A Romance With Food

"Ice cream was the secret ingredient in Aunt Molly's rugelach. Oy! Were they fantastic". "But what about my grandmother’s brisket, it melted in your mouth". Such are the recollections of food whenever Jews get together, usually around a sumptuous meal. I overheard this conversation recently. "How was your Seder?" "Great, they started with matzo ball soup, homemade gefilte fish and the main course was roast chicken with matzo farfel stuffing. Not a word about the Seder.

We have both a fascination and romance with food more than any other ethnic group I know. Cooking for Shabbat in some households begins early in the week, every week. Kitchen aromas beckon us, as roasts and kugels warm in the oven. Often, before Pesach women are chopping, dicing, sautéing and baking, weeks before the big meal. We celebrate the major life cycle events--the baby naming, the bar/bat mitzvah, and the wedding reception--with a festive meal. Is all this effort simply religious observance or are there deeper spiritual implications?

Jewish customs dictate certain foods for each holiday: latkes at Chanukah, dairy at Shavuot and apples with honey for the New Year; Shabbat would not be complete without challah and gefilte fish. Each holiday brings with it the flavors of the customary foods.  But no meal should be eaten without invoking the proper blessing before the meal and the grace after the meal. These blessings are supposed to transport us to a more subtle level of understanding that distinguishes eating in a spiritual state from "fressing", Yiddish for eating unconsciously. When blessings are said before and after a meal with the proper intention, eating becomes a contemplative exercise, a meditation. Just as we can reflect on a candle flame or a melody, we can focus our attention on eating. By opening our awareness to the experience of slowly chewing and tasting our food we can transform eating into an act of worship.

By paying careful attention to the food we eat, we can appreciate our connection to the universe. Each morsel we taste reflects the droplets of moisture and the rays of solar warmth that sprouted the grain, the vegetables and the fruit. Imagine how farmers harvested the crop and brought it to market, so that food processors could convert it into edible products for our tables. We can also appreciate how each mouthful we swallow gets converted into usable energy that enables us to perform our daily chores and God's work.

We should understand food beyond its role as physical sustenance; food is also our best medicine. Each one of the innumerable food products, we have available to us, contains a unique combination of nutrients, essential to our health.  Beyond the macronutrients--carbohydrate, protein and fat--in every natural food; there lies some combination of micronutrients--vitamins and other important organic substances--that operate synergistically and found only in whole foods. No one knows for sure, but there is evidence that many of our major diseases result from a lack of some necessary component in our diets.

What is Jewish food? I often wonder that myself. I used to attend business meetings at the now defunct Concord Hotel that maintained a strictly kosher kitchen. Non-Jews were often seated at the same dining table with other Jews, in the enormous, ornately festooned dining room. At a meat meal when someone asked for butter, they got margarine; when they asked for cream they got the non-dairy version, thinking they got what they asked for. At one dinner, a few days into the meeting, someone at the table asked me, "When are they going to bring out the Jewish food?"

I can remember, from my growing up days, certain foods that were always on the table: gedempte fleisch (pot roast), borscht (cold beet soup) and mamaliga (corn meal mush, a Romanian staple). I never knew it was Jewish food. To me, it was just food.  But today, besides the Eastern European favorites, we've grown accustomed to the influx of foods from Israel. We consume a fair share of felafel (fried chickpea patties), hummus (pureed sesame dip) and pita, the pocket bread of the Middle East.

 What can we learn about our spiritual condition from what we eat? The laws of kashrut may not have any bearing on our physical soundness, but it certainly affects our spiritual connection. Cleanness or purity from a spiritual perspective contains the ability to perceive the presence of God, as opposed to impurities (emotional stuff like anger or fear) that shield our vision of the Divine. Summoning our will to eat according to the dietary laws helps us to recognize the impurities that hinder us from spiritual development.  The sole function, of the laws, is to distinguish between clean and unclean, not for our bodies, but for our souls.

Eating, like so many other mundane activities, contains the prospect for spiritual growth. Judaism sees even the most mundane acts as a means of gaining God consciousness. Through eating we may begin to foster our relationship with God.  The Torah presents us with the source material for our romance with food: the dietary laws, the holy food contribution for the Kohanim (the priestly class), and the sacrificial offerings; it's all about food. Is it any wonder that food enjoys such prominence among Jews everywhere? Bon appetit!