lifestyle

Obligated to warn of danger

I often chat with a retired doctor neighbour as I walk by his house with my dog. When he mentioned hiking solo on the famously difficult Mantario Trail in southeastern Manitoba, it sounded risky to me. I asked him what safety precautions he was taking. Afterwards, he chided me for being overly motherly and a worrywart. While his response made me feel uncomfortable, maybe it was because he was defensive about a potentially unsafe hike. The defensiveness might be a sign that part of his brain thought I might be right.

I just studied Kiddushin 29, a page of the Babylonian Talmud, while doing Daf Yomi (a page a day of Talmud). It turns out, this scene has played out before. At the time, rabbis had their own yeshivas/schools where others came to learn and a seven-headed demon was in Rav Abaye’s “study hall.” The best advice to avoid a demon, according to the rabbis, was to travel during the day and in pairs. Demons were known to come out at night, but this situation was so dangerous that students were unsafe even during the day.

Now, it happened that Rav Aha bar Yaakov wanted to come study with Abaye, but had nowhere to stay. Instead of helping Rav Aha find a place to sleep, Abaye tells others not to accommodate him. This forces Rav Aha to stay overnight at the study hall. It’s a set up. There, Rav Aha must battle the demon and vanquish it. Abaye hopes for a miracle to take place.

When Rav Aha is faced with the demon, the text indicates that he prayed. As he prayed, he bowed to shuckle (the movement many Jews make when davening/praying), and each vigorous bow resulted in knocking off one of the demon’s heads. Rav Aha battles the demon with prayer and survives.

This storyline, according to Dr. Sara Ronis’s introduction to the page on My Jewish Learning, fits into a greater literary and historic context. There are many tales of a divine hero combating a demon in Ugarit and ancient Mesopotamia. There are Zoroastrian, Christian and Jewish holy heroes who triumph over demons through prayer.

Rav Aha was a pious and great man who came eagerly to study with Abaye. However, he wasn’t without fault. Just before this story takes place, Kiddushin 29b says that Rav Aha sent his son to study. Alas, his son’s studies weren’t sufficiently “sharp,” so Aha left his son at home to manage the household while Rav Aha went to study instead.

After his confrontation with the demon, Rav Aha says to the others, “If a miracle hadn’t occurred, you would have placed me in danger.” Rav Aha was given no warning about the demon. He had no opportunity to stay elsewhere. Abaye relied on Rav Aha pulling off a miracle to save his study hall and his students.

This is one of the talmudic stories you can “sink your teeth into.” The rabbis appear as flawed people and a product of their time. There were stories about demons floating around the wider community, and people in general worried about demons and how to fight them. In the Jewish community, you see a “pious and learned” person, Rav Aha, who chooses his own study over further opportunity for his son’s education. And Abaye is a famous scholar, but asks others to deny hospitality to a student, and chooses to endanger others.

After my concern over the Mantario Trail hike, I got to wondering. If your friend is about to be in a potentially unsafe situation, do you have an obligation to warn them, to show concern? I believe we do. I still think I have this obligation, even if I’m belittled for it. I think we have the obligation even if some see it as hovering, annoying or overly solicitous.

I think about this a lot. We live in a peaceful urban residential enclave, but it’s not unusual to hear news reports of violent crime just a few blocks away. We have a neighbourhood watch, too. It pays to be cautious to avoid “demons” that might endanger us. It isn’t just a motherly inclination to be street smart. It’s not wrong to let others know if we foresee danger ahead.

Returning to this talmudic story, I’m angry that Abaye doesn’t warn or protect his student, Rav Aha. Abaye had an opportunity to do the right thing and failed in his responsibilities as a teacher. I’m also amazed at Rav Aha’s tact and self-control. After being endangered in this way, I might have made a much bigger fuss.

This time of year, we’ve got a lot to think about in the Jewish world. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we spend time thinking about our behaviours and failings as individuals and in community, the concept of forgiveness and our fate for the coming year. Yet we also look forward to Sukkot, grateful for the harvest, and to celebrating the Torah with joy on Simchat Torah.

Our calendar is complicated. Like the story of Abaye and Aha, we can’t find just a single obvious answer. Maybe this keeps us from getting bored as we repeat the rituals of each Jewish year. Perhaps it helps us sharpen our skills so we can perform miracles, protect and look out for one another, and slay unexpected (proverbial) demons, too.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

A yearly reminder to return

Family friends in their 80s just came over to visit. It was perhaps their first time at our house in a year or so. They’ve been busy. They had a family member move back to Winnipeg, there’s been a pandemic and, well, we’ve been busy, too, with kids on summer break, work obligations, visits from relatives, and home renovation.

When they first visited, our new (to us) historic home was empty. While the house had great character, original workmanship and many good points, it also needed a ton of work. We’ve had it all, from asbestos and electricity to plumbing, insulation, and so many other repairs. It didn’t have a single bathroom that worked.

When they walked in today, they said, “Oh wow! It looks like you’re home! It looks like you really live here now.” My kids then took our friends on a grand tour. They were amazed and impressed by all that’s happened. They saw such big improvements and wanted to know what we’d done ourselves, what our contractors had completed, and when and how it had happened. It was wonderfully reassuring, and also strange. We hadn’t realized how long it had been.

