burned-out brokenness is everywhere, the globe (or vast acres of it anyway) is shrouded in ashes, a more fitting metaphor it’s hard to imagine.

hope though comes in prayer — and, spine-tingly, in the science that tells us there are forest pines whose seeds can only burst new life when exposed to flame. may our prayers be those forest seeds.

prayer, for me, has become something of a force field. we fire up our deep-down jet-pack of incantation; we might, some of us, fall to our knees (a posture sure to super-launch those prayers, to propel with oomph through all the turbulence along the way). we do our part, our lowly simple part. and we realize that the more of us who fire up our prayers, the more fiercely, more mightily we put forth our voices, we just might forge an opening in heaven’s door, and our petitions — our saying we are so so sorry for the state of things, our vow to spend our living, breathing hours in pursuit of all that’s good, that’s holy — might find the way to the heart of the God to whom we are praying. it’s a collective effort, really, an all-out, all-of-us campaign to light the light, to open up the spigot of holy goodness, to let it rain down on this parched and burned-out earth.

there’s an ancient teaching, taught by long-ago rabbis and mystics, that in the beginning the light God made was so blindingly bright, it burst out of its vessel, and the shards, the sparks, the bits of flame sifted down to all creation — not unlike the embers raining down in all the smoldering forests, maybe. and from that shattering of the vessel came the first and holiest instruction, the one to carry all of humankind from that day forward: seek the shards of light, look deep into the souls of each and every someone you meet, look into the morning’s dew and the constellations strewn across the heavens, look where you least expect to find the shard, and in those places where you can’t help but see it.

and when you find it, when you gather up the bits and shards, bring your light harvest to the table, where we will all lay down our gleanings, where we will stand back and marvel. in awe. in awe for what we’ve all done, all on our own and all together. in awe for all the light that’s here to be pulled from the shadows and the darkness. in awe of how luminous it might be.

awe is what these days are called — the holy days of awe — in the great and holy tradition that unfolds at the cusp of the jewish new year. from tonight’s setting of the sun and the rising of the new moon, clear through to ten days from now, on the day of atonement, we stand in awe. we marvel at the light, holy light, that’s mustered from all the cracks and broken places in this still-holy, ever-holy earth.

it’s how we heal the world, how we make it whole — tikkun olum — repair the broken shattered world. it’s God’s command. and we begin to sew it whole with our prayer, our harvest of the light, and our undying awe.

will you join the prayer collective, do your bit to scrounge up shards of light wherever you go today, and tomorrow, and every day after? will you bring your bits of light to the shared table, so we can all of us stitch together the whole cloth of incandescence this broken world so deeply desperately needs?

9 Comments

September 7, 2018

improbably, the prayer shawl

a triptych of prayer shawls: three generations wrapped in sacred thread

it’s as if the voice calls to me from an ancient canyon, a hallowed space carved through time and history. the history of this perpetually-spinning planet and its holy peoples, and, now, the history that is mine, carved across the years.

i yearn to wrap myself in the folds of the prayer shawl. to cloak my shoulders, burrow my arms, to bend my knees and bow down in the way i have long watched my prayerful beloved. a part of me, yes, aches to be enfolded, to feel the soft threads against my bare skin, but more against my heart. to be swept into the incantations of long ago and forever. to confess and call out to the God who is Avinu Malkeinu, “loving parent, Sovereign of our souls,” in the translation of our synagogue’s new prayer book.

i immerse myself in this span of holy time — the days of awe, rosh hashanah, the jewish new year, through to yom kippur, the day of deepest atonement — as if a tide pool that washes over and through me. it’s at once a cleanse and elevation, a surrender to another key, a frequency and melody and language that carries me to another plane. an otherworldly plane.

and yet, it’s one that comes on and through the worldliest of channels: the trip to the butcher shop, the spice jars pulled from the shelves. the chopping and stirring at the kitchen counter. the strolling through the garden, cutting stems to tuck in wide-mouthed jars and pitchers strewn across the table. the gathering of pomegranates, apples, acorns — sweet fruits of the new year, blessed offerings of the season of sacred bounty.

i have always loved the whole-body immersion of judaism, the ancient call to prayerfulness, the stories set in desert and dry land, the image of the sacred quenching that comes through the oasis, the raining down of sustenance from heaven, the voice that calls out, unseen but deeply heard.

these days i seem to be wrapping myself in all sorts of unfamiliar sacred threads, in threads finer-grained in their unfamiliarity, because their language is new to me, the constructions of sentences, the word choice, the tales they choose to tell. i’ve been going all summer to a just-past-dawn service in an episcopal chapel, one presided over and preached by women. wise women. soulful women. women priests.

it is a soul-stirring thing in the landscape of religion to walk into an unfamiliar place, to listen to the unfolding of an unfamiliar script, to feel each word and gesture as if new (because to me it is new). and thus to feel it so deeply fully.

it’s the element of exposure. the eyes-open willingness to surrender. to submit to that which by definition is foreign, uncharted, able to come up and grasp you, unsuspecting. nothing’s dulled; it’s all bristling, and stands at full alert. you never know what might be around the next bend. and thus you enter wide-eyed, scanning. catching every shift and nuance, passing through the sieve of your soul as if the first rinse.

so it’s always been for me in the folds of judaism, the religion i’ve stepped into because my heart and soul pulled me toward this man who is my beloved, my much-tested companion on this long journey called our married life. i feel it wholly because it’s new to me in so many ways, and now, 30 years after i first stepped — quaking — into my then-beau’s synagogue, its refrains come washing over me with decades of resonance. i find my place, i pull familiar threads round my shoulders, taut against my heart. i am cloaked and covered, kept safe, and free to burrow deep inside, to pore over the holy text, to consider prayers and, most of all, the image of the God who puts pause to the mad dash of the everyday. who awaits our urge to surrender. to bow down and pay attention. to hold high the sanctified blessing of the gifts that abound at the cusp of this new and holy year.

