By Rivy Poupko Kletenik, JTNews Correspondent
It is a religion of food, this chewing over of our history at the seder. If religion is a blend of faith, belief and knowing, then food plays a teasingly sporadic starring role, emerging here and there with a responsibility seemingly beyond its humble countenance.
We ask a lot of the food we eat. We rarely expect it to be something as simple as filling the belly and fueling the body. We expect our food to entertain and to delight, to comfort and to soothe. On Seder night we ask our food to teach. We take the parsley dipped in salt water and invite it to remind us of the tears of the downtrodden. With bitter herbs in hand, we dip into the sweet charoset and learn how the slavery was bittersweet. And as we bite into the matzoh, we wait to taste the rushed reality of the dramatic escape from slavery.
Food as a teacher is not a novel thought. At the earliest of times, in Eden, God placed two extraordinary trees in the garden: one a tree of life, the other a tree of knowledge — good and bad. God warned Adam not to eat of them, but Eve looked at the tree of knowledge and understood it was not just a delight for the eyes, but a source of wisdom. She took hold of the fruit, offered it to Adam, and their eyes were opened. They saw their own nakedness and realized their profound vulnerability. Such is the knowledge of good and evil. I always wonder about this episode. Why is the fruit of the tree the conduit for knowledge, the vessel of wisdom? What is it about food that opens the eyes?
There is a story teachers tell about bread — from the wheat’s growth and harvest to the milling and grinding. They teach about the yeast and the kneading, the rising and the baking, about everything. Until they slice that loaf fresh from the oven, however, the students will not know bread. The knowing is in the eating. There is something deep and primal about the taking into one’s mouth, tasting, chewing and ingesting that informs like nothing else. Food teaches in a distinctive manner.
One month out of Egypt, deep in the desert, the people Israel were desperately hungry. They remembered the foods of Egypt with a fond but distorted, embellished memory that stung with the immediacy of pain and empty bellies. They demanded food, and God rained down manna from heaven. Its purpose was not simply to nourish the body, but to teach. The people saw the glory of God and knew that God heard them. They learned humans cannot live by bread alone, but by the word of the Lord. Such is the teaching nature of food: it informs our very belief in God, and we fill ourselves with nourishment.
Food has the power to affect us physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Our tradition has definite prescriptions about what we eat and how it is prepared. We have long dismissed notions of health as satisfying explanations for Kashrut. Reasons of discipline, separation and holiness resonate more powerfully.
Maimonides wrote that those who are careful about what they eat and follow the laws of kashrut will bring additional holiness and purity to their soul for the sake of Heaven fulfilling the command, “And you shall be holy because I am holy.”
This is an interesting marriage, the mundane nature of food and the lofty ideas of holiness. Food takes us by the hand and brings us closer to the sublime.
Not only do the foods that grace our tables lift us up, we may then take an additional step and imagine God’s own food. If God feeds us and if we are to walk in the way of God and imitate his ways, is there a possible reciprocal human feeding of God?
As far out and terrifying as this thought may be, it is nonetheless real. Metaphorically speaking, the offerings in sacrifices of old are known as food pleasing with aroma to satisfy God. As recorded in Numbers 28:2, “My food for My fires My satisfying aroma….”
The mystical Zohar tells us that “the offering brought to the Holy One was for the purpose of feeding the world and providing sustenance both for the upper and the lower worlds, inasmuch as the as the upper world moves in response to the lower world.” Our actions change the world. The foods we eat, the offerings we give change our small worlds of self as well as the large worlds way beyond.
Where are the offerings and the altars of today?
Our tradition tells us that gifts to the poor replace the offerings in the temple. The provisions placed before the needy who sit with us at our own seder tables have entered our homes long before we declare, “Let all who are hungry come and eat….” They shift our food from mere satisfaction of hunger to a nobility fit for God’s altar. Food teaches us we are not the only ones who are hungry.
The lessons we learn on Pesach are not limited to usual ones taught in classrooms and with books. They are the lessons told by parent to child with foods laid out and eaten with intent. The instruction is slowly digested and foods prepared with love and deliberation. It graces a table surrounded by family, friends and guests that catapult us back in time. That is certainly not all, however. Eating these foods creates a moment of in the present that alerts us to value freedoms. The hagaddah tells us to see ourselves as if we have come out of Egypt, slaves that have been set free. We feel it because we can taste it. We leave the seder table with the taste of the afikomen in our mouths, because perhaps it will lead us this year to dream of peace and freedom for all who are enslaved.
Rivy Poupko Kletenik is Director of Jewish Education Services of the Jewish Education Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
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