I couldn’t pin down when last they’d visited, even though I looked at the calendar. Then I also noticed that it’s Elul, the Jewish month where we’re supposed to wake ourselves up. We hear the shofar each day if going to morning minyan, a way to remind ourselves that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are coming. We need to look inward, do teshuvah, which is usually translated into English as repentance. Another way of understanding this word is to read it as return.

I have heard sermons or read things that entreat me, as a Jewish person, to start repenting – it’s time to apologize, repair relationships and become a better person. We need the reminder that repairing relationships and apologizing for things we’ve done wrong is important all the time. It’s also a specific ritual to prepare for the High Holidays.

Even as we enter this teshuvah season, I’m thinking of that other definition, the notion of return. Our household has been working hard to cope, in good humour, through an entire year of living through a house under renovation.

We’re lucky – we have a home! It’s mostly been warm and comfortable. Still, we’re all sleeping in temporary places. I’ve had my clothing “organized” in a laundry hamper for the entire year. We’ve had times with one functional bathroom and no kitchen. During this year, there have been days when getting to my chest of drawers or my oven has been an impossibility. We’ve moved and lost things multiple times. We’ve had days without water or heat. Other times, my kids are going to sleep or practising piano or doing homework with contractors working and making noise in the background.

When I see the house through my friends’ eyes, it’s a huge undertaking. This renovation is, in some ways, helping return this home to its best self. When it’s complete, we will have opened up windows and doors that were closed off for 40-some years or more. Things will be safe, full of warmth, light and air, with electricity that’s up to code and even the installation of a much-needed structural beam.

Seeing this house change through my friends’ eyes made me think about this return concept. When we return to ourselves, and hear our inner voice again, it means several things. Our teshuvah/return helps us be the best we can be. First, perhaps we’ve lost our way, but, as the morning liturgy reminds us, we were created in the divine image. It’s like an old house. We have good bones! Maybe we need to do some upkeep, work to stay up to date. Returning to our best selves might require us to listen, pay attention to our gut feelings, do some renovation.

Also, the teshuvah or returning work might be different from year to year. To make a new year a fresh start, we might well have to return to our core values and strengths, open up disused spaces that had been blocked off in ourselves. Sometimes, we start by apologizing to ourselves, too. We all underestimate how far we’ve come and how much we’ve grown and changed. I know our family is guilty of forgetting how much we’ve dealt with over the last year. Although we do remind each other of the changes we’ve experienced, change feels like the only constant right now, as walls move, windows and doors are repaired, and the light comes in again. Through this, we never know which piece of furniture will need moving or what we’ll have to clean (again) because of construction dust.

It’s also about being grateful. Having a kitchen to cook in this summer has been a celebration. How lucky it is to have all this garden produce and to have a place to cook it in. So many don’t have a kitchen or a garden. Maybe they lost it to fire or a bombing. Every day, I feel grateful even as I’m exhausted by my new garden’s potential zucchini and squash crop.

This return work must be grounded in a bigger reality. More than one person has remarked to me that they couldn’t do what we’re doing. In context, though, I’m not sure it’s such a big deal to renovate an old house. People are fleeing wildfires, losing their homes and families, and suffering from war, famine and disease across the world. Living in the middle of a renovation doesn’t feel like too much. It’s a privilege to have a home and have the resources to undertake this repair.

When I’m considering my gut feelings, I know I have high (perhaps unreasonable) expectations of myself and others. I suspect others may approach self-improvement this way, too. Perhaps the biggest teshuvah is remembering that we return to ourselves, while understanding that others might be elsewhere on this path … and that’s OK. Wishing you everything good as we begin 5784!

Rosh Hashanah table talk

In his diaries, Franz Kafka reflected that our not knowing “the real highway” we’re on means that “we drift in doubt. But, also in an unbelievable, beautiful diversity. Thus, the accomplishment of hopes remains an always unexpected miracle.” (photo from Piotr Malecki)

The Chassidic Rebbe Haim of Tzanz told this parable: A person had been wandering about in the forest for several days, unable to find a way out. Finally, in the distance, he saw another person approaching him, and his heart filled with joy. He thought to himself: “Now, surely, I shall find a way out of the forest.” When they neared each other, he asked the other person, “Brother, will you please tell me the way out of the forest?”

The other replied: “Brother, I also do not know the way out, for I, too, have been wandering about here for many days. But, this much I can tell you. Do not go the way I have gone, for I know that is not the way. Now come, let us search for the way out together.” (Adapted from S.Y. Agnon, The Days of Awe)

Perhaps this is a story to read at your Rosh Hashanah table, to start a discussion about your – and your guests’ – hopes for new direction in life. Think about a new path you would like to explore this coming year, or let others know about an old path you have tried that they might best avoid.

In his diaries, Franz Kafka, the 20th-century Czech Jewish writer, reflected on the difficulty of finding our way and yet our eternal hope:

“If we knew we were on the right road, having to leave it would mean endless despair. But we are on a road that only leads to a second one and then to a third one and so forth. And the real highway will not be sighted for a long, long time, perhaps never. So, we drift in doubt. But, also in an unbelievable, beautiful diversity. Thus, the accomplishment of hopes remains an always unexpected miracle. But, in compensation, the miracle remains forever possible.”