in the cry of the shofar, the coiled ram’s horn that calls out the new year. in the minor chords that rise up from our soul’s deepest depths. in the warm notes of spices saved for now. and in the prayers unfurled in each day of the days to come…..

i find my shelter and my refuge, my call to courage, and the certain whisper of the Most Holy. here, in the soft folds and sacred threads, i pull the prayer shawl round my shoulders. improbably, i tumble toward my heart’s deepest resonance.

l’shanah tovah u’metukah — may it be a good and sweet new year…

have you ventured into a sacred landscape that at first was unfamiliar, and did it sharpen all your senses, and draw you deeper into some universal understanding, some fine-grained sense of holy truths?

p.s. my friday mornings these days include a drive to the far side of this little town to drop my sweet boy off at the faraway high school campus where he is shepherding the new freshmen into their high school adventures. this puts a bit of a pause in my morning writing, and thus delays its arrival in your mailbox, if you’re one who receives this by e-post. apologies for the delay, but this is my last chance, my last year, of dropping my sweet boy at the schoolhouse door, and i am relishing every drop of it. (even the days when we are running late and i am not quite as “chill” as he wishes me to be….)

16 Comments

September 10, 2010

stirring sweetness

the beautiful thing about leaping into a religion that’s not your own, is there is no rule book.

well, there might be a tome or two on the shelves, but when you’re inventing, you often concoct as you go.

oh, sure you ask zillions of questions, you turn to the texts, pore over pages, searching for answers. but plenty of times, you go with the zeitgeist and, frankly, you wing it.

and so it was i bounded out of bed yesterday morn, on the dawn of the new year, rosh hashanah, and set out to make rosh hashanah bread pudding.

now, nowhere in the cookery books will you find such a sweet and pudding-y dish. there is no step-by-step guide to a sweeter morning than the usual cornflakes and cow’s milk.

ah, but like many a someone embracing something that’s new, that’s just a touch foreign, exotic, i can’t get enough.

give me a rosh hashanah prayer about morning stars and particles of dust floating on the wind, and i am swooning in my pew, thinking to myself, by jove, they’re talking to me, those ancient hebrew poets, the ones who thousands of years ago carved out these words to speak to my heart, here in the waistband of america, where leaves are just starting to rumble with thoughts of shedding their greens, too early just yet to unfurl great bolts of color.

truth is i tingle, through and through, here in these days of downright awe.

i am not a jew. but i love a jew. married him. bore our children. am raising those children in a house that is bathed in the best of two great and rather old faiths: we are catholic and jewish.

and this time of year, in these sacred golden-dripping days of awe, i cannot get enough of a whole-body immersion.

i am cooking it. praying it. setting the table with it. poring over the verses with it. inhaling every last drop of it.

everywhere i turn, there is awe. and it is sweet.

let’s start with the light: have you noticed the great kaleidoscope that is the turning of season has cranked it just to the north a notch, and now the sunbeams that hit us are amber molasses, tinged with spoonfuls of honey?

why yes, they drip on my bed pillows, my pages, my old creaky floorboards.

and then there’s that charge in the air, the one that has us un-sashing the windows, pulling back shutters, clearing the way so that cool night breezes might billow in, that air that seems at last purer and crisper, more certain to clear out our lungs from all the sticky still jungle air that took hold in the long hot summer.

but mostly, there are the prayers and the knowing now what i’ve always known: this is sacred time, new time, time that deeply matters. the days when our steps are counted, our deeds recorded, our fates inscribed in the holiest book.

God is paying attention, rapt attention, and so too must we.

thus, as if to upholster the year, to tilt it toward sweetness the whole way through, we stir it in in great dollops. a handful of raisins here. a bee-bumped macintosh chopped and grated over there.

we are watching as honey drools from a spoon. and wiping smudges, sticky, off from the table.

tonight this old house will be filled. the table as crowded as it knows how to be. if we could have layers of table, we would. i would invite everyone i have ever loved, and then some.

and just as the sun slips over the ledge and sacred twilight comes, having stirred the stews all night, and having set out my grandma’s silver, and the glasses of cobalt blue, i will strike a match and kindle the lights.

i will call on the legions of saints and angels who march behind me wherever i go. i will call on rachel and leah and rebekah.

i will look over (not down anymore, for the top of my head no longer makes it even to the cusp of his shoulders) at my firstborn, and gulp back the tear that comes with knowing he’ll not be home next year, or for years to come for that matter, on these sweetest of days upon days.

i will be humbled and filled all at once. will marvel that i, a deep quiet catholic, was somehow swept into the river that bathes me so richly, so wholly, so anciently. calling me back to where i must have once begun.

i count myself among the blessed, the ones who are stirred by the ancient hebrew poets, a people who marked time by the stirrings on the bough and in the field. who kept time by the heavens, the night star and moon. i read these rosh hashanah prayers through dual lenses, and in them i find such powerful majesty, such knee-buckling knowing of the intricacies of the human heart. today this meander is merely an unspooling, no deep lesson or question, other than this: what is it of this time of year that heightens in you a deep sense of awe, no matter your religion?

p.s. that rosh hashanah bread pudding? nothing more to it than torn-up bits of the night before’s raisin-studded challah, with a fat granny smith grated into it, along with a handful of even more raisins and cranberries (why stop when studding your pudding?) i had promised rosh hashanah bread pudding to my little one who loves a good reason to leap out of bed. and thus, once stirred from my dreams, i had little choice but to come up with a version that lived up to the promise.

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pull up a chair

Tag: rosh hashanah

September 26, 2025

turn to sweetness