Things We Did in Colorado Springs

–Attended sister-in-law’s annual pig roast: live music, a 90-pound beast laid out with apple in mouth, live music, silly dancing, and marriage proposal (bride-to-be said yes).

–Helped sister-in-law purchase IPad. Developed IPad envy.

–Walked in Rock Ledge Ranch and Garden of Gods. Admired rock & cloud formations.

–“Didn’t notice” Local Traffic Only signs at entrance to Waldo-fire-ravished Mountain Shadows neighborhood. Snapped drive-by photos of devastation. Felt guilty. And lucky.

–Walked mile up and mile back down High Drive, near Cheyenne Mountain. Admired road-side flowers and octogenarian in-laws’ stamina.

–Saw 87-year-old mother-in-law through appendectomy. Relieved and astounded at patient’s resilience. 48 hours post-op, patient was strolling condo complex, supervising son’s gardening work, and even (briefly) picking up hoe herself.

–Ran in Garden of the Gods, 7-7:30, several mornings. Impressed by relative difficulty of running on steep, rock-and-sand trails at 6000 feet, compared to doing same on level pavement, at sea-level. And by how much more beautiful.

–Helped ‘rents-in-law hang pictures that have been sitting in piles since house in Rochester was sold, five years ago. Family photos, American Indian and Inuit prints, art by family members. Noted psychological/philosophical/poetic/whatever significance of said activity taking place so soon after in-laws’ being evacuated due to wild fires.

–Swam in condo-complex pool. Managed to remain placidly in lounge chair while obnoxious neighbor, unsolicited, stood in the water, shaking finger holding forth about likely demise of life as we know it if POTUS is re-elected. Left pool area as soon as politely possible.

–Sorted & divided ancestral textiles, mostly from India– embroidered, woven, silk, fine wool – with sister-in-law.

–Savored time with loved ones we see far too infrequently.

Big Grandma’s Chicken Soup

Passover prep is well underway at my house. Last weekend I got the chicken soup and matzoh balls made. I used Big Grandma’s recipe, as recorded by my mother in Cooking Is My Bag, a fundraiser cookbook put out by the Montclair Education Association, I’m guessing in the late 1970s.

Big Grandma (may her memory be for a blessing) was (among many other things) my mother’s mother, an ace fundraiser for United Jewish Appeal, a fiercely competitive Scrabble player, a skilled knitter and needle-pointer, a Canadian Club drinker, an opera listener, a staunch supporter of and frequent flyer to Israel, and our family’s official soup maker.

She was famous for two soups: mushroom barley with beef, and chicken with matzoh balls. She brought them to our home frozen in quart-sized containers weeks before whatever holiday they were meant for. Serving the soup meant setting the container in a saucepan half filled with water and gently heating it until the soup was melted enough to slip out of the container, and then getting it nice and hot. Once I was living too far from New Jersey to come home for Passover, I found out that making chicken soup with matzoh balls is more difficult than just waiting for your grandmother to drive up the Garden State Parkway with her vats of frozen soup.

But it’s not that difficult. Mostly, it just takes some advance planning, because doing it right takes three days. Here’s how I did it this year.

Day one: Make soup!

Quarter your whole chicken. (B.G. didn’t keep kosher, but she did demand a kosher pullet for her soup. I don’t keep kosher, either, but I do try to eat only the meat of animals I believe have been raised humanely. This year’s soup chicken scored a 5 – the highest grade — on Whole Foods’ animal treating ratings.)

Throw the chicken parts into your soup pot, along with three large onions, four or five celery stalks, and two or three large carrots. (I also add a bunch of whole garlic cloves. And this year, a parsnip. Don’t tell B.G.)

Add four quarts of water and bring to a boil. (B.G. says to then skim any accumulated “fluff.” This makes the final broth beautifully clear. But it’s also a pain in the neck, especially when the chicken and vegetables are bobbing up over the top of the water. I used to spend a lot of time and effort trying to accomplish this step. Now I ignore it. No one has ever complained.)

Simmer, covered, for 90 minutes. (I think B.G. cracked the pot lid. I used to, but no longer bother.)

At this point, this year, I added a bouquet of parsley, as recommended by Big Grandma’s brother-in-law, Uncle Moley. I also seasoned with salt and pepper.

Simmer another 30 minutes.

