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dinner++

Tonight we went to Sitar (which does not seem to have a web site; tsk) with friends. It's an Indian restaurant with a nice variety of tasty dishes. Definitely recommended. Alas, they did not have the goat that Dani was seeking, so he had to settle for lamb. I got tandoori fish (I'd never heard of non-chicken tandoori). On reflection, that probably wasn't smart kashrut-wise; I failed to remember that a tandoori oven is clay, not metal. Oops. A couple other people got vegetarian dishes, so we were able to share.

The descriptions of dishes, while being passed, suffered some signal degradation: "one of the lamb dishes", "vegetarian something-or-other", "meat, um chicken?, with spinach", and so on. Fortunately, we were all somewhat aware of what had been ordered, so we only needed to disambiguate, not fully specify.

Later my mother called to try to figure out when we can get together. (Her birthday is Saturday.) This turned out to be challenging:

Her: Saturday?
Me: It's Rosh Hashana. Sunday?
Her: Your father has [schedule conflict]. Next Sunday?
Me: Well, Yom Kippur is that night, but we could do lunch.
Her: If that's a problem, what about Saturday the 11th?
Me to self: Do I want to explain to them about eating in the sukkah?
Me to her: Um, that's Sukkot. Let's go back to that previous Sunday...
Her: What's Sukkot?
Me: One of several holidays that are going to complicate this exercise for the next few weeks. :-)

Later I ended up explaining Sukkot to her anyway (quickie version) and she said it sounded neat, so if we decide that next Sunday doesn't work, they'll come out for Sukkot lunch or something.

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I remember one year when my favorite Minister of Music & Youth (MoMY to some) was still at the church, and he and the rabbi at my friend Susan's temple decided to do the Fall Youth Group stuff together. I had been going to services with Susan on Friday nights for .. months, I think, at that point. We did Rosh Hashana studies in our Sunday school, then went to temple for it. We built a "harvest booth" in front of our church (that's how the church bulletin described it, anyhoo), and did a bunch of other stuff together. Then, just after New Year's, he announced that he was going to join the FBI, and left our church. I really missed him. The next MoMY was a real fuddy-duddy.

I was raised Baptist. Susan was Reformed. I went to services with her, and she came to hear me sing in the choir every Sunday night, and came to revivals on the odd occasion to hear us do gospel. We did folk music togehter in our spare moments...

This is probably a dumb question, and the answer is probably "I converted" or something, but how come your mother doesn't know this stuff?

Although Mom never did keep Kosher, your dealings with holiday conflict and your mother remind me of my childhood (Mom also converted to Judaism from Catholicism). Easter was the most "interesting" holiday because most of the traditional Slovak foods are as un-Kosher as they come (ham, sandwiches made with sidik ("egg cheese"), nut roll...).

Not a dumb question, and your guess is correct.

Fish can't be cooked in a clay oven? What's the rationale there?

A clay oven can't really be sterilized the way metal can -- so there's more likely to be meat residue, like from the previous round of chicken. And not only that, but that bright pink coating is yogurt-based, so there is meat residue along with the dairy.

I don't know if these are issues in practice (e.g. if a strict vegetarian would get sick from this). It's possible that the oven gets hot enough that any meat or fat from the previous batch is incinerated. I don't know, though, and I should find out more about tandoori ovens before eating from one again.

Later I ended up explaining Sukkot to her anyway (quickie version)

Ooh, me, me!

OK: Sukkot is the feast of Tabernacles.

Just kidding. I hate definitions like that (Tefillin? Well, they're phylacteries. Everything clear now?)

Sukkot is a harvest festival where Jews build temporary structures (sukkahs), eat (and, ideally, sleep) in them, and wave around bits of foliage and produce during services.

Now, for an encore: Shmini Atzeret in one sentence:

Shmini Atzeret is a holiday for no specific reason that falls at the end of Sukkot.

Now, for an encore: Shmini Atzeret in one sentence

I frequently tell the story, especially around this time of year, of my friend Donna, whom I met in college. Donna was a physical therapy major, and the program was quite rigorous. In her junior year, I believe, all the fall Jewish holidays fell on Thursday-Friday (with Yom Kippur on Saturday), in early October. When she explained to one of her professors that she was going to have to miss class again (the professor was Jewish but only observed Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur), the professor asked why. The following exchange then occurred:

Donna: "It's a Jewish holiday."
Prof: "No, it's not. I'm Jewish and I don't know of any holiday on Thursday."
Donna: "It's Shmini Atzeret."
Prof: "That's not a real holiday; you're making it up."
Donna: "If I were going to make up a holiday, do you really think I'd give it as ridiculous a name as 'Shmini Atzeret'?"

The prof didn't buy the argument; the Hillel rabbi had to intervene on Donna's behalf, but Donna was able to miss class without penalty.

Damn, now you're making me hungry! Well, I get to see my family and have all the traditional foods in December!

Sounds like you had a good MoMY. Too bad he left when he did.

My rabbi is part of a local interfaith network and there have been lots of programs for adults, but now that I think about it I don't know if we're doing anything for the kids. Hmm.

Shmini Atzeret is a holiday for no specific reason that falls at the end of Sukkot.

I tend to think of it as the generic holiday, an experience of the holiday-ness with out the specificity of funky foods (Passover, Shavuot) or locations (Sukkot).

