Category Archives: Holiday

Sukkot, Shmita & Perennials Roast

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Pomegranates. La Cienega farmers market.

Pomegranates. La Cienega farmers market.

As apples dangle from trees, pears turn to a burnt orange and pomegranates burst at their seams with plump tiny fruits, it’s a reminder that we are in Fall harvest season. After the dramatic, solemn day of Yom Kippur, we suddenly jump into the celebratory, abundant harvest festival of Sukkot.  This is the ultimate farm-to-table holiday that pre-dated the Slow Food movement by a few thousand years.

Sukkot is yet another reminder of the beautiful cyclical nature of Jewish life. From weekly cycles marked by Shabbat to agricultural cycles (the agricultural holidays of Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot, plus the counting of the Omer), to year cycles that begin each Fall to the seven year cycles of Shmita, Jewish life is communal and circular: always expanding, growing and evolving with each cycle. Continue reading →

Yom Kippur: From Fasting to Juicing

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Magical Juice

The anxieties of abstaining from food and water on Yom Kippur (and enduring an expected heat wave in Los Angeles this weekend) start to dance around my head months before the actual holiday. As I try to do the important work of teshuva, I keep thinking: How am I going to prepare for and survive the fast?! How many late summer conversations do I have with my coffee drinking friends about their preferred caffeine withdrawal techniques?

Needless to say, I probably don’t need to remind anyone of the billion plus people worldwide who experience many days like this from lack of access to or fresh water each week, month, year.  Or the 46.5 million Americans who are hungry (21 million children, 7 million seniors). Unlike the daily struggles billions of people endure, this is one day for Jews without food or water.

And even though my mind admittedly will at times be distracted by a visual loop equivalent to the Food Network, Yom Kippur is really a gift. It’s an opportunity to try to move into a deep spiritual realm that is beyond our physical dimensions. Continue reading →

Rosh Hashana & the Garden of Eden

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Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden dish is inspired by many of the symbolic foods eaten on Rosh Hashana and the story of the garden. According to Talmudic rabbis, Rosh Hashana falls on the sixth day of the creation of the world when humans were made.The conflicting notions of beauty, sins and judgement were unleashed in the Garden of Eden.   Humanity was created, sinned and judged. As a result of human’s actions, the pains of the world–violence, death– were exposed.

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Apples & honey: Rosh Hashana 5775

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Mr Ha’s apples, La Cienega farmers market

Apples and honey: as I launch Neesh Noosh  just days before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, I thought it would be appropriate for my first entry to be a simple dish.  Rosh Hashana (head of the new year)  celebrates the creation of the world. We are about to enter the Jewish year of 5775 for the world. What does a plain dish of sliced apples, dipped in honey, have to do with the awesomeness of the creation of the world?  And why the seductive fruit that played a  pivotal role in the future of the world and humanity?

The simple answer to all of this is that apples and honey are eaten at Rosh Hashana meals after saying a prayer, that asks God for a sweet year.

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