Chanukah Recipe: Bimuelos (Sephardic Hanukkah Fritters)

By Jean Graubart, Director of the Center for Jewish Living and Learning

“Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah, come light the menorah”

Along with the songs we remember from childhood and enjoy hearing in the sweet little voices of children everywhere, we also remember what we eat during every Jewish holiday.

“And on the 25th day of Kislev….The sanctuary of G-d was dedicated anew with song and music…moreover, Judah the Maccabean and his brethren, with the whole congregation of Israel, ordained that the day of the dedication of the altar should be celebrated from year to year for eight days in gladness and thanksgiving.”
APOCRYPHA- I MACCABEES 4:52-59

Chanukah known to us as the festival of lights, is a joyous holiday that celebrates an ancient victory for freedom and peace.  It is still marked by the lighting of candles on the menorah, traditional fried foods, singing and a (hopefully) “lighthearted” exchange of gifts.

In my family of origin, my mother always had a few extra little gifts wrapped (all of our gifts were little, just a token of giving) in case and in hopes that we would bring a friend or two home for dinner and candle lighting.  Gifts were socks for the winter (prettier ones than we would normally buy), knit gloves or a scarf (in other words, things we were going to need), and, for extra pleasure, a book.  I remember opening the next volume of a Trixie Belden mystery book and could hardly wait to get into my bed and read.  Chanukah was a family time, fun because all the cousins got together, each aunt handed us a $5 bill, and we sang and played dreidel, knowing that the Sunday during Chanukah was our gathering.

My Sephardic grandmother never heard of latkas and always said the Yiddish food is not authentic.  We were treated to BIMUELOS, a fritter fried and sweetened.  Latkes were eaten in the privacy of our home, so nona didn’t know that we had a taste for the Eshkanazi.  She was proud of her culture and history, and made that clear every time we were with her.

BIMUELOS

1 1/3 cup warm water
2 envelopes of yeast
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable, canola or corn oil
3 cups flour
cinnamon for sprinkling
oil to deep fry

SYRUP

1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar, boiled and stirred
Mix 1 24-ounce jar of honey and 1/4 cup of water heated  (My nona said honey was not authentic, just as she made a syrup of sugar/water for her baklava because honey was too expensive and not the way it was done by “mama.”)

DIRECTIONS

Combine sugar and water or honey and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil
Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water
Add beaten egg, salt and oil to mixture
Add flour all at once and stir
Take remaining water and add gradually, mixing thoroughly
Allow to rise at least an hour, covered with clean towel in warm place
Heat oil in deep frying pan or saucepan to 375 degrees (test to see if ready by dropping a tiny bit of dough and seeing if it puffs up)
Drop dough into the hot oil from a tablespoon dipped in oil
Bimuelos puff up and need to be turned over until golden all over
Drain on paper toweling, removing with a slotted spoon
Dip into warm syrup immediately and sprinkle with cinnamon
If not serving right away, dip and sprinkle when serving

Makes about four dozen.  Everyone will eat 2-3, except those on diets or gluten free.  It is a different world from my nona’s.

Enjoy as you read a lovely Chanukah story with friends or family.  Stop at the DCJCC gift shop to buy a book you will all enjoy and have for years to come!

Chanukah brings light into our home as the menorah glows, brighter each night.  It is my sincere hope that these lights will bring lightness to your lives and to the world we live in, sometimes seeming so very dark.  And may Israel celebrate with the light of peace and hope.

Modernity and Tradition: Our Struggle for a Modern Jewish Identity

By Tami Wolf
Director, EntryPointDC

It might seem crazy, but the daily struggle we have today over the balance between tradition and modernity and identity is not new to the Jewish people.

Torah is full of examples of Israelites trying to live in the bigger world while maintaining their ways, not always successfully. Even the story of Chanukkah, which starts on December 8 this year, is about how one group of people thought Jews should balance tradition and modernity. If it weren’t a struggle, if we didn’t have conflicting feelings about this, it wouldn’t still bother us today, and that is why it is still so important.

