Rosh Hashanah – From Under the Fig Tree

Number 1535

joselitSeptember 17, 2017December 10, 2017Leave a comment

More than a century ago, visitors to London’s Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition encountered an embarrassment of riches: nearly 3,000 items that ranged from a Hebrew version of “God Save the Queen” to a brass model of Solomon’s Temple.

An attempt to shore up and secure Anglo-Jewry’s relationship to the British Empire, an exercise in both apologetics and cultural pride, the exhibition dazzled the eye, or so we are told.

The students in my grad seminar, “Displaying Jewish Culture,” where we recently took the measure of the exhibition, were not so much dazzled as baffled. Its sweep and scale they understood as strategic, a way to make the case that the Jews had a rich and complex cultural patrimony, but the paucity of interpretive information that accompanied the objects on display was something else again.

Consider, for example, item number 1535, a shofar, or, as the catalogue explained, a “ram’s horn trumpet.” Housed in a section of the exhibition given over to music, it was identified simply as “quaint and old.” Ditto for item number 1540, a shofar described as “very old,” and its companion, number 1548, which featured “black from age” as its label.

Where, oh, where, wondered the students, was information about context or usage or significance?
Surely, vague descriptive phrases on the order of ‘old’ and ‘very old’ didn’t do much for the shofar, especially among the uninitiated.

As we batted about the absence of detail from our latter-day perches, generating lively conversation about the sea changes in museological conventions and expectations since 1887, it occurred to me that the curators of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition had gotten it right.

When it came to the shofar, what really mattered was not so much its materiel or place of origin or maker. A blast from the past, the ram’s horn trumpeted the values of historicity, connecting one generation with another.

On that note, here’s wishing one and all a sweet new year and a vibrant and meaningful 5778.

Greetings

joselitSeptember 7, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

As Rosh Hashanah approaches, one of the things that strikes me is how each generation of Jews, drawing on tradition as well as on the latest technology and the most current protocol, has developed its own way of wishing one another well for the new year. Here, as with other elements of Jewish life and culture, constancy and novelty go hand in hand.

Rosh Hashanah card from the Rosenthall collection

These days, cleverly animated digital greetings rule the roost, one more amusing than the next. Your inbox, like mine, is probably full of them.

When I was growing up, my parents and their friends opted for a more restrained form of exchange, one that placed a premium on good paper stock and just a few lines of handsomely embossed text: “Mr. and Mrs. Irving Weissman and family wish you a healthy and a happy New Year.” Emily Post would have approved.

My grandparents, in turn, were likely to avail themselves of a colorful array of Jewish New Year’s cards, the more bedecked and ornamented, the better. Taking their cue from Christmas and Easter holiday cards, which they often repurposed, shana tovas, as they were known, fancied accordion pleats, paper hinges and other movable parts. In the New World, tradition, they seemed to suggest, was not static, but on the go. That so many coreligionists were also on the go, migrating from one part of the globe to another, was surely not lost on those who purchased and posted these greeting cards.

Earlier generations of Jews, after all, made do with a handshake and a verbal greeting. When communities were intact and intimately sized, there was simply no need for anything more elaborate.

No matter their form, or, for that matter, their language, Jewish New Year greetings are to be treasured. A holiday salute as well as a reflection of circumstance, they speak to a shared sense of community.

Shana tova, a zisn yahr, anyada buena, and a happy new year to one and all.

Season’s greetings

joselitSeptember 2, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The Jewish New Year is right around the corner, but with the advent of a new semester and its attendant responsibilities, I haven’t been able to give the holiday the attention it deserves, especially when it comes to figuring out what I’m going to serve, to whom, and when.

Rosh Hashanah greeting card. Flickr/Max Bacou

Little wonder, then, that I can’t help giving more than a passing glance at the list of foodstuffs ready for purchase and a quick turn in the microwave which Zabar’s, that fabled Manhattan food emporium, has made available for “Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur 2013.”

In addition to dutifully notifying would-be consumers when these two Jewish holidays take place, a function once filled by the local kosher butcher who distributed a Jewish calendar along with the brisket to his customers, Zabar’s offers a wide range of provisions. They run the gamut from “Great Beginnings” to “Main Courses,” and from “Veggies and Sides” to an “Apples & Honey Gift Crate.” There’s the requisite chopped liver, of course, as well as two kinds of gefilte fish. Stuffed cabbage, brisket, and a roast turkey round out the main bill of fare; the latter is even accompanied by a gentle, grandmotherly warning: “Do not overheat.”

Vegetables are also widely available but, with the exception of mashed potatoes and that old, Frenchified standby, string beans almondine, they strike a decidedly contemporary note: Asparagus with sun dried tomatoes, anyone? Braised brussel sprouts?!

So far, so good, especially if you eat your vegetables. But then, throwing caution to the wind -- or something -- the Zabar’s Holiday Dinner Menu ups the ante, leaving no Jewish culinary cliché unturned. It encompasses virtually every item that ever graced the family table of yesteryear: bagels, cream cheese, blintzes, smoked salmon, whitefish, belly lox, and chopped herring salad. All this and brisket, too? On the same table?

It took me a moment or two to adjust my sights, much less my stomach, before it occurred to me that the smoked fish and dairy delights were intended for the Yom Kippur break fast, and not for Rosh Hashanah. Even so, their collective appearance under the rubric of a Jewish holiday dinner strikes me as a bit odd, even misplaced.

It isn’t just that the Zabar’s list of Jewish gastronomic favorites dissolves the traditional boundaries between milk and meat products. Huddling together on a menu designed for Rosh Hashanah and (post)Yom Kippur, they also seem, well, unmoored from their traditional context. Once a regular feature of the American Jewish diet, these items are meant these days to be consumed only now and then. Eating Jewish food has become an occasion rather than the staff of life.