The poet and Bible scholar Joel Rosenberg speaks of Rosh Hashanah as a homecoming, rather than as journeying:

“The Hebrew word for year – shana – means change. But its sense is two-fold: on the one hand, change of cycle, repetition (Hebrew, l’shanot, reiterate, from sh’naim, two), but, on the other hand, it means difference (as in the [the Pesach seder when we ask] mah nishtana? How is this night different?) We are the same, we are different. We repeat, we learn, we recapitulate. We encounter something new. ‘Shana tova!’ means, ‘Have a good change!’”

And yet, how familiar is this time! The chant, the faces, the dressed-up mood, the calling on the same God, the words, the blessings, the bread, the apples, the honey, the wine – all are the same, and yet completely new. We meet ourselves again and for the first time.

A year that begins anew is also the fruit of the year that preceded. Good or bad, it has made us wiser. It will not constrain us. We choose from it what we want and need like gifts we brought from journeys. Rosh Hashanah is always like coming home – just as Pesach was always going on a journey.

“How do we find our Divine Parent who is in Heaven? How do we find our Parent who is in Heaven? By good deeds and the study of Torah.

“How does the Blessed Holy One find us – through love, through brotherhood, through respect, through companionship, through truth, through peace, through bending the knee, through humility, through more study, through less commerce, through the personal service to our teachers, through discussion among the students, through a good heart, through decency, through No that is really No, and through Yes that is really Yes.” (Midrash Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 23)

Noam Zion is a senior fellow emeritus of the Kogod Research Centre at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He has developed study guides on Bible, holidays and rabbinic ethics. His publications and worldwide lectures have focused on “homemade Judaism” – empowering families to create their own pluralistic Judaism. This article was originally published in 2014; it is adapted from his Rosh Hashanah seder. Articles by Zion and other Hartman Institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

The first step is the to-do list

Yesterday, I shared my to-do list with a friend via email. She responded with “Ahh! I’m tired just reading this!” What I didn’t mention is that I had to do all this plus other chores, thrown in, which I had either forgotten to write down or were such household habits that I didn’t list them. For many caregivers who work and manage households, this sounds familiar. It’s the list that is the first step. Write it down. Name the obligation. Then release yourself from trying to remember it all. Finally, cross it off the list later.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Studies have shown how much of this organizational and emotional labour falls to women. For example, a recent National Public Radio piece from the United States covered research by economists, which showed that women (mothers) were almost always contacted by schools first, no matter which parent was designated as the “first contact” on the emergency form. The social media chatter that followed remarked on how female medical residents or surgeons, working hours away from their children’s schools, were still called first even though the primary caretaker was the father. In the study itself, one economist described the mental load of planning ahead for “if the school called” and how women’s workload could be managed in such situations. She noted that, even though her husband was the vice-president of the Parent Teacher Association, the school always called her first.

In economic terms, women then self-select for lower paying, more flexible work simply to manage these challenges, resulting in lower income and fewer opportunities for career growth. Societal obligations placed mostly on women create a lifelong effect on earning power and household income.

This morning, as I bake bread, make chicken broth in two slow cookers, write this article and air out the house with fans because of an unexpected drop in temperatures due to a rainstorm, I time everything to fit into the hours between when I drop kids off at 9 a.m. and pick them up at noon for their half day of camp. This is, of course, not a specifically Jewish problem, but aspects of it are in our house.

We have twin 12-year-olds, with both kids doing b’nai mitzvah lessons at the same time. These kids come with different challenges. Like all learners, they may need different supports to master chanting trope. Amid the meltdown tears last night, it became clear that what was necessary was for each kid to have 15 minutes to practise separately every day with me. As the crying continued – and I include myself in the crying – my partner tried to help.

This is when you might wonder why all this falls to me, and you’d be right to ask. My partner told us that the year before his bar mitzvah involved a lot of crying. He was so overwhelmed that he quit playing drums at school, because he couldn’t manage both things. His mother had been given no Jewish education. She couldn’t read Hebrew and didn’t know the prayers. His father worked late every day, coming home at 11 p.m. My twins’ dad was truly on his own, with a cassette tape. He never learned the trope and struggled with short-term memory issues. Mastering his bar mitzvah portion took him a long time. As an adult, he never gained some of these prayer skills. A demanding job means now is not the time for him to catch up. The obligation’s all mine.

We’ve now been married for 25 years and I just learned last night about this tough path my husband took towards bar mitzvah. By comparison, I had supportive parents with some Jewish literacy, plus we attended services regularly. I was self-directed as a learner. Mastering everything for my bat mitzvah was interesting and challenging but not a struggle. I continued learning through university and graduate school and beyond, as I continue to study Talmud when I can. We chose a bilingual Hebrew/English elementary school for our kids partially because it would make bar mitzvah study easier for them.

Few people see what my lists of work and household obligations look like. I tell even fewer people about fitting in 20 minutes of Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud every day. When I mention the Talmud study, I’ve been asked why I bother. The minutiae of discussions of Jewish law that rabbis conducted so long ago is of no interest to most. Sometimes, if the person wants to know why, I explain that I learn things about Jewish tradition, history and daily life from these debates.

I also admit to myself that I find some reassurance in these pages. Although the specifics might have been different, life’s minutiae is pretty much the same. The rabbis struggled over multiple daily tasks, relationships and household concerns in many of the ways I do. They sweated the details, even if they didn’t do them all personally.

If everything works out, in June 2024, my kids will step up to the bimah (pulpit) and become bar mitzvah boys, which is a huge lifecycle event. Between now and then, practising with them will be another part of my to-do list. Good study habits mean you do a little every day until, suddenly, you learn something new. Just like my lists, nothing is insurmountable if you name it, take it step by step, and cross it off the list when the task is complete.