This afternoon, the DCJCC hosted Anat Hoffman for a lunchtime update on the current state of pluralism in Israel. Hoffman works with two organizations that are working for change, i.e. changing tradition, in Jewish life in Israel. One is the Israel Religious Action Center.

The IRAC, as it’s affectionately known, is the legal arm of the Union for Reform Judaism in Israel and addresses issues of religion and state in Israel, including social justice, equality, and religious pluralism. They are trying to find a way to balance traditional and modern values and make religion in Israel something all Jews can feel comfortable with.

Hoffman is also the head of an organization called Women of the Wall (WoW), whose mission is “to achieve the social and legal recognition of our right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall.”

Women of the Wall meet every rosh chodesh (new month) to pray at the kotel together. From my own experiences with them, the Women of the Wall are not looking to start a fight with local police officers or upset other worshipers; they merely want the right to pray in a way that is meaningful to them.

This afternoon, Hoffman talked about how Israelis are attempting to maintain traditions while living in a definitely modern state. She talked about the work IRAC and WoW are doing on things we think of as extremist – things we would never dream are happening in a place we see as so western and modern:

• segregated busses, where women sit in the back and men in the front;
• uncondemned racism from state-employed rabbis towards Arabs;
• and, of course, the hold a small group of ultra-orthodox extremists have over all religious aspects of the country, including over the management of holy sites.

Hoffman’s struggles with the IRAC and Women of the Wall are two windows on the struggles we face between living our traditions and embracing the modern world we live in today.
Anat’s visit kicks off a slew of upcoming Israel programming at the DCJCC.

Theater J, the DCJCC’s professional theater company, will be staging two plays about life in Israel, and it is one of those that I want to talk about specifically.

Apples from the Desert, by Savyon Liebrecht, is a story of a search for balance. The protagonist is Rivka, a young Sephardic religious girl, whose life is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a secular kibbutznik from the south, Dooby.

Rivka has to do what all of us strive to do: find a way to maintain her religious identity in a way she feels is appropriate without dismissing the expectations of her family and community or turning away from what she really wants.
I don’t think there’s a “right” or a “wrong” solution to this problem, but I do think we can all arrive at answers we are comfortable with, at least for the moment. I have no doubt this is a daily struggle, something that as individuals we always have to come to terms with and re-evaluate as our lives move on.

Personally, I’m very much looking forward to exploring how DC’s young professionals see this issue and have made choices for themselves, on December 22 after a performance of Apples from the Desert, and especially how Israel has been a part of that process. (That means you’re invited, so come talk this out with me.)

And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving from EPDC!

Recipes: Symbolic Rosh Hashana Foods and Russian Tea Biscuits

By Jean Graubart, Director of Jewish Living and Learning

Rosh Hashanah, which begins on Sunday night September 16, is right around the corner.*

Every year, as I prepare my menu to share with family and friends, I think of ways to add meaning to the meal.It is the beginning of our New Year and a time we think about our hopes and desires for the year to come, dreams for ourselves, those we love and the world around us.

There are foods we can add to our table that symbolically add good wishes for the new year!

Dates dipped in powdered sugar and served along with the more familiar apples and honey, bring sweetness to the new year.
A prayer to accompany the eating of dates: “As we eat this date, may we ‘date’ the New Year that is beginning, as one of happiness and blessing and peace for all the world.”

Pomegranates are said to contain exactly 613 seeds, the same number of mitzvot, the biblical commandments. These beautiful fruits often decorate the holiday table but cut open and eaten bring a year filled with as many good deeds at the pomegranate seeds.
A prayer said as seeds are tasted: “In the coming year, may we be rich and replete with acts inspired by religion and piety, as this pomegranate is rich and replete with seeds.”