Remove the carrots and chicken parts, and strain the rest.

Cut the carrots into coins and return them to the soup. (Uncle Moley also returns the chicken to the soup. B.G. and I reserve it for other uses, such as chicken salad and chicken tertrazini, one of my grandmother’s favorites.)

Cool the soup in the fridge overnight.

Day two: Skim, mix and chill

Skim the fat from the top of the soup. (This soup fat isn’t exactly the same as schmaltz you make by rendering chicken fat with onion. But it works just as well for matzoh balls, and it’s a lot more convenient.)

Make your matzah ball batter by creaming the soup fat and combining it with beaten eggs, matzah meal, and salt and pepper to taste. Amounts: 3 TBS fat to 3 eggs to 3/4 cup matzah meal.

Cover and let sit in the fridge overnight.

If you’re freezing the soup for later, you can do that now.

Day three: Make matzoh balls!

Get a big pot of salted water boiling while you set up your matzah-ball-making station. (The recipe in the Montclair Education Association cookbook doesn’t include this part. It’s the secret to success B.G. shared with me when she found out I was planning to actually use the recipe she had so casually dictated to my mother. I felt privileged that she’d given me this extra wisdom. Especially since years earlier, when I asked her to teach me to knit, she’d gotten disgusted with my ineptitude and given up almost immediately.)

To make your matzoh balls B.G.’s secret way, you’ll need the batter you’ve had sitting overnight, a bowl of warm water wide enough to wet your palms, a towel to dry your fingertips.

To form smooth, round matzoh balls, dig walnut-sized bits from the batter with your dry finger tips, and roll them between your wet palms. Keeping your finger tips to be dry prevents the batter from becoming soggy, and keeping your palms wet helps the balls slide around without sticking, so you can form a lovely sphere.

Drop the balls into the water and let them boil, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

Remove them with a slotted spoon. Let them drain and cool. Then you can freeze them. (I used to freeze the balls in the soup, but they tended to fall apart as the soup thawed.)

That’s it. Do it right, and the result will be a broth that’s rich in taste, just slightly sweet, and not at all greasy, and matzoh balls that are flavorful, firm enough to stand up to a spoon, soft enough to melt in your mouth, and not at all heavy. Plan on offering seconds.

Happy Passover!

Effie

Wedding party: David, Big Grandma, me, Effie.

Effie Gale worked for my family for more than 40 years. Every Wednesday, she rode the New Jersey Transit bus from her home in Roselle to ours, in Montclair. There she vacuumed, dusted, cleaned the bathrooms, mopped the kitchen floor, put new sheets on the beds, and ironed my father’s handkerchiefs. When holidays were approaching, she washed the wine glasses and polished the silver.

When I was small and my mother was attending library school, Effie stayed late and prepared dinner. Her fried chicken was a rare, special treat. It set a bar few other versions have met. After we grew up and had homes of our own, Effie baked us zucchini bread – a foil-wrapped loaf for each of us when we came to Montclair for Thanksgiving. Sometimes there were fragrant stalks of rosemary from her garden.

Effie sometimes fed us, but she didn’t eat with us. On Wednesdays when we were home, my mother would prepare our lunch and set up a separate tray for her – a woven place mat, a folded napkin, a glass of milk, a plate full of whatever we were having, and dessert. While we ate in the kitchen, Effie ate at the end of the dining room table. Afterwards, she would carry her tray into the kitchen and compliment my mother on the meal.

I didn’t think anything about the arrangement until I was visiting home from college.

“Why the separate tray?” I asked. “Why don’t we just all eat together?”

“Effie prefers it this way,” my mother said, and that was the end of the conversation.

Effie called my mother “Mrs. Horowitz,” sometimes, “Mrs. H.” My mother and everyone else in the family called Effie, “Effie.”

When she wasn’t working for my parents, Effie took care of my grandmother’s house in Elizabeth. Eventually, she also commuted to my aunt’s apartment in New York City. She attended all of our weddings, and the funerals for both my parents and my grandmother. She admired our babies when we brought them home to visit, and long after she retired, she continued to ask after us and send us her love through our aunt.

Effie knew all about our family, but my brother and sisters and I didn’t know much about hers. At Christmas time, she visited her sisters in Louisiana, where she’d grown up. When her husband died, my grandmother and my aunt attended his funeral. Earlier this month, when Effie went into the hospital, her son phoned my aunt, who spread the word to the rest of us.