Like many women, I get bogged down by the minutiae. I wish I could share more of the household labour and emotional load. Even men who try to assume more of these tasks have to struggle against the societal expectations our culture wields. Step by step, we make change in our lives, our lists and our expectations for one another. It’s not a sprint. You can’t cram the night before to pass this exam. Life is a series of chores, moments, obligations and, well, joys.

Early this morning, I leashed up the dog while I sang the first Haftorah blessing aloud. I try to put the melody into the twins’ heads while donning my shoes and raincoat as I head out. Each step makes a difference to hopefully hit one very big milestone ahead.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Sharing the load as a team

The greatest triumph of our summer so far is moving 10 cubic yards of gravel. Obviously, there’s a story in this! When we moved to our present house, we knew that the landscaping (along with the plumbing, electricity, insulation, boiler and more) needed work. A previous owner created rock-filled beds in both the front and backyards. This wouldn’t have been our chosen landscaping technique, but, when we moved in, these beds had so many weeds and enough scattered rock that it would be hard to remove them, so we chose to improve on what was here already.

We found an advertisement offering an entire dump truck’s worth of (slightly used) gravel for a low price. I made bad geology jokes about “new” versus “used” gravel after that, but we called them up. Soon after, we received two huge piles of gravel in our driveway, dumped efficiently by a Hutterite colony that found they had too much on hand. We had saved cardboard and put it down to kill weeds. Then the cardboard was covered with the slightly dusty and dirty (used) gravel.

The first pile of gravel, for the front of the house, was moved by the end of May long weekend. Through trial and error, I found a successful system that one mom (me) and twins (age 12) could manage. It involved using beach sand buckets and plastic flowerpots. Each person filled up two of these, and we pretended to do weightlifting as we marched from the pile to the landscape bed, over and over. My much larger partner filled a heavy wheelbarrow full of gravel with a shovel and moved it instead. We also had help from a kind neighbour who loaned us a second garden cart, which could be operated by the twins if (and only if) they cooperated.

The backyard gravel pile took longer. It wasn’t in the way as much, not as publicly in view and, well, some of our enthusiasm for the project had worn off. We finally moved it all into the backyard by mid-July. There are, of course, people who hire landscapers using Bobcats, or workers with multiple wheelbarrows, but we did the physical labour, for free, as a team. It worked for us. As neighbours commented on the hardworking “mama and twins” and the disappearing piles, we felt proud of our efforts.

This gravel experience reminded me of other Jewish traditions around summer, with Tisha b’Av coming. This day of mourning, where we remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, has a lot of upsetting stories attached to it. One reason the rabbis give about why the Temple was destroyed is “sinat chinam” or “baseless hatred.” In other words, there was so much infighting between Jewish factions that it caused the Romans to be able to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple.

The Roman Empire was big and powerful. Probably there were many reasons its leaders wanted to conquer more territory, including Jerusalem and the Temple. Yet, the talmudic rabbis give multiple examples of how individuals’ bad behaviour resulted in the fall of the entire Jewish world. Was every single one of these painful stories of bad behaviour completely historically factual? Well, maybe not. It’s hard to say from here.

Regardless, the personal stories of hatred remain powerful thousands of years later. I thought of this stuff as we trudged back and forth with our little buckets of stones. I also nearly joked with my children about Sisyphus, forced to push his rock uphill for eternity, as they occasionally complained, but Sisyphus was Greek, not Roman, and I didn’t want to mix metaphors while hauling gravel.

What I found most interesting about moving the gravel, or cleaning up construction messes as a family, is that, after initial grumbling, we all settle down into a rhythm together. We put in the work. We all pull in the same direction and, well, with all four of us working, things get done.

This struck me as the absolute opposite of sinat chinam, or baseless hatred. We are faced so often with hard tasks – as individuals, as families, in neighbourhoods or in the wider Jewish community. Not every task is physical labour either. It’s easy to fall apart and bicker over everything instead of finding a common cause and working efficiently together. However, if we search for what we have in common, including big goals, it’s amazing what we can accomplish.

Jewish people are like everyone else – we’re all very different individuals, prone to disagreement and conflict. Some of us will avoid haircuts, washing clothes, eating meat and then fast on Tisha b’Av. Others may skip those rituals altogether. Whatever we do or don’t do for Jewish holiday observance, we also might forget that we have things in common, too. If we choose to pull in the same direction to make changes about things that matter to us, we can do it.

I’m not claiming to know what matters for all of us or how to fix it, because in my mind, that, too, is part of our work. The work we have to do together, as people who care about one another, as part of a larger community. Perhaps identifying common goals is a hard part of our task, too.

This summer, my family moved gravel. It wasn’t world peace and it didn’t end homelessness or poverty. It was just a step closer to restoring our character home, which needs so much more done to it. Each time I see my family working together, wiping up endless drywall dust or moving small stones, I think about how much we accomplish and build as a family “team” and how proud I am to be a part of this one.