Pumpkin is often served in some form in Sephardic homes to express the hope that, as this vegetable has been protected by a thick covering, we too will be protected. Our family ate the seeds toasted and salted by my nona.
Prayer for eating pumpkin: “May the coming year grow as a gourd in fulness of blessing.  In the year to come, may this pumpkin guard us from enemies.”

Leek is considered a food for luck, something we all need.  In Sephardic cooking, leek is as common as the onion and is cooked and added to meat for keftes, small burgers made with boiled leeks chopped, ground beef or turkey, eggs, matzo meal and salt and pepper to taste, then fried lightly in oil, cooked in tomato sauce with lemon or baked in the oven. For a vegetable side dish or for vegetarians, boiled and chopped to mix with chopped spinach, matzo meal, eggs and salt and pepper and cooked like the meat.
A prayer for this lovely vegetable: “As we eat this leek may our luck never lack in the year to come.”

Beets are a prime vegetable at this time of year.  Roasted with a little olive oil (wrapped in foil and baked at 450 for 40 minutes until soft) or boiled, beets are a beautifully colorful addition to the Rosh Hashanah table. They can be served cold in salad or alone with a little balsamic vinegar.
While enjoying, recite: “As we bite this beet, may those who in the past have beaten us or sought our harm, be beaten in the coming year.”

Recently a friend told me to be sure and add celery and raisins to the holiday table.  This is an easy one, since celery is good in salad and a must in chicken soup, a tradition at the holiday table. For the raisins, add to your favorite apple cake or make these delicious Russian Tea Biscuits, a recipe brought from the “old country” (this time from eastern Europe, an Ashkanazi treat) and filled with raisins and nuts.  Why raisins and celery?  For a raise in salary!

Russian Tea Biscuits

4 1/2 cups flour (begin with a little less)
1 stick parve margarine (butter if for dairy meal)
1/4 cup oil
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons sweet wine
1/4 cup club soda (this was made when baking soda was not to be found)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix margarine, oil and sugar
Add eggs and mix
Add dry ingredients and mix
Put in wine and club soda and mix with wooden spoon
Add flour as needed for dough you can roll out easily
Divide dough into 4 pieces
Roll each into rectangle on floured board or table

Fill, using what you like from below, all or some. This is for you to enjoy, put your signature on it!
Fillings:
2 jars preserves spread on the dough
Chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds)
Raisins (yellow or black)
Dried shredded coconut

Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of filling
Roll like a jelly roll, tuck top and bottom under
With a spatula, place on greased cookie sheet (or use parchment paper)
Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle crumbs on top made with 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar and1/2 cup margarine mixed together
Cut half way through the dough, about 1/2 inch apart

Bake 325 (preheated oven) for 1 hour
Cool and slice through
Place in cupcake papers
Can be frozen if made in advance.

As these are very full, we hope for a full and satisfying life. Enjoy as the finish of a wonderful and meaningful Rosh Hashanah meal.

Shana tova, and hopes for a year of sweetness and satisfaction to you and your loved ones!

 

*While this post was supposed to go up a few weeks ago, it mysteriously disappeared into the bloggy ether… Enjoy all the festive foods during these Days of Awe!

Shabbat Surfing: What’s New?

Suze Orman thinks you should be going to a cool Jewish summer camp.
Image (c) suzeorman.com

Shana tova!

We’re days away from the Jewish New Year and it seemed the right time to focus on all things both Jewish and new.

Because it’s hard to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Suze Orman just making lanyards…
New Camp: Four new Jewish summer camps are gearing up to create more memorable overnight camp experiences for underserved populations, thanks to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, in the areas of business and entrepreneurship, health and wellness, sports, and science and technology.

Because it’s about time…
New Name: “Jew Pond” in New Hampshire, named as a pejorative in the 1920s when the hotel to which it was connected was bought by two Jewish businessmen from Boston, has been officially renamed Carleton Pond.

