Fast Times

Why would anyone write about Yom Kippur in a blog about food? To discuss the break-the-fast, of course.

The problem is that I’m not much of a fan of late 20^th or early 21^st century break-the-fast celebrations. For one thing, I’m really don’t like the ubiquitous sweet noodle kugel. For another, after a day of fasting and spiritual contemplation, attending a party is the last thing I want to do – definitely far down the list from taking a bath and going to bed.

What bothers me the most is that, for too many Jews, the holiday has become more about the meal afterward than the fasting and prayer that come before. The tendency to end the fast early, often as much as two hours before sundown, is often related to someone’s desire to serve the break-the-fast meal at a more civilized time than well after 8 p.m.

It’s probably been a decade since I attended a break-the-fast and, as best as I can remember, I haven’t hosted one for at least 20 years. On that occasion, my friends and I didn’t dip into the whitefish salad until nearly 9 p.m., well after the prohibitions had lifted.

As an adult, I only remember enjoying one break-the-fast meal, and that was because it beautifully captured the spirit of the day instead of perverting it.

Shortly after we were married, Marc and I were invited to end the fast with a meal at the home of some close friends. Those friends, at the time, were in their late 70s or early 80s, and had a very different idea of “celebrating” the end of the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

The other guests, like our hosts, were old enough to be our parents, yet made us feel both welcome and cherished. The conversation was low-key but warm as befit the occasion. After all, we had just stood in judgment before the highest court imaginable and our fates had been decided, although we did not know the verdicts.

We were honored to be at a table with people with true wisdom. They understood how the sweetness and hardships of life work together to grow souls.

The meal started with a steaming bowl of cabbage borscht. Chunks of beef were enveloped in a tangy tomato soup filled with cabbage, beets and other vegetables. It tasted great and felt good going down. (My blood sugar also probably appreciated its slow rise rather than the kind of spike caused by sweet kugel.)

A plain but satisfying meal of roast chicken, potato and vegetables followed, Our hostess, who is still very much alive in her 90s, finished the meal with some homemade cake. Her husband, of blessed memory, led the blessing after the meal.

(To this day, when we recite the blessing after the meal, Marc and I both hear in our heads his southern-accented Hebrew. We feel privileged to have known him and to not be able to forget the sound of his voice in prayer.)

The entire meal took a little more than an hour, and we then headed home to the aforementioned showers and bed. We were full with dinner and friendship and ready to face the workday the next morning.

There is a time for celebrating after Yom Kippur, of course. It’s called Sukkot and starts four nights after the fast ends. Indeed, the holiday is often called, “the season of our joy.” The meals take place in specially-constructed booths from which you can view the sky and remember who provides far greater protection than a mere roof.

Sukkot is my favorite holiday, at least partly because it is a showcase for autumnal cuisine. This year, I won’t be cooking as much as usual because our friends have been so kind in inviting us to eat in their sukkahs.

So far, I’ve only made one dish for the holiday. It’s a version of cabbage soup, and, with fond memories of our friends who no longer live here, I plan to serve it with a side of friendship.

Calls and Matzo Balls

3 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashana


Matzo balls are cooking in a pot on the stove, 31 of them, to be exact. I’m hoping that will be enough for a Rosh Hashana lunch with 4-5 teen-aged boys.

None will be left over, I’m fairly sure, because after the first round of soup is eaten, a gangly mob usually surrounds the pot and finishes off everything that is left.

As soon as the matzo balls cook to fluffy perfection, I’ll refrigerate the soup mixture and head upstairs for a bath and a nap. With dinner beginning at 8:30 p.m. or so, after services, it will be a late night.

I’m looking forward to the festive meal with a combination of old and new friends. It makes me think of the rhyme I learned as a child, “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

If only….

If only we could keep the people we love, so every holiday isn’t as much about who is absent as who is present. That may sound a little sad, but I can’t stop thinking about the telephone call that won’t come today.

Just before Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Passover and Hannukah, my entire adult life, the telephone would ring and one of my oldest friends would be on the line. Some readers of my blog know her only as Potty; others recognize her as Earlene Fuquay.

She would wish me a happy holiday and then always ask the same two questions, “Are you going to see your sisters?” and when I said I was celebrating the holiday at home, “What are you cooking?”

