Monday, September 28, 2009
Playing Fast and Loose - plus bonus superkugel!
It’s commonly known as the Day of Atonement, the most serious holy day of the Jewish calendar. Of course, every day is holy, you might say, and several of them are extra-holy, but YK is the one that pulls the fewest punches. You’re supposed to have spent the prior 39 days getting ready for it, apologizing in the most inconvenient ways to anyone you may have injured, setting up a personal work plan for being a better person, listening to the unearthly wails of the shofars and mumbling along with extra prayers that are extra personal. We think of what may befall us, the fates that await us depending on our behavior and the myriad circumstances over which we have no control.
And then the day comes and, as is commonly known, we fast. No food from sundown till sundown, and if you’re hard core you might even build a primitive shack in your backyard before finally sitting down for supper so that in a few days you can dine therein for the festival of sukkot, which is joyous and amusing and a much-appreciated counterpart to YK. Which is today. And I’m not really doing much for it. So here’s my rationalization.
There are times when I just can’t face going to services, for personal or even financial reasons (it’s the one time in the year every congregation asks for a fee to attend services). This year, those things are not issues for me. But I’d been out of town lately and a lot of work has piled up on my desk, and I had an important meeting to attend, and all kinds of other reasons to imagine myself too important and indispensible to take off half a day (since that’s all I work on mondays), so I was going to the office regardless of the condition of my immortal soul or whatever it is we’re burnishing today.
On the other hand, Kelly has had pneumonia for nearly a month now and she’s exhausted just from the effort of breathing. Zach has been getting into our bed and thrashing around keeping us awake, and Jesse is more than a handful for anybody - cheerful and imperturbable, but the personification of the unstoppable force and the immovable object bound together into one supercharged conundrum all on his own. This morning Kel didn’t feel well enough even to go in for her half-day of work, and then didn’t feel well enough to have me go in for mine. So there were no services, nor any important meeting at work, this YK day. It was just me taking Z to pre-school on the shuttlebus he loves so much (but which makes a 20 minute dropoff take more like 90), and then wrangling J around the house and to the playground and back via the produce market I always visit on mondays. Not very Yom-Kipperistic, overall - except for the fasting.
The fasting is an interesting component to the whole YK deal. It’s tempting to think of it as mortification of the flesh, but that’s not it; mortification implies punishment for inherent corruption and YK is really about just the opposite, encouragement of inherent virtue. The errors to be corrected through the YK process cannot be physically beaten away. The heart cannot soar if the body is downcast and broken. Neither is the goal “purification,” though that does get closer. It’s not like food infects the spirit, rendering it incapable of improvement. Truly, some great meals are very spiritual, and one of the most spiritual events in the Jewish calendar takes place around a supper table. The point, I think, is that we’re supposed to be too busy to eat. There’s prayer at night straight through till sleeping time, and those meditations are supposed to be the last - and only - things in our minds as we drift off, so they occupy our dreams and remain with us when we awaken - to join the community, borborygmous and clear-headed, undistracted by superfluous thoughts or activities, to continue our joint and individual jouneys of the day. There are series of prayers all day long, with torah readings and meditations; the introduction of a snack-break would disrupt the metaphysical structure of the process and retard the steady inculcation of numinous potential in the celebrants. Food is fine, for the rest of the year. This day, the attention should be elsewhere, where the important work remains to be done.
I, of course, forsook that important work for my important meeting. Then I blew off the meeting for the fragile welfare of my family. However, I did keep the fast. No food has passed my lips since supper last night and I’m really starting to notice, you know? It’s a lot easier to keep the fast when you’re surrounded by others who are doing the same, when your day is full of carefully-scripted activities, and when temptation is kept far from your lips. I, on the other hand, have been feeding Jesse, cleaning the kitchen, cooking a kugel for tonight’s break-fast party, and even cut a dozen kiwis into quarters and wrapped halves together in plastic wrap as a snack for Z’s preschool class. Food’s been everywhere, and where there has not been food there has been work of the most quotidian sort. It has been a challenging YK, for sure.
But at least I have labored throughout the day on the thing that’s really most important - not soulfulness, not my vocation, but the family that sustains me and gives me both the strength and the reason to persevere. The fasting has help me keep the significance of that work foremost in my mind, as it typically is not. And now Jesse is up from his nap (he’s taken to denuding himself in his crib but at least this time there was no soiling of linens) and it’s time for me to get Kel out of her therapeutic steamy shower so I can go pick Zach up from school. We do have a good party to go to soon, and my kugel is succulent and ready to be served. It’s not the YK the sages expected me to have, but it was a good one nonetheless.
Break Fast Kugel
Boil about 8-10 ounces of broad noodles till soft, then stir in 2/3s cup of butter till absorbed. Beat three eggs; then add the zest of one lemon, and 1/2 a cup of sugar. Separately, mix 8 oz of sour cream and 8 oz of marscapone with about a teaspoon of cinnamon and two grated apples; stir all this into the egg mixture. Add in half a cup of raisins which have been soaked in rum and then gently heated to make them absorb the liquor (together with the rum in which they had been soaking). Finally, add the juice of half a lemon and mix it all well into the noodles.
Pour half the noodles into a buttered baking dish, then spread fruit jam over it (I used strawberry and heated it a bit to make it easier to spread); add the rest of the noodles and top with corn flakes. Sprinkle sugar over the corn flakes, spray with a mist of water to dissolve the granules, and then bake at 350 for an hour. I have yet to cut into it, but why should it be bad? After all, I’m all atoned up and morally clear. It’s a perfect time to clog my arteries!