As community members, we’ve also got a “team” and, together, we can do so much to improve the world if we pull in the same direction. If we base our efforts in love, we can find common ground and work together. It might not bring about the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem (and not everybody even yearns for that) but it might make the world we live in a much better place in the meanwhile.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

A life of light and of shade

The quality of our lives seems to contain alternating waves of good and bad, hard and soft, light and shade. If we are lucky enough to appreciate that this is the nature of existence, we can bear much better with the shady parts of our lives. We can have faith that, whatever challenges we are facing, no matter how painful, the good times will roll around again. And the good times can be so good, so full of richness, pleasure, joy, lightness and brightness, that they are worth the price we may ultimately have to pay for the good fortune we have the luck to be earning.

The dilemma is that sometimes we do not realize that what we are passing through are the bright times, the good times, the best times. That often comes only with retrospection.

I remember that I left home at the age of 18 to spend a year of work and study in Israel. I did not think to ask for the permission of my parents, I just made my plans and informed them of those plans. I never thought to do otherwise, and I was never questioned. I saved up the money I needed from the odd jobs I performed as I wended my way through my high school years. I applied for the assignment, gathered my pennies and off I went, traveling across the globe.

I was a part of a group, but I felt very much alone. I remember that, being alone, on the ship sailing across the ocean, my mind brimming full of speculations about the nature of the world. I wrote incessantly about that on every scrap of paper I could find.

I have some of those scraps in a file I have kept to this day. So much of it, seems to me today, to be a load of nonsense. The gist of it was that I was a solitary sailor afloat on the sea of life and that life was incredibly sweet. I was full of wants. I wanted to find a true companion. I wanted a country of my own. I wanted to save the world. I was going to do it all myself if I had to. At the time, I could read it all in the palm of my hand, and it was all going to happen. I was totally free from obligations, except those that I chose to lay upon myself – and included in those was responsibility for creating the perfect world. All of us are heroes in our own eyes, and we have to try as hard as we can to live up to that image of ourselves.

How was that not the most superlative moment of my life to that date? I had not the merest clue as to the nature of the importance of those moments in my existence. I was unconsciously writing an agenda for my life.

I am no different from others, and all of you have had those moments in your lives, those moments whose importance is only appreciated by you with the passage of time and the gleanings of experience.

I remember holding a child of mine in my arms, and feeling like I would burst with joy. I remember when I was leaving my first job, hearing that my superiors were frantic about who they could find to fill the hole I was leaving. I remember when I realized that I had succeeded in resolving a dilemma that would yield years of success at a seemingly impossible task that I had taken on. I remember the instant when I recaptured the love of my heart after 50 long years of disappointment when I had not found the companionship I longed for. I remember the moments when I began to understand what elements of my behaviour prevented my Bride from feeling the depth of my love for her. All these events, which cast other parts of my life in the shade where they belonged, I could only truly appreciate in retrospect. The thrill they yield when I recall them I relive over and over again. So it must be for so many of you, when you recall your own experiences.

Surely there are lessons to be learned by sentient beings from these experiences. Don’t they help us, when we find ourselves in periods when there is shade all around us, know that the moments we hope for and will cherish all the days of our lives will surely arrive for us if we carry on? Just as day follows night, won’t our turn at good fortune arrive if we put in the necessary effort to survive what may seem to us to be the worst of times, and if we are lucky enough to have the good health and fortune to do so? Isn’t that the secret, that we try, and try again, to confront the challenges we face, and we never, never, give up?

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

A foolproof eggplant recipe

Rebbetzin Chanie’s eggplant dish is “super-easy and ridiculously yummy.” (photo by Shelley Civkin)

A recent Shabbat dinner with Rabbi Yechiel and Chanie Baitelman and a few other guests was like waking into the light after being in darkness for three years. The isolation brought on by COVID, compounded by health issues leaving us feeling vulnerable, resulted in Harvey and I spending every Shabbat and all Jewish holidays by ourselves for three long years. It was our first Shabbat “out in the open” and we couldn’t have asked for a warmer or more welcoming environment.

Observant, but not very much so, Harvey and I are used to lighting Shabbat candles, and he always reads Eishes Chayil (Woman of Valour) to me. But that’s pretty much all we do on Shabbat. So it was truly a delight to spend it with the rabbi and Chanie, their two youngest children, and a few others. The Shabbat rituals added much to the sanctity of the evening, and reminded me why we do what we do, and why Jews are G-d’s chosen people. The singing, the chatting – really, just the feeling of being “home” – all contributed to this intimate and freilach (joyous) evening. And then there was the food.

No Jewish celebration is complete without spectacular homemade food. And Chanie hit all the right notes on that count. We started out the meal with a bunch of small dishes, including the best eggplant dish I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. There was also baked fish, another eggplant dip, a gorgeous salad, freshly baked challah and an Israeli couscous salad. And that was just to start! Having been a guest at their home before, I knew that this was just the beginning, and that I should pace myself. Juicy, delicious Shabbos chicken followed, along with zucchini and onion quiche.

The star of the show for me, though, was Chanie’s Middle Eastern eggplant dish, which is the stuff that Jewish dreams are made of. People always say delicious food is “to die for!” but, really, the saying should be: “It’s to live for!” Naturally, I asked Chanie for the recipe and she admitted that she doesn’t really use one, which is why it tastes different every time she makes it. I tried to nail her down, as I wasn’t about to let this amazing dish get away. A couple of days later, and after a lot of question-asking and prodding, she relented and texted me the ingredients. No measurements. Just ingredients. Her directions to me were simple: “Just taste it as you go along.” Not unlike what our grandmothers did. But this is not something you say to someone like me, who’s a bit compulsive, and a stickler for a recipe. Needless to say, I was a bit flustered by the meagre directions.