Potty, along with my mother and Julia Child, was one of the three greatest influences on my cooking style. When I would tell her what was on the stove, she would begin reminiscing.

“Do you remember how good that cabbage soup smelled?” she would ask. “I could eat a bowl of that soup right now. Right now!”

Or, maybe, if it were around Passover, she would recall how she and Mom worked together to scour every cabinet and put the special dishes in place, or, around Hannukah, how they would fry up batch after batch of potato latkes.

In recent years, as she got older, Potty got a little confused sometimes, although her heart always remained in the right place. Last spring, she told me she had called my sister Susan at her business to wish her a happy holiday. She wasn’t there, so Potty told me she left a message with a young man to “tell Susan Happy Hannukah.”

I didn’t say anything, but she obviously meant “Happy Passover.”

“I don’t think he ever gave her the message,” she told me a few days later. “I don’t know why he didn’t tell her.”

I agreed that was a shame but couldn’t help laughing to myself at the thought of the young store clerk, puzzling over whether he should tell his boss that some old lady called to wish her Happy Hanukkah in March.

It’s true, her stated messages may have become less accurate over time or that, in recent years, she might call me twice and forget to call my sister Linda. But telephoning us before major Jewish holidays and on our birthdays was Potty’s way of keeping in touch, of remaining an integral part of our lives.

She also would call if we hadn’t picked up the telephone to talk to her for a few weeks. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” she would tell us.

Staying in contact was the same reason I sent her cards for her birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and Mother’s Day – and often called too. Potty was far more reliable than the U.S. Postal Service and would telephone me immediately to thank me for the cards, whether she received them in two days or two weeks.

Now, all of this is reminiscence.

Potty died unexpectedly in an automobile accident this summer. I know that is a strange way to describe the death of someone in her 80s, but she was in fairly good health and took excellent care of herself. Everyone expected to be at her 90th birthday party, even her 100th. I took it for granted that those holiday calls would continue for a long time.

Sometimes, I regret to say, I was even a bit irritated when the telephone rang while my hands were immersed in matzo ball mixture or while I was lugging a heavy pan of brisket from oven to counter. Maybe I even rushed her off the telephone a few times because the oven was beeping and my challah was about to burn.

But what wouldn’t I give for the telephone to ring today and to hear her voice again, even if she had just called to wish me Happy Passover in September.

The Tale of the Tablecloth

When I was girl, maybe 10 or 12, my Bubbie announced that it was time for her to begin embroidering my tablecloth.


By that point, she already had made table coverings for my two sisters and two other older female cousins. After me, there was one more female cousin, Colleen, who, at the time, was barely in elementary school.

(The exquisite green and purple tablecloth she made for my sister Susan made an exquisite Chuppah [marriage canopy] cover when my niece Shayle married her Todd last summer.)

Sitting in her bedroom, Bubbie showed me the linen cloth, stiff with starch and dotted with the design. She also laid out an array of threads in a rainbow of colors and asked me to choose which I wanted.

Being, even then, a fan of the classic and the tailored, I chose a silvery taupe.

Bubbie looked puzzled and asked if I was sure that was the color I wanted. I nodded my head yes. She shrugged her shoulders and said okay.

I always had been a bit of a mystery to my grandmother. As a child, I was as withdrawn and bookish as she was dramatic and flamboyant. There is no question that she used her bigger-than-life personality for good; she had an immigrant good citizenship award from the Daughters of the American Revolution to prove it. Bubbie just found it easier to relate to her grandchildren with personalities more similar to her own.

To her credit, she had given me a choice and I had chosen a brownish-gray color. So, that’s what it would be.

The tablecloth turned out to be beautiful. The thread shimmers next to white china and gleaming silver. It also has served me well my entire life, looking as appropriate for a 56-year-old as it did for a 26-year-old. It clearly is one of the best gifts I ever received.

So, why am I telling this story the day before Rosh Hashana, when the Jewish New Year begins. One obvious answer is that Bubbie’s gift already is draped across my dining room table, ready for my guests the first night of the holiday.

There’s a lot more to the story, however.