He called her again on Saturday to say Effie had died.

Effie had an elegant beauty, a bright smile and a good hug. She hummed while she worked, and welcomed “help” from two generations of children. She stayed with my mother and my grandmother through their final illnesses, a comforting, confidence-inspiring constancy as health-care workers of varying qualities came and went. By the time my mother was taking all her meals in her bedroom, Effie was carrying her tray upstairs and they were eating lunch together.

She leaves her son, her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. She was 91.

What’s that smell?

It started with this musty smell in the kitchen. We first noticed it earlier this summer. It was worst on humid days, and strongest near the trash bin. Taking the trash out didn’t help, and neither did scrubbing the plastic bin, itself. So yesterday we (well, David) removed the wooden frame that slides the bin under the counter, and all the other drawers in that cabinet.

When we shined a flashlight into opening, we found some very, very dirty floorboards. But no dead mouse or decomposing peach. (I should probably mention that we have an old kitchen. We think the last time it was updated was 30 years ago. The bead board  and most of the drawers and cabinetsdate back to around 1900, when the house was built.)

We (well, David) scrubbed the floorboards with a bleach mixture, and then with a wood cleaner. The rinse water came up just as filthy each time, but after several go-overs we (well, David) decided enough was enough. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

My real point, though, is those drawers. Having them sitting out in the open gave us a chance to really look inside them – something we haven’t done since we moved in, four years ago. The silverware and food wraps and dish towels each have their own space, and that makes sense. But three other drawers hold our over-stock of spices – jars and boxes and bags that don’t fit in our go-to cabinet beside the stove.

“Maybe this would be a good time to do some weeding,” David suggested, and I reluctantly agreed. And oh, what we found.

–The last teaspoon of herbes de Provence from our South of France vacation in 2006.

–A vanilla bean from the house in Rochester David’s parents sold that same year.

–The lifetime supply of dried chiles given to David by my mother, who in February, 1999.

–A  jam jar filled with black salt, an ingredient used in Indian cooking, though in none of the recipes we ever make.

–A  jar of chervil from which all scent expired years ago. Ditto a jar of green peppercorns.

–The same plastic container of garam masala David and his parents used to secretly plant in each other’s possessions – a game no one has played in at least five years.

I could go on, but you get the idea. We threw some stuff away, though probably not nearly as much as we should have. The whole exercise reminded me – a little too much – of a scene from LITTLE GRANDMA’S MIRROR, the novel my agent is currently shopping. Adam’s mother has died, and he’s hired Kitty Klein, a professional estate liquidator, to help him dispose of the family home.

_______________________

Kitty Klein wears a fancy gray hat and shiny black boots that hug her calves like ballroom gloves. Her long red fingernails make it all the more unbelievable when, after her I’m-sorry-we-couldn’t-meet-under-happier-circumstances handshake and before Adam finally manages to jimmy open the door he has never before had any trouble opening, she announces, “I’m a roll-up-the-sleeves gal. Do everything myself. If you want something done right, you know what I’m saying?”

Inside the kitchen, she pulls a notebook and a pen from her suitcase-sized handbag and starts opening cabinets and drawers and stirring through the unopened mail. “Your mother was sentimental, wasn’t she?” She says delicately extracts from the paper slush a laminated name tag Mouse wore at a convention she attended sometime in the nineties. “A keeper.”  Kitty’s nose twitches. She sets the name tag back down as if it were some frail archeological shard. “They’re the hardest.”

“The hardest in terms of what?” Adam asks, helplessly tracking her tight-lipped inspection of the aluminum-foil pans amassed against Armageddon, the expired spices in their dusty bottles, the ten-year archive of handwritten holiday menus hanging beside the stove from a grease-encrusted string.

“Letting go.” She writes something down on her pad, then taps her perfect white teeth with her pen. “The kitchen definitely has potential.”

“For what?”

“To be something really special. A little paint. New appliances. Reface the cabinets. But the buyer would have to have some imagination.”

________

Adam and Kitty are products of my imagination, but the kitchen is definitely my mother’s – which sometimes smelled a little musty, too. Some things just linger, no matter how much you scrub.