Not to be daunted by a challenge though, I did what I rarely do – I winged it. With great trepidation, I might add. Chanie’s eggplant dish was so spectacular that I just knew I had to figure it out on my own, no matter how many tries it took. And, whaddaya know, I hit it out of the ballpark on the first go! And now, as humbly as possibly, I will share (to the best of my memory) the ingredients and measurements that I recall, and if it doesn’t work out … well … just try again. All measurements are approximate. As if that helps.

REBBETZIN CHANIE’S EGGPLANT
(makes enough for four as a side dish)

3 smallish eggplants, cubed and with skin on
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
2-3 cloves minced garlic
2 heaping tbsp tomato paste
2 heaping tbsp honey or date syrup (I used honey)
large handful of parsley, finely chopped
pepper to taste

Dice unpeeled eggplants into small cubes and sprinkle generously with olive oil. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of oil. Then sprinkle with salt. Bake at 375°F. until very soft, about 40 minutes. Turn it halfway through.

While the eggplant is baking, fry up minced garlic in a good amount of olive oil. Once it starts to brown, turn the heat down and add lemon juice, cumin, paprika, smoked paprika, tomato paste, honey or date syrup, and pepper. As you fry it up, taste it and adjust accordingly. There won’t be a lot of sauce but, trust me, the flavour is enough to permeate all of the eggplant.

Once the eggplant is nice and soft, mix it in with the garlic and tomato paste mixture, add the parsley, and you’re good to go. This dish is spectacular on its own, or with challah or focaccia to soak up the oil. It’s great served hot but it’s even better served cold the next day, once the flavours have had a chance to meld and marry. My husband declared it “company worthy” and hopes I’ll make it daily. Nice try, honey.

What I like about this dish is that it’s super-easy and ridiculously yummy – it’s sweet, smoky and slightly tart all at once. It’s also very oily, but that’s part of its Middle Eastern charm. You can adjust the amount you use, as eggplant tends to suck it up like a sponge. In our household though, you can never have enough olive oil.

I served this eggplant dish with steak, but it would go well with pasta, fish, rice, chicken or pretty much anything. Chanie told me that she makes up a big batch of the garlic tomato paste mixture and freezes it, so that when she’s in the mood for eggplant, all she has to do is cube the eggplant, bake it and add it to her defrosted pre-made “sauce” mixture. If I were a store or a restaurant, I’d put a money-back guarantee on this dish. Short of outrageously over-spicing it, you really can’t go wrong. I mean, it’s eggplant after all. The nightshade superstar. Enough said. Go dice your eggplant and call me when it’s done. I won’t take no for an answer. I’ll even bring the bread.

Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.

Recipes for special moments

As my kid peered over the counter, straining to see into the mixer bowl, I had a moment that I hope I will always remember. “Egg chemistry is amazing!” I commented, as he asked what cream of tartar did and we read the label together. Then, as the mixer churned faster than I could ever do by hand, we saw soft peaks and medium peaks pass into stiff peaks. We were ready to drop globs of this air-filled sugar mixture onto the baking sheets, ready to turn egg whites into crunchy meringues.

It’s after Shavuot. There’s Winnipeg’s glorious spring all around us, as well as the remains of a delicious lemon custard pie (like key lime pie, if you’re wondering, but with lemons) in the refrigerator. Since some of the Shavuot dairy desserts use egg yolks, we were left with the practical gift of the whites and the magical meringues that followed.

I live with a science professor and twins who won their school science fair this year, but I wouldn’t call myself good at science. However, moments like these, whipping egg whites with one of my kids, make me think back to my high school chemistry teacher, Tuvia. Tuvia grew up in New York and settled on a religious kibbutz in Israel. He had an impressive beard and was probably in his 40s when he taught our Grade 11 class of North Americans, living on secular Kibbutz Beit HaShita in 1989-90. He had limited access to supplies or facilities when it came to doing experiments. I got the sense that teaching our class took time out of his regular work schedule. Even so, he captured the joy and neat magic of how basic chemistry worked.

Due to a sickness that caused a lengthy absence, I was behind in his class. I got to visit his family at their kibbutz with another classmate or two. From what I remember, I sat at his kitchen table to do make-up work. His wife offered us snacks. Kids played outside, running through the sprinklers on the well-tended paths, surrounded by flowers.

Tuvia offered us a good grounding in chemistry but also a window into what an Israeli religious kibbutz settlement looked like, simply by inviting us home to help us catch up on our schoolwork. This was something our year abroad program wasn’t offering. More than 30 years later, that memory is a valuable one. Tuvia, if you’re out there in our “connected by Jewish geography” world – thank you for being such a good teacher.

On social media at this time of year, it’s common to see lots of weddings and other celebrations. Family picnics, parties and graduations fill up many people’s schedules. My household’s not immune: this month, we’ve got a big school play, three birthdays, an end-of-year elementary school event, a milestone wedding anniversary and more. I joked with a friend that it’s like somebody pushed a “GO” button. Everybody’s running around like crazy.

Many people (likely extroverts) get a lot of joy from the big occasions. Turns out that I’m one of those people who can do without the big events. The pandemic reminded me that, if I had to avoid gathering in large groups forever, I probably wouldn’t mind. There’s a lot of pressure to “return to normal” right now, even though COVID still exists. But, even if it didn’t, I am one of those who didn’t really find “normal” large social events all that easy before.