That very tablecloth, created to be part of my trousseau when I married, played an important role in my engagement and subsequent marriage to Marc. It clinched the deal, so to speak, when we imagined ourselves to be beshert .

Beshert is one of the most overused and misunderstood terms in Jewish life. It refers back to a Talmudic passage that 40 days prior to the formation of the fetus, a Heavenly voice comes down from Above and decrees who is to be mated with whom..

Spending all of one’s life searching for your beshert would probably assure you a long spinsterhood or bachelorhood. Many couples marry because they see potential in each other and, with lots of love and hard work, have a very successful partnership. It may not have been love at first site for most people, but it created a tremendously satisfying relationship anyway.

After my first marriage ended, I certainly was not looking for my beshert. I wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to marry again.

Then, one Saturday in synagogue, I saw this man carrying the Torah. He had a kind face and was wearing a gray Brooks Brothers suit. It was the Shabbos between Yom Kippur and Sukkos, and I actually had prayed for guidance in my love life.

The man looked and me and I looked at him. It was as if we had known each other forever.

I wondered if that was the man the rabbi had told me about. As we had walked to his house on Yom Kippur, the rabbi had told me that he had met a man named Marc who seemed to be the male version of me. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I was intrigued.

Due to a confusing set of circumstances, Marc and I did not meet that first Sabbath we saw each other. We actually were introduced a few days later, the first day of Succos, inside of a booth that symbolizes the holiday. I didn’t like him at all.

He came across as a know-it-all, and he made it very clear that he had no interest in being traditionally religious. (I found that puzzling because, usually, the only Jews who show up for services on Succos, are either religious or interested in becoming so.)

That day, I went to some friends’ house for a holiday lunch. The other diners were two men with their children; in both cases, their wives had to work that day. They asked about my dating prospects but I didn’t tell them about the guy I had met. I truly thought nothing would come of it.

The next day, I spotted Marc across the sanctuary. He was sitting next to a woman and chatting with her. Inexplicably, I was jealous.

At the light meal after the service, he made his way across the crowd to talk to me. He mentioned that he had met a woman in services; she was in town with her husband for her conference and wanted to go to synagogue for the holiday.

I’m not sure why, but I was relieved.

Marc showed up for the entire string of holidays and by the time Simchas Torah had passed, we had made a date for a movie.

The movie was a Coen brothers flick called Barton Fink. It was kind of dark and disturbing. We both liked it a lot.

As we talked, we found a surprising number of commonalities. My close friend in college at Emory had been his close friend when he went to the Georgia Governor’s Honors program as a high-schooler. His former business partner was the father of my work colleague and friend. We had often attended the same movies at the same theaters on the same Sunday afternoons and had both shown up regularly for the delivery of the Sunday New York Times at a local bookshop.

And it went on and on.. What was nice, of course, is that we knew so many people in common that I didn’t worry that I would later find out he was a psychopathic ax murderer.

When we went back to my house and looked through my record albums (yes, it was a very different time and place), he was amazed that I had such a large collection of both Ella Fitzgerald and Stephen Sondheim, his favorites. Indeed, I may have been the first person he’d ever met who really loved Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.

We began dating and, on the third date barely a week later, talked about getting married. There just seemed to be too many coincidences. Maybe, just maybe, we were meant to be.

One Friday night, we invited guests to my house to join us for a Sabbath meal. Marc was helping me cook and prepare.

I opened the drawer and pulled out Bubbie’s tablecloth. I told him how I had picked the color as a child.

He started laughing, and I thought he was amused because I had been so precocious in my taste.

That wasn’t it. A few days later, he came to my house carrying a dry cleaner bag. In it were freshly cleaned and starched linen napkins. They had been painstakingly embroidered by his mother. The pattern was very similar to my tablecloth and the thread….well, the thread was a silvery taupe.

My future mother-in-law, Erika, of blessed memory, had made them when Marc was a child.

Marc and I married in a traditionally Jewish ceremony a few months later, just after the holiday of Passover.

We’ll be using the tablecloth and the “matching” napkins the first night of Rosh Hashana this year. It will be the 18th holiday Marc and I have spent together.

I guess no one ever really knows if they are married to their beshert, but the tablecloth and napkins tomorrow night make a fairly good argument for us. Shana Tova to all.