Sounds like a challenge. :-) My family tends (or tended, anyway) toward ham for Christmas and lamb for Easter. I am still expected to visit them for Christmas (not necessarily on Dec 25); we now supplement the ham with something I can eat. I don't visit them for Easter, so I don't know what their current culinary practice is.

For the most part, we seem to have passed on the traditional foods of our ancestry. I'm told that Italians have a traditional Christmas-eve meal involving many kinds of seafood, but my father hated it when he was a kid so I've never been to one. The only detail I know is that one of the dishes is eel.

"If I were going to make up a holiday, do you really think I'd give it as ridiculous a name as 'Shmini Atzeret'?"

*laugh* She has a good point, you know. :-)

Our associate rabbi likes to complain (good-naturedly) about "poor, neglected Shmini Atzerer, lost in the shadow of Simchat Torah", but I think he misses the point that if Shmini Atzerer were actually about something, it wouldn't be in anybody's shadow.

It's hard sometimes I think because of the mixing pot mentality (we don't tend to marry inside our traditional community anymore).

One thing that my family has done is create video tapes of my grandmother making the traditional foods. We have our Kastelic kitchen shows, so we know how to make stuff.

Besides, my grandmother is just a hoot to watch sometimes.

Something similar happened to me in Grad school. OK, the background: I was a 5th year grad student by this point, and had been a TA for freshman general chemistry lab 4 times already. I knew how to do the labs. The Jewish holidays fell on weekdays that year, so I naturally arranged to teach the lab on the days that the holidays didn't fall. But the prof in charge of the lab had this insane idea that it was vital for all grad students to do the lab every week. I was a bit annoyed about this, but I didn't really mind that much. The only problem was that the day he picked was... the day that Rosh Hashannah fell on. And Sukkot. And Shmini Atzeret. I explained to him after he picked the day that I wasn't going to be able to do the prep, and he said something like "I don't believe that there are that many Jewish holidays". I think he would've made a bigger stink if I hadn't offered to do the prep on another day...

You want to see Shmini Atzeret really lost in Simchat Torah? Celebrate it in Israel...

OK, I've never heard of this. Does it mean anything?

Two stories --

At U-Mich, the buildings are pretty much shut down between Christmas and New Year, and all us "christian-oid" folk take the whole thing off for a holiday. Saves TONS of money for the school on electricity, etc. But, folks who are not Christmas-oriented may take their holidays when they fall (ie, Rosh Hashashana, Yom Kippur, Passover, etc.) but come in to work on the days between Christmas and New Years. About half really come into the cold, icky buildings.

And:

When Jen was born, her pediatrician was Dr. Mrs. Singer (to distinguish from Dr. Mr. Singer, also a pediatrician, but with radically [and I mean radically] different views on nutrition for the first year or so.).

The Drs. Singer always were on call for their Christian practice members on the Christian holidays, so that the holidays could be spent with the others' children, rather than having to go to the ER and deal with someone ill. I thought it was rather sweet. And, their practice members reciprocated, which was also really nice. My current GP, also Jewish, does the same thing, which is very nice of him, I think.

Yup. Actually, this has inspired me to write an entry in my journal about Shmini Atzeret.

OK, I've never heard of this. Does it mean anything?

Shmini Atzeret? Yes, of course it means something. The problem is what, exactly, it means. Maybe it's supposed to be a holiday that we don't understand, just in case we get all full of ourselves about how much we know...

Re: Jews working on Christian holidays (and vice versa): yes, this is a very nice practice.

Reform congregations in the US follow the Israeli calendar on this, so the associate rabbi has a valid point. :-)

It's an under-specified holiday. It's in the Torah, but it's not described. What it means literally is "8th day of assembly"; it immediately follows Sukkot, a seven-day festival, and is God's way of saying "stick around a little longer". (Simchat Torah, which is either the day after or the same day as Shmini Atzeret depending on where you live, is not specified in the Torah. It's a later addition to this season, and I don't actually know how it came about. When and why did we decide to start the cycle of Torah readings on that particular date?)

Did I remember to mention that the Drs. Singer were married? Had Twins, in fact. I keep wondering how they coped with raising those kids, given their widely divergent ideas about food, behavior, etc....

Ah, I had wondered about that -- whether they were married or just coincidentally shared a last name. I wonder how they coped with their own kids. (Hmm, twins. Separate them and let research happen... nah. :-) )

Ah yes -- Shmini Atzerit.

You have to understand, I went to college at Brandeis, which is secular, yet Jewish. That is, there's nothing unusually religious about the school, but it was founded by Jews, and the considerable majority of the student body is Jewish. That said, I'm not unusual in having gone there because it's a good liberal-arts school, rather than due to its religious/ethnic background. (While I'm Jewish by heritage, my family has been pretty secular for a couple of generations.)

It shouldn't surprise one that Brandeis' holiday schedule is built around the Jewish holidays. Which leads to the following conversation among the freshmen, hundreds of times each September:

Student 1: Shmini Atzeret? What the heck is Shmini Atzeret?
Student 2: It's apparently some sort of Jewish holiday.
Student 1: I've never heard of it.
Student 2: Are you going to complain about getting the day off?
Student 1: Oh, no, no, no. Shmini Atzeret, that's a terribly important holiday in my family...

:-) It's important for the students to get their priorities straight!

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dinner++

Sukkot

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culinary traditions

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Shmini Atzeret?

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Drs Singer....

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