Wedding in the Woods

Photo by Paulina Sliwa. Fabric for Sophie's dress is from her grandmother's first sari.

It finally happened. After all the planning and discussing and deciding, the list-making and ordering and organizing, on Sunday Sophie and Henry got married.

(click on the thumbnails to see full size)

Saturday afternoon we gathered at Camp Kiwanee, on a lake south of Boston. Think tall pine, rustic cabins, picnic tables encircling a fire pit. Garlands of ribbons were strung between the trees. We swam, played games, visited, shared grilled goodies and a feast of potluck sides and desserts, sprayed on bug repellent and built a fire.

By the time we got around to making the flower arrangements for the wedding lunch tables, it was dark, so we worked by flashlight, grabbing random stalks of Queen Ann’s lace, sweet William, zinnia, daisy, and dozens of other multicolored varieties from their tubs, cutting the stems to size, and planting them in the field of mason jars that covered the table. We figured that whatever we did would look great, and when we came back to look by light of day, we weren’t disappointed.

The main event happened late Sunday morning, on the porch of the lodge. The lake behind created a beautiful setting, if an extra challenge for all the nice people who’d brought their cameras.

The ceremony blended elements from Sophie and Henry’s religious backgrounds and political principles, without mentioning any gods or being explicit about the politics. A friend officiated, certified for the occasion by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The chuppah they stood under was a bedspread crocheted by Henry’s great-great grandmother, supported by poles Sophie’s brother fashioned from driftwood he gathered on the banks of the Hudson and then cut, buffed and oiled. A vase of white roses memorialized three pairs of grandparents. Indian designs on the floor, stenciled in chalk dust, marked the specialness of the space, and the occasion.

Photo by Paulina Sliwa

We sang “Enter, Rejoice and Come in,” a Unitarian hymn Henry’s mom remembers hearing when she was pregnant. We heard excerpts from Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the decision that made marriage equality legal in Massachusetts, parts of Kahlil Gibran’s “On Marriage,”  and Charles Darwin’s notes to himself on the pros and cons of getting married (con: less money for books; pro: a soft wife on the sofa). A friend performed a stunning rendition of Bellini’s “Vaga luna, che inargenti,”  accompanied by another friend on keyboard.

After the vows and the exchange of rings, guests read a reworked version of the Jewish Seven Blessings (a process I described here.)

Sophie’s grandmother performed a Zoroastrian blessing. A silver tray held a variety of symbols, which she explained: rice for plenty; fish for festive feasting; cloves, nutmeg, cardamom and cinnamon for savoring life; pomegranate – for its tartness, to add zest and color to life; betel nut – for life’s more astringent and bitter passages (with hopes that these be few); and coconut, sugar, nuts and raisin for times of plenty and sweetness (with hopes that these be many). She hung flower garlands around Sophie and Henry’s necks, marked their foreheads with red kumkum paste and tossed rice over them. To ward off evil, she broke an egg at their feet.

Then Isaac pronounced them married, they stamped on a pair of wine glasses, and everyone applauded.

Lunch was delicious barbecue, followed by delicious pie.

People made toasts. In mine, I recalled the first time Sophie and Henry met, eight years ago. We were dropping Sophie off at college. Just as we climbed out of the car, another first-year student came walking up the sidewalk between his parents. He looked at Sophie and said, “Sophie?” and she looked at him and said, “Henry!” They had already met online, and recognized each other in person right away. I had been a little apprehensive about my older child leaving home, but, as I said in my toast, Henry’s warm greeting reassured me that she would be among friends.

I talked about the attributes that make these two such good friends (caring for each other, giving each other space, enjoying each other, being similarly serious while not taking themselves too seriously), and suggested that a strong friendship makes a good foundation for a strong marriage. Finally, I thanked Sophie for bringing Henry and his family into our family, and thanking Henry for reassuring me that now, as I watch Sophie embark on this next phase in her life, she will be among friends once again.

Among all the planning and discussing and deciding, the list-making and ordering and organizing, figuring out my toast was one of the easiest thing I had to do. I just told the truth.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Here’s how I celebrated my sixth birthday, back in 1963. I like how my sister Mike is pursing her lips empathetically, “helping” me blow out my candles the way you “help” a baby you’re feeding by opening your mouth as you offer the spoon. That Edgemont School T-shirt of Ben’s became mine when he outgrew it. Rachel and I are wearing matching dresses with a cherry pattern. The cake is pineapple-upside-down, probably with one pineapple ring to hold each candle. I couldn’t begin to guess what I’m wishing.

