We all have special recipes in our
families, passed down through the generations, often as guarded secrets.
Recipes are often the tie that binds a family together. Indeed, a
mother-in-law’s willingness to pass on her secret recipe for potato kugel to
her daughter in law may be predictive of the kind of relationship they will
have. Many of these recipes, however, as shrouded in secrecy as they may be,
are actually lifted from the sides of cake boxes or cans of soup. Years ago,
during my time in Boca Raton, I was invited to join a panel of taste testers on
an episode of Taste of America, a cooking program featured on both the Travel
Network as well as the Food Network. The
competitors were a young rebbetzin named Yocheved Goldberg, and a charming
Bubbe by the name of Penny Pearlman. The
judges were not given any information about the soup or its cook, and in the
end - Penny’s soup emerged the clear victor, a battle won decisively for one
reason alone - the Matzo Balls. While it was not surprising that the seasoned
grandmother edged out her relatively inexperienced counterpart, the shocker
came when the show’s host Mark De Carlo asked the two women to reveal their
recipes. Yocheved made her kneidelach from scratch, whereas Penny
had dutifully used the Manischewitz mix to prepare hers.
In 2018, the website Atlas Obscura asked
readers to send in stories of similar discoveries. The responses poured in.
Here is one of my favorite, from a woman named Suzy Scuderi of Olympia,
Washington:
My
husband’s Russian grandmother made the world’s best Lemon Cake—according to my
husband. Now, I consider myself a pretty good baker. I only use European
butter, fresh ingredients, everything from scratch. It’s my hobby, my passion.
When my husband and I first got together, he talked wistfully of his
grandmother’s cake. She was 90+ and living on the other side of the country, so
on my urging, he would ask her to send him the recipe. She never got around to
it. Over the years, I tried dozens of recipes—using fresh Meyer Lemons that we
grew ourselves! He would try them and say, “Well, it’s delicious, but not what
I remember from my childhood.”
Finally,
we happened to visit the East Coast in the final year of Grandma’s long life.
We went to visit her at her home. Joe brought up the cake. She whacked her knee
and exclaimed in her thick Jersey-and-cigarettes voice: “Oh Joey! That WAS a
great cake! I got it off the box of Betty Crockah. Lemon Poke Cake. I’ll find
it for you.”
You can imagine
that some people felt betrayed when they discovered the secret of the family
recipe. Others, however, didn’t care- and even enjoyed making this
discovery. After all, it’s not the
secrecy or uniqueness of a recipe which makes it memorable. It is, rather, the memories the recipe evokes of the person
who made it, of the gatherings at which it was served and the special people
who enjoyed it.
I’ve been
reflecting on this story in light of a verse in this week’s Parshah.
תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה
עִ֖ם
ה'
אֱלֹקיךָ׃ (ס)
You must be wholehearted with the
LORD your God.
The Torah warns
us not to fall prey to the easy charms and snakeoil promises of soothsayers and
practitioners of the occult. While the word תמים
is usually rendered as “whole,” “pure” or “simple,” Rav Weinberger z”l reads it
homiletically, connecting it to the word תאומים,
or twins. The life we present on the outside should mirror or be the “identical
twin” of the life we present to God. More than being “pure,” this Torah is
challenging us to be authentic. When you meet people who are “real,” you know
it- they have no need to impress anyone, whether by their piety, their
affluence or their talents. To be sure, authenticity is value neutral- there
are people with terrible middos who
do truly awful things, but they are at least transparent about it. They may
stab you in the chest, but they will never
stab you in the back. At the very least, there is something to be said about
this transparency. Think about the people we know who are authentic; they are
enjoyable to be around, even charming, in a guilty pleasure sort of way. Temimusdik people are not always the
most articulate, nuanced, refined or
lovable people- but they are easy to understand because what you see is what
you get.
תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה
עִ֖ם
ה'
אֱלֹקיךָ
Means dropping the pretensions of a
“secret” family recipe, and proudly pointing to the Manischewitz box instead.
Pouring some duck sauce on chicken and baking it is no less authentic than a
challah recipe handed down for generations. What matters most is that it is
served with love to loved ones, and that it brings them together.
Lehavdil,
religion is not the province of the unattainable, in which excellence is out of
reach or only the domain of the few. For this reason, Chassidic lore often
features two archetypes. On the one hand, there is the larger than life tzaddik
whose prayers are legendary and whose mystical powers are renowned and whose
wisdom plummets the depths of the universe. On the other hand, there is the
simple, unlettered and even uncouth chassid who connects to Hashem in honest
and straightforward ways. The second
category of person can exist alongside the first and is also worthy of
admiration, because he or she has one thing that even the tzaddik can never
dream of: simple authenticity. Whether it is the poor tailor who uses his last
ruble to help an orphan get married, or the wagon driver who says Tehillim
while repairing a broken wheel, or the bereft widow whose tears reignite an
extinguished flame from her Shabbos candles.
We have commenced the month of Elul, the time of year in which we once again face the person we truly are, and not the one we project to the world. The key to success in Elul is not larger than life heroism, or outsized spiritual accomplishments. It is an unflinchingly honest reckoning with ourselves. This year, there will be no in-person scholars in residence, most sermons will be in written form and will lack the gut-punch of a live delivery, and even the most talented Chazzan will be stifled by an abridged tefillah, reduced singing and masks. The festive Yom Tov tables at which we share the products of those recipes with friends and family will be devoid of many regulars who are synonymous with the Yamim Noraim. Instead - this is the season of temimut. For those of us who are dreading this year’s very different Yom Tov, this is an opportunity to reframe the experience. This is the year we can actually be inspired by the words of the davening, as opposed to depending largely on the tunes selected for the piyyutim to lift us up. This year, when seating must take physical distancing into account, perhaps we can discover that davening is bearable, and maybe even meaningful, even if you are unable to sit near your best friend.
Maybe this period in the Jewish calendar will be a trying one, but I suspect that it will go down in history as one of growth. There is no secret recipe for a High Holiday season like this one; few if any of us have experienced anything like it in our lifetimes. It has forced us to drop the pretense and playbook of a complex recipe and to embrace the simple formula on the side of the Manischewitz box. May it prove to be a time of temimus- of simple, genuine service of God.
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