As the mother of young children, it sometimes seems that all my waking hours are spent in the kitchen. Somehow I am always either cooking for them, serving them, or cleaning up after them.
The situation only gets worse when yom tov rolls around. You may as well just move my bed and clothes in the kitchen with me, since I never leave, except to go buy more food to cook. At some point, usually around the end of Sukkos, rebellion sets in and I protest loudly that my participation in Judaism has become more culinary than spiritual. Yet while I often wish I had more time to spend with a siddur and less with a ladle, the truth is that in Judaism, food and spirituality do not exclude one another. On the contrary, food is an important vehicle for our spiritual life.
It's no secret that we Jews love to eat. The tables at our simchas groan with delicacies, from the most traditional chopped liver and gefilte fish to foods most of us can't even pronounce from countries we wouldn't know where to locate on a map.
A burgeoning kosher food industry has emerged that is geared to anticipate every conceivable gastronomic whim of the Orthodox Jews. Keeping kosher used to involve a large degree of mesiras nefesh (self-sacrifice). Today we find our meat kashered for us, and a huge selection of foods that require no more effort to prepare than firing up the oven or microwave.
The kosher food business is merely following the example of the general food industry. In our land of plenty and of ethnic diversity, supermarkets everywhere are stocking a greater variety of foods and a greater selection of ready-made foods. One finds gourmet magazines in which top chefs are accorded the honor usually reserved for famous performers and artistically arranged food on glossy pages grabs the eye.
All this hype about food should trouble the Jewish soul. A confusion of priorities is occurring; with all this worship of good food, we may lose sight of the concept that food is very serious business, serious beyond the search for the perfect dim sum or designer pizza.
Eating is literally a sacred act. The table is considered an altar, and blessings precede and follow every meal. The details that must be considered in the observance of the laws of kashrus have led some to label Judaism "legalistic." However, the true intent of kashrus laws is to create within us a consciousness of G-d and of Torah even in the most quotidian and repetitive of our actions. Only Judaism has the ability to invest our most earthly actions — from eating to putting on new clothes to using the bathroom — with a sense of holiness and connection to heaven.
When I was a child, proper eating was defined by the good table manners my parents tried hard to instill in us. One's degree of civilization could be surmised from the correct use of utensils and napkins; a person of refined character ate politely rather than attacking his food with both hands like an animal. Later, when I was taught about kashrus and about making brachos before and after eating, a new dimension was added to my concept of what it meant to be "civilized." Suddenly civilized eating involved not only which fork to use, but a "thank you" to G-d as well. Today when I observe people eating without making a brachah, I am struck by the lack of appreciation for the gift of a meal.
We are eating more and better food than at any time in history since Gan Eden. We would do well to remind ourselves and our children not to take our prosperity for granted. Saying a blessing over food encourages true refinement of character, for it forces a person to show gratitude to his Creator.
In Jewish families, food has always served as an essential tool in educating our children about their religion. The most outstanding example is the Pesach Seder, where certain foods are put on the table purely to elicit questions from the children about the Exodus from Egypt. Our children will literally digest their heritage as they consume latkes this Chanukah, or hamantaschen on Purim, leaving memories that remain in the soul.
I used to teach English to Russian Jewish immigrants, most of them middle-aged or elderly. Their knowledge of Judaism was sparse at best; they had only vague notions of the significance of Pesach or Yom Kippur, and the names Tu BiShvat and Sukkos rang no bells whatsoever. But every last one of them knew about matzoh, gefilte fish, chicken soup, and blintzes. Not only did they know, but they would proudly describe how they prepare these dishes at home.
The same message comes across in American kitchens when the mother or father takes the trouble to prepare special foods for Jewish occasions. How can we convince our children that Shabbat and yamim tovim are important if we ourselves do not put forth an effort to make them so? We derive greater enjoyment from an occasion when we have put something of ourselves into it. I began baking challah for Shabbat for this reason, and although my first attempts did not exactly recall the manna from heaven, they did manage to teach our children that Shabbat is very special. And as much as we laugh at the stereotype of the Jewish mother endlessly cooking for her offspring, it is undoubtedly healthy for a child's self-esteem to know that his mother is so concerned with providing nourishment.
Baking for Shabbat broadened our understanding of the mitzvah of taking challah as well. This mitzvah, in which a portion of the dough is separated and burnt, serves as a reminder of how challah was brought to the Temple in ancient times and given as a gift to the kohen. And the children also learned a lesson in environmentalism. We discovered that Jewish law prefers that bread not be thrown in the garbage; instead it should ideally be "recycled" into other foods (bread crumbs, French toast, etc.) or fed to birds or animals. The idea is that the gift of bread, the "staff of life" that G-d gives us to sustain ourselves, should not be tossed away thoughtlessly.
These days, most food comes to us so highly processed that we forget its origins in earth, sun, and rain. Baking challah brings one a little closer to the source, and the labor entailed engenders greater respect for the product. How much more respect our forefathers and mothers must have had for bread, when they not only baked it themselves but grew the wheat and ground it for flour as well.
It is the most basic, daily aspects of life that are also the most profound and encrusted with meaning. A birth, for example, is at once the most ordinary and extraordinary event imaginable. And so it is with our daily breaking of bread, from the most humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the multiple courses of a wedding seudah. Our food is spiced with more than salt and pepper, and more than calories are ingested.
These are the things I tell myself as I stand in my kitchen erev yom tov, with all four burners blasting away and a sink full of dirty mixing bowls and saucepans. That's not just food, that's Yiddishkeit you see simmering away on the stove. The kugel is a d'var Torah, a Torah thought, unto itself, and the smell wafting out of the soup pot comes straight out of Gan Eden. We may all gain a few pounds, but surely our souls will have been strengthened as well. And my family, if they know what's good for them, will conclude these uplifting meals by expressing their deepest gratitude to Hashem . . . not to mention their ever-loving and oh-so-hardworking mom!
On the rare occasions when Barbara Bensoussan has escaped the confines of her kitchen, she has found the time to write for numerous magazines, including Gourmet and Woman's Day.