Parshat Shoftim- 5780 "Secret" Recipes

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.