Attack of the Latke Lovers

By Susan Esther Barnes

It was the seventh night of Chanukah. The meeting of our Chevra Kadisha (group of people who visit the sick, ritually wash and prepare people for burial, etc.) had barely begun when the rabbi asked, "Who here hasn't had a latke yet this year?" I raised my hand. Nobody else did.

There was a round of gasps. "You haven't had a latke? Seriously?"

"No," I answered, "I never have latkes."

"Susan Barnes," he said, "You must have a latke before Chanukah is over. You think what we are doing here is a mitzvah, but having a latke is a more important one."

"What," I retorted, "I'm going to Hell because I haven't eaten a latke?" (Yes, the rabbi and I actually talk to each other like this).

"Tomorrow night," he asked, "you're getting home early enough that you can make latkes?"

"No," I explained, "tomorrow night I'm volunteering here at the homeless shelter."

He looked distressed.

By this point, the conversation had gone on longer than I wanted. I was blushing. "What's the big deal?" I thought, "Eating a latke isn't actually a mitzvah, a commandment from God. Maybe eating latkes is the tradition of the rest of the Chevra Kadisha, but it isn't mine."

The word "latke" is Yiddish, not Hebrew. When I was growing up, nobody in my family spoke Yiddish. My father and his parents were from Hungary, not Poland or Russia. Apparently, my ancestors spent some time in France and Germany after they were thrown out of Spain in 1492 and before they settled in Hungary, but my father insists we're still Sephardic.

Nonetheless, latkes are associated with Chanukah because they are fried in oil, and Chanukah is about the miracle of the light that lasted for eight days even though there was only one day's worth of oil.

One would think it would be sufficient for me to say, "It may be your tradition to eat latkes on Chanukah, but it isn't mine," and that would be the end of it, but it wasn't.

Ironically, at one point, after the discussion had finally been deflected off of my latke deficiency and had made its way to visiting the sick, one of the women described some advice she had gotten when she was volunteering at a hotline to prevent child abuse.

She was told, "When you're talking with someone, picture that you're riding in a car with them. The person you are talking to is the driver, and you are the passenger. They are driving their own life. You can point out the view to them; you can even suggest they might want to take a different route, but you never try to grab the wheel."

Clearly, at least some of the others in the room had a lot of energy about the fact that I hadn't eaten a latke. The message I got from them was, "You are not okay because you have not eaten a latke. There is something wrong with you. The only way to fix it is for you to eat a latke, and then you will be okay again."

I felt as if suddenly a whole room full of people had tried to grab the wheel from me all at the same time, and I had to try to wrestle it back. I realized how fortunate I am that I am in a place in my life where I know I'm okay. There is nothing essentially wrong with me. I could not eat a single latke for the entire rest of my life, and I would still be okay.

Still, after the meeting, one woman said to me, "You must be allergic to something in latkes."

"No," I said, "If I were allergic, I would have said so."

On the way to the parking lot, another woman offered hopefully, "I'll be making latkes on Sunday. You're welcome to come over and have some."

After I declined her invitation, another person said, "I'll be making latkes on Thursday. I can bring one to synagogue for you on Friday night."

"What?" I said, "You think I want a cold, congealed latke?"

"I'll heat it up for you," she said.

"No thank you," I insisted, "I don't need a latke."

As I said to these folks in the parking lot, I'm not anti-latke. If I were at someone's home and they were serving latkes, I would have one. But I don't need a latke to feel like I have properly observed Chanukah.

What is it that makes us go beyond simple hospitality and causes us to go to such great lengths to try to foist our traditions onto people who clearly do not feel compelled to partake in them? And how can we make it stop?

With Apologies to the Caterer

By Susan Esther Barnes

A few years ago Rabbi Lezak was trying to convince me to read “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” by Merle Feld, and I was trying to tell him I wasn’t interested in reading a feminist book and I certainly wasn’t interested in reading poetry. So he pulled his copy off the bookshelf and read me a no-nonsense poem from it called, “Mazel Tov!” I loved it; I bought the book.

The poem “Mazel Tov!” is the story of Feld at a wedding reception, telling the band leader to play traditional Jewish dance music when the bride and groom come in so the guests can lift the two of them on chairs and dance, a core tradition at Jewish weddings. But the caterer interrupts and says, for a variety of reasons, they can’t dance until after the soup. Feld says they’re going to dance anyway. The last line of the poem is, “And screw the caterer.”