I’m guessing this is my seventh eighth* birthday, because we’re in Paris and to my right is Rachel Bonner — my best friend that year. My birthday must have fallen on week day, because the two Rachels and I are all wearing the white blouses and blue sweaters of our school uniforms. (Not pictured: our pleated grey skirts. Also, Mike. Where is she?) I have no idea what Ben is thinking about, but he sure looks pensive.  The cake is definitely not pineapple-upside-down. It looks like some sort of fruit tart, probably from A La Flute Enchantee, the fancy bakery on Avenue Mozart, a short block from our apartment.

*Thanks to Ben for this correction.  Maybe that’s what he’s thinking about in this picture? Must remember what year it is, because if I don’t, who will? 

I celebrated another birthday this past weekend. David prepared incredible huevos rancheros for breakfast. They tasted just as good as they looked.

Sophie and Henry took the train down from Boston, and we spent the day exploring Bristol. Here’s a detail from the very ornate, very rusted fence in front of Linden Place. If we’d gone inside, we could have heard the history of the family that built this house. Like so many of the wealthiest citizens of this area in those days, they made their fortune in the slave trade. Rhode Island is where molasses from the West Indies got turned into rum,  which was exported to West Africa, where the ships were converted into prison boats and the rum traded for slaves.

This year’s cold, rainy May made it an exceptional season for rhododendrons. They were at their peak this weekend. Bristol is lush with them.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Colt State Park, walking beside the water, checking out the many families at their Memorial Day Weekend picnics, and trying not to get sunburned. Not pictured: the mango with sticky rice into which David stuck a single candle at dinner. He and Sophie and Henry all sang the birthday song, and I blew the candle out. But I forgot to make a wish.

What would you have wished for?

The Eggy Palmer Effect

My May column for the Voice and Herald

When our son Sam was little, he played a game called ‘Eggy Palmer.” “Eggy Palmer” is an impish children’s book character who turns milk sour. My husband would pour himself a before-dinner drink, and Sam would sidle over and wave his hand over the glass, saying, “I’m Eggy Palmer!” David would sip his drink and twist his face in disgust. Hilarity would ensue – except for David, who discovered that when he made a sour face, his martini really did taste terrible.

Psychologists confirm a similar phenomenon. In one study, subjects who thought they were testing headphones’ durability were told to move their heads up-and-down or side-to-side while they listened to an opinion piece. When they were asked afterwards to evaluate the argument they’d heard, those who had nodded felt much more certain of their judgments than those who had shaken their heads. Action influences attitude.

The Eggy Palmer effect plays out in religion, too. Judaism distinguishes keva, ritual’s predetermined form, from kavanah, the mindset we bring to the ritual. Without mindful intention, we’re often reminded, religious ritual becomes a hollow exercise. The Talmud says we shouldn’t even stand up to pray unless we’re already in a “reverent frame of mind.” And when we do pray, unless our hearts are directed to Heaven, we’re not really getting the job done. If you’re thinking about your next Scrabble move while you light the Shabbat candles, you’re just playing with matches.

In fact, the keva-kavanah connection also operates in the other direction. Start going through the motions, and motivation often follows. That’s how it works for me, more often than not. The effect is usually too subtle to really notice. But it can also be dramatic. Shaking the lulav on Sukkot, for example, strikes me as silly, archaic, even alienating. I hesitate to participate. But when I force myself to engage, the ritual reveals its meaning. The point of the practice isn’t in the thinking, but the doing.

How does this work? Philosopher Howard Wettstein proposes one explanation in his 1997 paper, “Awe and the Religious Life.” Wettstein quotes Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, in “God in Search of Man” writes, “There is no faith at first sight.” Faith doesn’t come “as an unearned surprise,” says Heschel. Rather, it is “preceded by awe, by acts of amazement at things that we apprehend but cannot comprehend.”
The birth of a child, a spectacular sunset and a great work of art all inspire awe. And the Jewish system of blessings gives these moments their due, insuring they’re not lost in the press of daily life, Wettstein suggests.