The gift that I’ve received instead is this amazing joy in the small things every day. In sitting outside in the shade, watching one kid construct mysterious imaginary fairy worlds while the other one doggedly coaxes along things he has built, like his solar rover. I loved starting our garden, where we all dug in the earth together, tucking in our seedlings and seeds, and feeling such hopeful enthusiasm for what will grow and for the growing season’s potential.

We have lots of specific, prescribed blessings in Jewish tradition to help us find that everyday gratitude and joy. There’s the brachah (blessing) for seeing a rainbow, for a thunderstorm, or even for seeing a king. I don’t always remember the blessings at the right moment, but, in the end, I’m not sure it matters. The prompt to recognize these things, express gratitude and sense the wonder of the world is still there.

Along with making meringue magic and planting in the sunshine this past weekend, I heard some hard news, too. One friend from university, a single mom who lives far away, age 49, is facing a new diagnosis of lung cancer. Another faraway friend, dear to my heart, is soon to enter palliative care and hospice. This bad news just about derailed me. There were moments to cry. Yet, I grasped hold of the sunshine, the airy bits of sugar and egg, the time weeding and digging in the earth, and, instead of tears, two kid drawings and a note filled with love went out in the mail today to my friend entering hospice.

Very few things are as tidy as basic math or chemistry problems. Food chemistry, like making meringues, is just about the most predictable experiment I know. Those recipes are like the ritual prayers for seeing moments of wonder. To me, recipes, like their religious ritual equivalent, perhaps express a purely rote way to acknowledge wonder in the everyday. I am holding onto that recipe for wonder with both hands as I head forth through this warm season of celebration. Sometimes, a “recipe” for complete healing after surgery removes cancer or a prayer for a peaceful send off to Olam HaBa (the next world, the place some believe we go after death) is all we can do. In the meanwhile, it’s a good time to eat those crunches of sugar and air – but only after we clean the dirt from our fingernails and race through the sprinklers to another summer day.

Beauty in indrawn breath

An indrawn breath. What are the things that cause your eyes to widen, that are such a surprise, good or bad, that they literally take your breath away? There may not be many things that do that to you, but they do leave an impression. I have found it important to mark them.

Myself, I prefer the happy surprises. When that person you have been dreaming about every night pops the question, that can take your breath away. Perhaps even better, someone you never dreamed of appears before your eyes, sweeps you off your feet and whisks you to a place that never existed before. Your feet rise from the ground and, amazingly, you are bodiless, and it can go on and on, even for a lifetime! Eventually, you have to breathe again, but now you are in a new world, and things have changed forever. Am I raising your expectations too high? Why not ask for the moon? It happened to me.

How about when a new life is born. Then, suddenly, there is an indrawn breath, and a cry – the world has changed forever for all those concerned. And there will be many ups and downs. Try to enjoy the ups as much as you can!

I remember coming upon an iris in a garden, the colour was blue-black. It took my breath away. The beautiful delicacy of an orchid, its shape, colours – that does it for me every time. A piece of music can pierce me to the very core and set me weeping, so that I find it almost impossible to breathe. A summer day in a vineyard, the clouds advancing to attenuate the summer heat, the blush of air on my skin from a gentle breeze as I hide in the shade of a massive tree – I hold my breath and hug myself. When I stand with my fingers brushing the weathered stone of the ancient Wall in Jerusalem, I can feel the thrum of the centuries rumbling under my skin and my body shakes uncontrollably in resonance with the events I am heir to; I feel myself gasping for air, I am transported.

Let me take you into my confidence. I am intoxicated with life, totally drunk and out of my skull. The tsunami of sensory input coursing through the coruscations of my cortex from my eyes, ears, skin, not to mention my taste buds and my gut, have me in a constant state of arousal. And I haven’t even mentioned sex. I kid you not.

The tiny tiptoeing of an insect on my skin brings me to full alert. I wonder where it thinks it is going, what it sees, feels. Will it bite, just feed on my exfoliations, or is it exploring to find a friend? As it crawls across my arm, I contemplate the feel of my muscles when they propel me down the street. I sometimes am impelled to break into a run just to experience the pump of my heart and the puff of my lungs. What a rush to be alive!

Talk about taste and what it does to my senses: the sweet and bitter of wine, the acridity of a cigar, the shock of a shot of single malt, and that’s just the stuff designed to kill brain cells. What about salt and vinegar, spiced meats and garlic, onions and, a favourite, caraway seeds?

There is no bland for me. How about a rib steak, medium rare, seared so the exterior is caramelized, adding salad with a sharp vinaigrette? How about battered cod, with French fries and lots of ketchup? Does this sound like a sensible low-cal diet for an old fogey like me? Let’s not mention desserts, enjoyed in moderation even though I am diabetic. The sight of one in a French restaurant is sometimes enough to excite me to breathlessness. I haven’t mentioned that I love a tart apple pie.

I have experienced Yellowknife at 40-below, with a wind, and the desolate airport tarmac, in scenic Mauritania, at 45˚C, the juicy humidity (with body melting like ice cream) of the Congolese jungle and the aridity (feeling like a dried-up leaf) of Darfur. I know when I am fortunate in passing my time in a temperate climate. Just being in a pleasant place is something I can never take for granted.