Because sexism and agism are so passe…
New Shofar Blowers: DC Congregations, including Adas Israel and Tifereth Israel, are seeing more and more women, plus young and older adults who want to blow the shofar, and are learning for these High Holidays.

Because we notice when one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Middle East is denied the right to worship…
New Place Without a Minyan: “For the first time in some 2,000 years, Alexandria [Egypt] will not have a minyan,” as Egyptian authorities cancel services at Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue and deny visas.

Because welcoming all Jewish families is a core value…
New Info on Interfaith Families: With interfaith relationships making up a not-insignificant amount of the Jewish community, new survey data helps Jewish organizations engage these families, who are looking for outlandish things like a welcoming attitude, invitations to learn about Judaism, and events for interfaith families.

 

Recipes: Summer Desserts – Plum Torte and Ice Cream Strudel

By Jean Graubart, Director of Jewish Living and Learning

I always thought that baking was one of those skills (some say, talents) that skips a generation.

My Ashkanazi grandmother Evelyn made the most delicious pastries stuffed with raisins and cinnamon, which I can still taste so many years later.  My Sephardic grandmother Molly, rolled out wonderful biscochos, always found in her oven (she stored them there) for the grandkids to grab.

But my mother burnt Sara Lee, and at best would make a Duncan Hines cake so dry, it only worked with layers of ice cream in the middle and on top, and we thought this was gourmet.  Who knew?

I would gather recipes from friends, claiming them as my own and giving them a family history.  By making a change or 2, they became my recipe, and have been enjoyed and passed on.

Since it is so terribly hot in the summer, I rarely bake, not wanting to heat the house.  But there are exceptions…

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Summer is when we get the best plums, and I love this plum torte.

Plum Torte

12 Italian or purple plums halved…if large, quarter (and who says you can’t use green or red plums?)
1 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter (I use parve margarine so we can enjoy this with any meal)
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Lemon juice to taste

Cream butter and sugar together
Add eggs and mix well (hand mixing or electric are fine)
Add flour, baking powder and mix to combine
Spoon into a lightly greased pie pan and cover the bottom and a little way up the sides
Place plums, skin side up, on top of batter, all around
Squeeze lemon on top  to cover and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon

Bake 350 for an hour.
Cool and serve, warm or next day, with ice cream, whipped cream or plain.
This torte can stay in the refrigerator several days, covered (can heat before serving, though I like it cold)
Freezes very nicely, wrapped tightly.  Can defrost on 300 for a few minutes.

My friend has a plum tree and makes this in a square brownie pan with the plums cut up and mixed in.  Since that has worked so well and the cake is so easy to make with 1 bowl only, we have made it with other fruits.

It is great (pie style) with apples or pears on top for Rosh Hashanah.

For more summer treats, use peaches on top if you have a basket from the farm waiting to be used.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

When I was in graduate school, I tasted this delicious strudel which I never thought I could duplicate, but then realized how easy it was.  Why is it summer food?  The main ingredient is ice cream!

Ice Cream Strudel

2 1/2 cup flour
1/2 pound sweet butter
1/2 pint strawberry, peach or any fruit flavored ice cream (I have used vanilla too)  – very soft, almost melted

Blend and refrigerate above over night.
Preheat oven to 325.
Divide into 4 balls and roll in rectangle on floured table (can use powdered sugar instead).
Spread with jam, nuts, raisins, coconut, cinnamon and sugar (Use whatever you like: currants, raisins, mini chocolate chips).
Roll up like a jelly roll, and cut ¾” apart, and ¾ of the way through (seam side down).
Bake at 325 for 30 minutes on greased cookie sheet, seam side down.
When cooled and ready to serve, cut all the way through and put in cupcake holders and freeze in a cookie tin or serve and enjoy with iced tea.

So when those fruity ice cream flavors tempt you, have a bowlful and then prepare this rich and lovely dough.

This is a great dough! You can do anything with it. (It also makes a great dough to cover apples in apple dumplings or baked apples.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Yes, summertime and the livin’ is easy, the salads are tasty and the fruit is delicious.