But great jazz solos and postcard skies only come around now and then. And that’s the other reason we need ritual, according to Wettstein. All those scheduled prayers and candle-lightings and so on create opportunities for what Rabbi Elliot Dorff describes as the dual experience of being “humbled but elevated” – of recognizing simultaneously a sense of one’s human limitation and of having been created in the divine image.
The experience doesn’t just feel good. As Wettstein suggests, it can also do good, by inspiring generosity of spirit, lack of pettiness, increased ability to forgive and to contain anger and disappointment. These are godly attributes – worthy aspirations no matter what your view of God.

Is the Eggy Palmer effect a form of self-deception? You could call it that. Or you could see it as a useful tool for attitude adjustment. It doesn’t succeed for everyone or in all situations, but it can be surprisingly effective.

Years after he pretended to sour David’s martini, our son started college, and found himself assigned to the roommate from hell. It could have been the worst year of his life, but Sam was determined not to let it be. Since he couldn’t change his roommate, he decided to change himself. Rather than dwelling on the parts of his life that annoyed him, he concentrated on those that made him happy.

“I pretended to be more excited than I really was,” he later explained to us. “I figured if I acted excited, I would start to feel excited, and then I wouldn’t care as much about the other stuff.” The ploy worked.
Sam didn’t know it, but he was confirming the claim of the early 19th-century Hasidic rabbi, Nachman of Breslov. “If you don’t feel happy, pretend to be,” Rabbi Nachman advised. “Act happy. Genuine joy will follow.”

Little Grandma’s Chremslach

The traditional Passover greeting is to wish someone a “Zissen Pesach” – a sweet Passover. The phrase is probably meant as a reference to the sweetness of liberation, the holiday’s central theme. But it could just as well describe the flavors of the seder. Besides the spicy bite of the “bitter herb” and the blandness of the matzo, there’s an awful lot of sweet stuff on the menu, from fruity charoset and Manischewitz wine to honeyed tzimmes and all manner of desserts. In my house there’s also the chremsls.

Chremsls as I have always known them are golden matzo fritters fried in oil and soaked in hot honey. Dense and greasy and starchy, they ooze dark sweetness when you bite into them. My mother made them from a recipe she got from her mother-in-law, our Little Grandma, and served them as an entrée side dish, alongside the brisket and the asparagus. When I started hosting my own seders, she gave me the recipe. I’ve been serving them ever since.

For years it seemed that no one outside our family had ever even heard of them. Now I learn that the proper Yiddish plural isn’t chremsls, but chremslach. Most sources say they’re eaten for breakfast or dessert. But I found one that uses the word chremslach for mashed potatoes stuffed with meat and fried. A cottage cheese version is touted as an easier, Passover-appropriate variation on blintzes.

In The Book of Jewish Food, Claudia Roden offers an Alsatian version that includes brandy, salt, sugar and cinnamon as well as raisins and chopped almonds.

Joan Nathan says she has never had a seder without chremslach (or “grimslech,” as she says it can also be spelled). Her family recipe is included in her Jewish Cooking in America. The matzo meal fritter are stuffed with currants, almonds and apricots and served with prunes stewed in orange juice, or a wine sauce.

Little Grandma’s chremsls don’t include any fruit or nuts. They’re made with actual matzo that’s been soaked, drained and crushed, rather than matzo meal. David has never liked them but the kids love them as much as I do. One memorable year, when Sam was about six, his friend Alex was eating over, and I served leftover chremsls. Alex couldn’t get enough of them. It wasn’t until later, when he was telling Sam how much he’d enjoyed the meal, that we realized he thought he was eating chicken.

Here’s my recipe:

Beat and season with salt and pepper

1 egg for each person

Moisten with hot water and drain

1 matzo for each egg

Crush the matzos into the egg and mix

Add to the egg/matzo mixture

about 1 tsp matzo meal for each matzo, or enough to bind the batter.*

(*Less is better. Too much turns your finished chremsls in to hockey pucks.)

Heat in a wide pan

peanut oil, maybe 1/2 inch deep

Meanwhile, start heating in a deep pan

honey, maybe 2 cups

When oil begins to sizzle, form the batter into 2-inch diameter patties and fry them in the oil, turning once.

When chremsls are golden on both side, drop them into the hot honey turning them over a few times as they soak up the honey.