I love the message this poem communicates about what is important. The meal is there to help the guests celebrate with the bride and groom. But nothing is more important than the main event, which is the wedding itself and the traditional dancing with the chairs, without which it just wouldn’t feel like a proper Jewish wedding. The food is secondary.

Still, I feel for the caterer. He or she is trying to make a living, and to some extent has a reputation riding on whether or not the soup is cold or the main course is overcooked. As anyone who has put together a Thanksgiving or Passover dinner can tell you, when serving an elaborate meal, timing is key and an unexpected glitch can throw everything off.

Of course, on this day, the happiness of the bride and groom is paramount. The rabbis even tell us that if a wedding party and a funeral procession arrive at the same intersection at the same time, the funeral procession should pause and allow the wedding party to pass first. I agree with all this, but I still wish the caterer didn’t have to feel screwed.



On Shabbat morning this week there were two girls having their bat mitzvah. Near the front door of the synagogue is a long table. The top of the table opens, and inside are hearing devices, nametags, kippot (or yarmulkes, the skullcap men, in particular, commonly wear in synagogue), and some other items. Before services this particular morning the tabletop was down, because the family of the bar mitzvah girls had provided their own baskets of kippot for the guests.

It was an overflow crowd, so the partition at the back of the sanctuary was open, allowing us to set up extra chairs, extending the congregation into the social hall. Generally when this happens I stand near the back of the extra chairs, handing out prayer books to late arrivals and answering their questions. This allows me to see pretty much everything going on, including the service itself, the congregants, and the activities of the caterer in the social hall, setting up for the lunch that follows the service.

Part way through the service, I saw the caterer and one of her helpers carrying trays with cups of wine for the kiddush toward the front door. I didn’t know why they would take the wine out there, instead of keeping it in the social hall, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Moments later, a man who had just arrived asked me if we had a yarmulke he could wear. I replied, “Of course,” and went to get one from the table by the front door. When I got there, I found that on top of the table were four trays, with a sign on one side saying, “wine,” and a sign on the other which read, “grape juice.”

“Oh,” I thought, "the caterer just put these here so guests who aren’t staying for lunch can still get kiddush wine (or juice) on the way out.” The problem was, the baskets of kippot from the bar mitzvah family were empty, and the synagogue’s kippot were all trapped inside the table under the trays of wine and juice. I couldn’t lift up the tabletop even a little bit to reach inside for one without risking everything sliding off the back and spilling all over the floor.

I looked around hopefully, but the other table near the front door was full of other items, including what looked like food covered in foil, so I couldn’t put the wine trays there. Years ago I worked for a restaurant company; I know one of the ten commandments of the food service industry is, “You shall never put food or drinks on the floor.” Just then, in my head I heard Rabbi Lezak’s voice saying, “Screw the caterer,” and I knew the importance of the man being able to wear a kippah outweighed the matter of a temporary displacement of the wine, so I began to move the trays onto the floor.

That’s when the caterer came around the corner. Imagine the look of horror on her face as she saw her carefully poured and artfully arranged trays of wine strewn about the floor where no consumable should ever be. I was so busted.

Immediately I apologized to her, and explained that I needed to get a kippah from inside the table. She said, “It’s a little late, isn’t it?” and I nodded, and mumbled, “Yes, well, he just got here, and he asked for one.” She lifted the last tray of wine from the table for me, and wisely suggested I grab several kippot instead of just one, and put the extras in the empty basket, in case anyone else needed one. I did as she recommended, and helped her return the trays to the table before apologizing again and bringing the kippah to the man who had so innocently asked for it.

This is a caterer who often serves at functions at the synagogue, and I was a little concerned she would be upset with me, but later on she asked me whether it was the first girl still reading from the torah or the second one, in order to help her with the timing of the last lunch items she was preparing. She didn’t seem angry, so I suppose she must have taken it all in stride.

And frankly, although I still love Merle Feld’s poem, this is as it should be. We must do our best to honor what is important about the day, and yet, whenever possible, it is still best to make an attempt not to screw the caterer.