These treats help to balance out the calories and are truly good all year.  They are easy, different and a pleasure to share at a picnic or BBQ.

_________________________

Want to check out past recipes from Jean? Click here!

Shabbat Surfing: Tu B’Av – It’s All About the Love!

If you’re feeling an extra bit love and affection floating around today, it’s the effects of Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love.

(Or as other Jewish denominations pronounce it, lurve.)

If you want to pass along the love, you can send a free Tu B’Av ecard to your special someones, designed by contest winner, Rachel Scheer.

And isn’t a Day of Love the perfect time for a Kiss-In?

The Jewish community was recently polled to find that 81% support equal marriage for all. Some will be celebrating the today with National Same-Sex Kiss Day, in support of equality for all, and in response to Chik-Fil-A’s Chickens for Bigotry* campaign. It seems all expressions of affection (kisses, hugs, holding hands) will be welcome, as will as any and all who would like to come and kiss.
*Not the actual name

Whether you are celebrating with a quiet dinner at home, or a huge white party with hundreds of your nearest and dearest, our Tu B’Av wish is that you know how much we love our readers and all who join us at the DCJCC.

Send a Tu B’av Card to Someone You Love!

Tu B’Av (the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Av) is the Israeli-Jewish “Day of Love.”  The closest thing to Valentine’s Day in the Jewish calendar, this ancient holiday occurs in late July or early August. This year Tu B’Av falls out on Friday, August 3.

Jewish tradition relates how millennia ago, on the 15th of Av, the “daughters of Jerusalem” dressed in white and danced in the vineyards to entice the young men. In recent years, Tu B’Av has experienced a revival, especially in Israel, with weddings, singles events and gifts and a flurry of flowers, chocolates and hearts.

In celebration of the Jewish Day of Love, the DCJCC invited the community to compete in a Tu B’Av Greeting Card contest. Congratulations to Rachel Scheer for her winning design! Rachel will enjoy a romantic dinner for two at the Distrikt Bistro.

Click on the greeting card image below to send a card to someone you love!

Shabbat Surfing: When the Lights Went Out in DC

While Europe was discovering the power of the universe with the Higgs boson breakthrough, back here in DC, many of us spent days without power in the aftermath of the storm – including a simcha or two that went forward even without electricity.

If the storm had you all shaken up, that’s okay, as we learn in the Arty Semite’s post this week, because Jews are awesome at anxiety – recognizing it, dramatizing it, grasping it, differentiating it, talking about it, and even dealing with it.

Dan Fishback, who joined us last year at the Washington Jewish Music Festival, is taking that anxiety and putting it to productive use in The Material World, which “features an anachronistic cast of neurotic Jews, all trying to save the planet. (…) And unlike other pop musicals about Madonna and socialism, this play has scenes in Yiddish.”

For those still feeling unsettled and needing more assurances about the future, Jewcy has begun prognosticating, introducing Jewcy Horoscopes, and explaining the Jewish astrological tradition, which has been around for centuries, apparently.

Since my horoscope is warning against ruining things by over-analyzing, I’ll sign off with a final Shabbat wish: may your A/C be humming, your summer salads be chilly, your swimming pools open for everyone.

 

Shabbat Surfing: Summertime and the Living is Groovy

The National Zoo recommends fruitsicles. As do we.

Now that we can turn from serious conversations about healthcare for just a moment, this heat is keeping us on some lighter, more summery topics.

Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn – aka Rabbi Reefer* – is among the first to be opening a medical marijuana dispensary in DC, after an epic process. “Our midlife quest for a new way to make a positive difference in people’s lives and a lifelong commitment to pushing the envelope to help others made this the obvious path to follow.” (*Okay, no one has actually called him that before now.)