You’ll probably have to work in stages, adding more patties to the oil as room permits, and making room for newly fried chremls in the hot honey by removing them to your serving platter (or the baking sheet on which you will reheat them, if you need to make them in advance).

But now that I think about it, maybe my mother just kept adding more and fried chremsls to the hot honey and removed them all at once, so some ended up soaking much longer than any of mine do. Maybe that’s why my version of Little Grandma’s chremsls are never as dark and sweet as I remember my mother’s being. Or maybe that’s not the reason.

By the Book

Finding the Perfect Script for the Seder

The Passover Haggadah compiled and edited by Rabbi Morris Silverman, published by The Prayer Book Press, 1972

(This is the text of my column, Ad Lib., in the April 15, 2011 issue of  The Jewish Voice and Herald.)

On a shelf in their New Jersey sunroom, my parent kept a pile of Haggadas. Several were printed in Tel Aviv in the 1950s and ’60, illustrated with old etchings so poorly reproduced it was hard to tell the hail from the locusts. One of these was in French, bought when my family lived inParis. A later edition, in Russian, recalled my grandmother’s work with the UJA. We kept these stapled booklets for sentimental reasons, but rarely looked at them.

The books we actually used were more substantial. The lime-green Glatzer Haggadah meant business, with its extensive footnotes and essays by Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and other heavy-hitter theologians.

In time, the ponderous Glatzer Haggadas were supplemented with the more user-friendly Silverman. I’m not a huge fan of the Silverman. The red-and-purple color scheme is garish. The pictures of the four sons are goofy. And the commentary tries a little too hard to convince the reader that a traditional Seder is worth the trouble.

Soon after the Silvermans came on the scene, I got married and moved toLos Angeles, where we celebrated with an Orthodox friend. I don’t remember his Haggadah — probably because he spent more time discussing the text than actually reading it. Who knew Seders could be so unscripted? So educational?

FromLos Angeles, our growing family moved toVermont. Far from my parents and with no friend to host us, I would be leading my own Seders. For the first time, I could do them my way. But what was my way? The answer, I was sure, could be found in the right Haggadah.

A bookstore in L.A.’s Fairfaxdistrict offered options from every corner of Judaism. But no one corner was exactly mine. I ended up buying several Haggadah’s. The Yeshiva University Haggada provides the sort of erudite analysis our Orthodox friend taught us to appreciate. The Telling uses non-gendered God language. Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist New Haggadah resonates with my theology.

The New Haggadah for the Pesach Seder, edited by Mordecai M Kaplan, Euegene Kohn, and Ira Eisenstein for the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation. Published by Behrman House, NY, 1978.

I rounded out the collection with a handful of Maxwell House Haggadahs, offered free at the supermarket, between the matzohs and the macaroons. They bear a striking resemblance to the stapled booklets in my parents’ sunroom.

Coordinating a seder with multiple manuals takes some doing. I charted out the corresponding page numbers in the different books, and decided which version of each section to use. It was hard to do – but not nearly as hard as getting my guests to follow the plan, especially as the evening progressed. By the time we broke the matzohs, my orderly scheme would be shattered.

That seems about right. In his essay reprinted in the Glatzer Haggadah, Franz Rosenzweig suggests that the Seder’s typical slide into silliness reinforces the festival’s liberation message. At the start of the meal, the leader speaks and the household listens. But questions and songs and four cups of wine free up the atmosphere until, as Rosenzweig puts it, “the last shred of autocracy … dissolves into community.”

When my parents died, I inherited their Haggadahs. At first I tried adding the ancestral books to my mix. But I soon realized that all my editing and orchestrating was missing the point.

For years now, we’ve been happily using the Silvermans. Yes, the art is still ugly. Yes, the commentary can be condescending. The language is no less sexist, the theology no closer mine. But the pages are stained with my mother’s haroset, the margins filled with reminders of loved ones we miss. I mean that literally.

Several of the books bear my dad’s distinctive, mangled handwriting – layers of names scratched in and crossed out as, year after year, he pre-assigned various passages. Above the Four Questions you’ll find my older sister, me, my cousin and my niece, a record of children learning to read. My Zionist grandmother repeats God’s promise to Abraham. My argumentative uncle plays the part of the rebellious son. An old family friend invites all who are hungry to come and eat.

