Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, is celebrated every Friday evening at sundown. On Shabbat, the Jewish home permeates the aromas of warm hearty dishes and the glow of candles grace the dining table. A mother is traditionally in the kitchen, wearing an apron and a busy mien, taking responsibility for the majestic quality of the Friday night meal that she is about to bestow on all her loved ones — husband, children, grandchildren, other family members and friends. A Jewish mother’s family is plaited together like the hallah (egg loaf bread) we eat with the chopped liver and gefilte fish (fish cakes) on the Sabbath. We are knitted together like lokshen (noodles) or pressed together like kreplach (small pockets of dough filled with ground meat), which eases our worries; or like kneidlach (dumplings), which accompanies the chicken soup that feeds our hungry souls. We all sit together at the table eating the love that binds us, despite the different opinions and ages. Everyone at the Shabbat table feels blessed to belong to a Jewish family. The feast then continues with a tsimmes (vegetable stew) or a cholent (potato stew) that accompanies the main meal, which in our house was usually roast chicken and sometimes chicken blintzes. For dessert, Mum would often make stewed apples with prunes or apple blintzes. If there was ever a meat-free Shabbat, like on the festival of Shavuot (which celebrates the giving of the law to Moses) cheese blintzes would be our dessert. How many Jewish mothers today do Shabbat the way my mother used to? I can’t talk for all Jewish families but my mother was a true Shabbat artist. Every week she would display her handiwork to a table from between ten to fifteen family members and friends. And the work took her days to complete. She would order in the kosher meats, then salt the meat to extract most of the blood. She would buy the Perch and the flathead for the gefilte fish, mince them herself and add the various ingredients to the mix. This was usually done Wednesday evening when she used to work. On Thursday evening she would have the chicken soup on and the kreplach or the kneidlach on the go. As a result of all her efforts, our family became close because each week we would come together to share our lives. She believed it was her role as a Jewish mother to do this for her family. You can achieve anything you want if you have made something, whatever it is, your goal. This is no secret. As long as you have the passion and believe in yourself. My mother’s living art was loving her family above all else, and showing it at the Shabbat table. Since our family lost Mum over twenty years ago, Shabbat has never been the same. Our family is not the same either. The loss of Mum, and of Shabbat, took its toll. Without her as our homebound anchor we drifted apart and our sense of harmony was washed away. For my own little family we tend to keep it really simple. A couple of candles, a hallah bread, some grape juice, wine and a simple home-cooked meal like roast chicken, meatloaf or a barbecue. There are salads and vegetables, and in winter I might make chicken soup with lokshen and some gefilte fish that I buy pre-mixed and ready to poach. A modern Jewish home isn’t a patch on the older traditional Jewish home in which I grew up.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 10:29:16 +0000
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