If you come up with a better nickname than I did and it catches on worldwide, you might be the first winner of the new million-dollar “Jewish Nobel Prize,” actually called the Genesis Prize. “The international prize will be awarded to Jews who win global recognition for their achievements in the fields of science and the arts.” I suppose “good nicknaming” doesn’t really count as an achievement in the arts…

However, creative labeling might be: Hebrew National is under fire for its kosher hotdogs not being quite so kosher… as Jon Stewart reported on The Daily Show.

And if it’s all too much, follow Nora Ephron’s advice. As she once told an audience, “I’m very into denial.” Hide out inside with the a/c this weekend, pop in “When Harry Met Sally,” and dream up how you’re going to win that million dollars.

 

In the Gallery – Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women

By Sarah Lightman,  Co-Curator and Artist in Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women

(c) Sarah Lightman – Graphic Details

I’d like to take a moment to talk about the show, and why it is so different from what I was just watching on TV last weekend.

Back home [in Britain] the celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee have just come to an end – having flooded every TV channel, newspaper and magazine. Yet amongst all this colour and pageantry, it is also widely acknowledged just how little we know about what the Queen thinks and feels. For she is, and here I quote a columnist from last weekend’s Guardian Newspaper, “one of the last silent celebrities.”

The artists in Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, as you may have already seen already, are quite the opposite.

(c) Corinne Pearlman – Graphic Details

Here on the walls of the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC, are comics that delight in the scatological, emotional, political, and sexual messiness of life. And in the need to tell of their lives, these 18 artists from Israel, UK, USA and Canada reflect not only a very Jewish nuance to living, but also some radical innovations.

Jewish life and experience is a constant litany of retelling and reliving stories: of what happened to us. For example, we are encouraged every Pesach around our seder tables, to feel like we personally came out of Egypt. The weekly Torah readings at synagogue are extrapolated in sermons to ensure the experiences of our forefathers relate to our very own lives, even though we are separated by thousands of years. Jewish life is a training ground for us to learn to tell our own stories, with both a personal, yet also wider, relevance.

(c) Sharon Rudahl – Graphic Details

Critically, however, it is predominantly the male experience, the male story that is passed down. The female experience is not recorded, vocalized and explored.

And I consider the description of Teresa de Lauretis of female characters in ancient mythology to be very apt – she writes in Alice Doesn’t how the female characters “have survived inscribed […] in someone else’s story, not their own; so they are figures and markers of positions […] places through which the hero and his story move to their destination and to accomplish meaning.”

But here in Graphic Details we have heroines.

These heroines survive and thrive the onslaught of daily and domestic life. The Graphic Details artists recognize that the comic offers a stage set where they as artists and writers are both directors, and stars.

(c) Lauren Weinstein – Graphic Details

An autobiographical comic is an empowering space, where for those pages, it’s their version of life and their life journey, that takes precedence.

Another way in which these comic artists voices are radical is because they tell of troubling experiences that are experienced by many, yet are frequently undiscussed. Miscarriage, divorce, coming out, failed relationships, complex friendships and regrets fill the walls.

These personal and resonant stories are able to fill the work because of the intimacy and safety of the comic.

(c) Diane Noomin – Graphic Details

As you can see, often comics pages are structured around a grid shape like a waffle. The square paneling of these comics pages are safe and controlled spaces for stories that are conflicted and painful. The size of the images and texts requires us to get close so we can read and see the work – forming a physical closeness like a friend whispering a secret.

In a world where being Jewish and a woman in society brings complicated expectations and resistance, comics offer a safe space to begin a confession, and find a voice for previously silenced fears, feelings and memories.

So I would like to conclude by suggesting that in visualizing and vocalizing their lives, the 18 artists of Graphic Details are reconfiguring a central concern of Jewish life – a commitment to History – but here it is a Herstory. As they take their own experiences and bring them to the wider Jewish and non-Jewish world, they are following a traditional and untraditional path.

Sarah Lightman is both a co-curator and an artist in Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, on display through September 2, 2012.

(c) Graphic Details