When we read the text now, with our grown children, we add our own comments, and rephrase sexist sentences on the fly – a challenge that becomes more difficult and entertaining as we approach the fourth cup.

This mix of remembering and revising seems right, too. After all, the point of Passover isn’t how the old story is reprinted. It’s how we remember it and make it our own.

Tree of Life

My mother died on February 1, 1999. According to the Jewish calendar, her death occurred in the year 5759, on the 15th day of Shevat. It’s easy for me to remember that date, because the 15th of Shevat is also Tu B’Shevat, the birthday of the trees, a minor Jewish holiday.

I do mean minor. When I was a kid in 1960s, Tu B’Shevat meant raising money to plant trees in Israel. Our Hebrew School teachers passed out cardboard cards with pictures of trees with slots among the leaves, each one the right size to hold a penny. Fill the card with enough pennies and the cardboard and copper magically morphed into a real tree that would transform the desert into a forest.

By the time my kids hit Hebrew School, 30 years later, pennies for trees were passé. Our Burlington synagogue celebrated Tu B’Shevat with a special seder based on a mystical model developed by 17th-century Kabbalists. Progressive hues of wine (or, in the kids’ case, juice) suggested the cycle of seasons, and different categories of fruit – with inedible shells and edible insides, with inedible pits and edible outsides, and with no inedible parts – symbolized, well, something.

Spheres of spiritual enlightenment? Personality types? Aspects of our relationship with Earth? Whatever. As someone in a college English class once said, “I know it’s a phallic symbol, but I don’t know of what.” That’s the great thing about ritual. It’s plastic. Also fun, even if you have no idea what it means.

But about my mom. By dying on a holiday, she did me a favor. Determining the Gregorian date of my dad’s Jewish death anniversary could be a pain. But every Jewish calendar came with my mom’s yahrzeit pre-labeled, making it oh-so-easy for me to know when to light the 24-hour memorial candle and show up at evening services to recite Mourner’s Kaddish.

On the other hand, anyone who has lost a loved one knows how holidays magnify the absence, and how holidays on which tragedies take place are never the same.

As earth-focused Tu B’Shevat took deeper root in my Green Mountain congregation, I grew increasingly resentful. Noshing on nuts and singing songs about trees hardly seemed suitable for such a sacred, somber day. Especially when the silly celebration’s eco-vibe and trippy mysticism were so appallingly appealing to an aging Deadhead and former Flower Child wannabe like me.

It really shouldn’t have been such a big deal. Except it was. Until it wasn’t. I didn’t do it on purpose or even consciously, but when we moved to Rhode Island, the mourner in me also moved on. First I forgot to buy the yahrzeit candle. Then I got lax about saying Kaddish.

David and I do go to synagogue more Saturdays than not, though, and when we do, I play an active role in the service. And every month we get together with the five other couples in the informal eating-and-schmoozing circle one of the rabbis organized. This month it was our turn to put together the program. When I realized the meeting’s date was the 11th of Shevat, I decided to do something I had never done before: put on a Tu B’Shevat seder.

We blessed and sipped various hues of wine, and blessed and nibbled different categories of fruit. In lieu of the Talmudic excerpts suggested by the Tu B’Shevat haggadah I found online, we read poems celebrating trees and their fruits: Mary Oliver, William Carlos Williams, Pablo Neruda, Joyce Kilmer. Then we dug into a sumptuous potluck. Before and during and after, we teased each other and told jokes, passed around a phone with texted updates on the Pats/Jets game, and generally enjoyed being together.

Did I think about my mother? Of course. Mostly what struck me was how right it felt to remember her by getting together with friends to celebrate trees and anticipate spring, rather than closing myself off and nursing resentment.

I didn’t realize how really right it felt until David and I were cleaning up, putting the house back in order before we went to bed, as my parents made a point of doing after every party.

My parents never attended a Tu B’Shevat seder, and they died before cell phones and texting. But they loved food and friendship and jokes. Dad was more into baseball than football, but he would have eagerly reached for that phone when each update came in. And as a lifelong Jersey Boy, he would have been the one person in the room celebrating the game’s outcome.

My mother would have particularly appreciated the poems, especially the ones by those great New Jersey poets, William Carlos Williams and Joyce Kilmer. It was my mother who introduced me to poetry, sitting at the side of my bed and reading verse after verse before finally turning out the light.

__________________________________

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918