Women and the Wall

By Susan Esther Barnes

There has been a lot of rhetoric flying around since Nofrat Frenkel was arrested at the Western Wall, or Kotel, in Jerusalem. Many reports suggest she was arrested for wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl, at the Wall, even though halachah, Jewish law, does not forbid a woman from wearing one. An article by Rabbi Avi Shafran, originally written for Am Echad Resources and published in the January 21 edition of J Weekly, says her offence was actually to “publicly read from the Torah opposite the stones of the Kotel.” He goes on to cite a passage in the Mishnah Torah which prohibits women from reading publicly from the Torah.

In splitting hairs about what, exactly, was Ms. Frenkel’s offense, Rabbi Shafran seems to ignore the point that all she wanted to do was to be allowed to pray at the wall in the same manner that men are allowed to pray there.

Marvin Schick, in the January 1 edition of The Jewish Week, says the women who want to be able to pray at the Kotel are sincere, but “This sincerity is embedded in egotism, in the attitude that what I/we want trumps long-standing religious practices, the sensibilities of others notwithstanding.”

Schick goes on to say, “I wonder whether it is all that difficult to understand that what has been labeled for far too long as out of touch or fundamentalist has proven to be essential to our survival as a people.” Further, he says, “Now that we have returned to Jerusalem and can pray at the Kotel, let us be respectful of the religious faith and teachings that indeed were the catalysts for our return to Jerusalem.”

I find it hard to imagine that others fail to see the lack of logic in the twisted reasoning of these men. They speak as if Judaism has always been static, that the laws were written down at the very beginning, and have never been re-examined or changed since. This is simply not true.

The most obvious example springs from the site of the debate itself, the Kotel, thought to be a remnant of the Temple where the Jewish people used to conduct our ritual sacrifices. When the Temple was destroyed for the second time, there was no place in which to conduct these sacrifices. Therefore, all of the laws regarding ritual sacrifice had to be set aside. The result was a tremendous change in how Jews practice our religion. Any who insisted Judaism could not exist if these changes were made were swept aside, and Judaism survived because of our ability to adapt and change to what was, at the time, the modern world.

It was only because Judaism recognized the realities of the world around it, and adapted, that it was it able to survive in the diaspora and thus have any chance of maintaining a people who would one day be able to return to Jerusalem. Thus, in contradiction to what Mr. Schick says, a refusal to re-examine the laws and to make changes where necessary was not a catalyst for our return, but could very well have been a course that would have prevented our continuation as a people.

Similarly, his statement that “We have returned to Jerusalem and can pray at the Kotel” is nonsensical when seen in the light that, although we have returned to Jerusalem, roughly only half of us can pray at the Kotel, because women may not do so.

Mr. Schick thinks it is wrong for the women to upset the sensibilities of the ultra-Orthodox, who are a minority, but he does not seem to consider the egotism of the ultra-Orthodox who upset the sensibilities of the Conservative, Reform, and other denominations of Jews who constitute the majority in Israel and elsewhere in the world.

It is time for the Orthodox to take a sincere look at the strength of the Jewish people and to recognize that our survival has depended in large part on our ability to adapt to the changing world around us. It is time for us to recognize that laws and rituals have changed over time to meet our changing understanding of the world and the realities in which we find ourselves. We have in the past, and must continue, to make changes where they make sense while retaining the core of our Jewish beliefs and practices. This is how we will survive as a people.

It is time to recognize we are all b’tzelim Elohim, made in the image of God. Let all Jews who want to come and pray at the Kotel do so, in full voice. Does this mean the Orthodox should lose their ability to pray as they see fit? No. Rabbi Eric Yoffie proposes a solution in which the Kotel is divided into thirds. One third would be set aside for Orthodox men to pray, one third would be set aside for Orthodox women to pray, and the remaining third would be open to secular Jews and those of other denominations. Thus, every Jew would be able to pray at our holiest site in the way we see fit.

It is time to stop worshipping what we imagine to be immutable laws, written by mere mortals long after we received the Torah at Sinai. It is time to return to our root values, in which we respect all human beings and recognize the fallibility of our sages. It is time to recognize the need to correct our course and to realize we have been following the wrong path. It is time to allow all of our people to return to Jerusalem to pray.