And, for a bit of something else, I know what it is to try to survive in the hurley-burley of a chaotic business environment. I have learned to appreciate the joys of single-tasking after being in situations where I have felt like a 10-armed paperhanger, working against time. And more? Believe me, you would not necessarily enjoy seeing your name on the front page of a newspaper or your face on the TV news. Talk again about the indrawn breath.

But it is our human relationships that top it all for me. There is nothing like the right one, or the wrong one, to get us breathing like a steam engine, testing the resistant capacities of our vascular systems. It surely takes the cake for the height of experience. When your moment arrives, and you feel that sense of communion with another person, just smiling at each other across a small space, you feel the need to pinch yourself to prove that the instant is really real. I don’t know about you, but I have to take a really big breath to try and keep calm. I feel I could burst with the ecstasy of the experience, because I can remember the misery of those other so-lonely times. Oh, yes, I can.

Welcome to Life.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Boundaries are a good thing

The house directly behind ours is for sale. This neighbourhood doesn’t have back lanes, so we look out over their backyard as well. Occasionally, when I’ve stepped outside with the dog, I encounter a family checking out that house’s yard, just beyond my fence. I always call out, smiling, welcome them and say I hope they will be our new neighbours. I’ve had several wonderful interactions, and one that gave me the creeps – the potential buyer, a man in camouflage with a woman trailing behind, left me unsettled. I took my big dog back inside and locked the door.

Our shared back fence needs to be mended. There is a tree, partly on our property, which needs to be trimmed. We never managed to meet the old neighbours, who we hear were seniors who couldn’t manage the upkeep and needed to downsize. We planned to try again to talk to the neighbours about the fence and the tree, but then the For Sale sign went up. Now we await the next occupants.

Overall, we’re delighted with the friendliness of our new neighbourhood. We took our weekend morning dog walk with another neighbour and her baby and participated in our community clean up. It’s a thoughtful place, where we help each other remember the yard waste pickup days or we look out for lost items. Yet fences exist for a reason – not just to keep dogs and kids in the yards, but also to provide us with personal space.

These encounters reminded me of Robert Frost’s famous poem “Mending Wall” and its unforgettable line “Good fences make good neighbours.” This poem (which is available online and worth reading) often springs to mind when I’m considering how to navigate in the world.

Jewish life also has lots of boundaries and reminders for how to order our lives and relationships. This is such a big part of our tradition that it’s hard to offer only one example. There are the ways we read the Torah portion each week, or how we get married or how we bury loved ones, how we are to educate our kids or how we should treat our elders. Our tradition offers us lots of structure and ideas for how we are to behave in a Jewish context.

All this came to mind when talking to a friend about work boundaries, which we’ve both struggled with addressing. She works unpredictable shifts. They sometimes seem assigned at random and she’s worked every weekend in recent memory. Her schedule isn’t dependably the same. There are weeks where she works six days in a row. Other times, she is told to go home early due to lack of work, or has several days off unexpectedly. It becomes very hard to make solid plans, like when I might see her next, or even when she can easily pick up groceries or consistently go to a once-a-week event.

I have a household that thrives on routine. For best success, we plan the heck out of things. If my kids have an afterschool activity and I’m taking them there, I’ve often thought out dinner and gotten it into the slow cooker before I start work in the morning. We have a dog that doesn’t like to be alone, a fair number of household medical appointments, and our old house is still undergoing needed renovations. We parents are spread thin! For me, having an unpredictable work meeting or emergency outing can disrupt this fragile equilibrium. Planning makes everything possible. It’s how I fit in my various paid and volunteer commitments, my kids’ and household needs, and also, I joke, my eating and sleeping.

In most Jewish practices, we’re a people of moderation, things have to be in balance. Like Frost’s poem, sometimes what makes us “good neighbours” are those walls, the boundaries we create to make structures that enable us to cope. We need structure. In religious life, we might call some of those structures rituals or behavioural expectations: derech eretz, how we are to behave towards one another. Whether it’s from the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets and Writings) or from rabbinic teachings, we’ve got a framework that helps us create those metaphoric walls.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to actually maintain our own boundaries when things get out of hand. It’s hard to stand up to a difficult work situation or a bully at school and say, “No, this is out of bounds.” Yet, most of the time, this is what we have to do to maintain our dignity and move forward. Sometimes, we have to remind others that “this isn’t in the job description” or, for kids coping with a bully, “No, I don’t have to respond when you say hurtful things. I can walk away and tell an adult.”

Good boundaries help us become better people, better workers, or even more thoughtful in our Jewish practice. However, it’s hard to find the courage to respond appropriately and draw one’s “line in the sand.”

Today, my twins went to the backyard for raucous playtime with pool noodles. They hopped on and off the deck, sparring with their imaginary swords, as they dueled and chased each other. Much later, right before bedtime, I heard that one of them saw a woman at “that house for sale.” My son demonstrated her expression of distaste as she gazed at them and his bad feeling about it – but my kids were safe in our yard as they played, laughing on our side of the fence.

Setting boundaries for ourselves, or fixing a literal fence, can sometimes mean everything. It may make good neighbours or give us orderly schedules that allow us to more calmly cope with our lives. Staying healthy and promoting our well-being might not always be wrapped up in spa days or vacations. We might promote wellness by saying no when others overstep. We can embrace structures, rituals, traditions or routines that make us feel best, allowing time for pool noodle sword play or a consistent day off work. We need boundaries in all things, work and play, because it’s the good fences that make good neighbours.