Jayne Cohen - Around the Shabbat Table: More than 40 Holiday Recipes for the Food Lover

Sabbath

Every week from eighteen minutes before sunset Friday until the first three stars appear Saturday evening

It was the darkness and emptiness of the streets I liked most about Friday evening, as if in preparation for that day of rest and worship which the Jews greet as a bride.... I waited for the streets to go dark on Friday evening as other children waited for Christmas lights.

ALFRED KAZIN, A Walker in the City

No wonder the Sabbath is frequently personified as a beautiful queen, princess, or bride: traditional Jewish families eagerly begin feverish preparations for its arrival as if for a royal visit.

Cooks seek out the best foods and wines in the markets, and often put aside especially choice or exotic fruits found during the week to be savored when the Sabbath comes. Most of the finest Jewish recipes derive from the Sabbath kitchen: for many poor Jews, it was the one day of the week that they would taste meat, chicken, or wine.

The freshly scrubbed house percolates with the sounds and smells of Sabbath cooking. A sniff of tsimmes, puckery-sweet with rhubarb and prunes, tantalizes the nose. And the crisp skin of lemon-roasted chicken and puffy little matzoh balls, waiting for soup, invite filching by hungry children just home from school.

For the most observant, everything must be readied before the Queens arrival, not only the Friday evening meal but Saturdays hot lunch as well. Kindling fires and cooking are among the thirty-nine activities classified as work, and therefore are prohibited while the Sabbath is in progress. In addition to festive foods like challah, chicken soup, chopped chicken livers, and gefilte fish, Jews have created a whole set of special dishes to accommodate the special Sabbath restrictions: cholents, hamins, and dafinaslusty one-pot meals made beforehand then left to cook overnight in the slowest ovens, savory kugels and fritadas (frittatas) warmed up on hot trays, and spicy fresh fish dishes from Jewish kitchens all over the globe, prepared ahead and served cold.

As night falls on Friday, the hustle and bustle cease and a hush falls over the house. The table, cleared of mail, keys, and other weekday detritus, has been transformed: now it is an elegant altar of spotless linen, gleaming silver, and china set to honor the Sabbath.

As Jews light the candles and recite the Kiddush blessing over the wine to usher in the Sabbath, the parents bless the children. The joyous family meal is especially delicious and savored leisurely.

The following day, the Queens presence is still felt, as the family continues to move in step with her unique rhythm. Since the most ancient times (it is the only holiday mentioned in the Ten Commandments), even those whose six-day work week revolved around mindless drudgery and endless toil could look forward to an evening, then an entire daythe Sabbathdevoted to resting their bodies, renewing their spirits, and strengthening the bonds with those they loved.

The numerical value of the letters in the word dag (Hebrew for fish) adds up to seven, and Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. And so whoever ate dag on the Sabbath was thought to be safe from the judgment of Gehenna, the hellish afterlife for the damned.

Although prepared differently in the myriad kitchens of the Diaspora, a special fish dish usually appears at one or more meals on every Jewish Sabbath: Friday night, the hearty Saturday lunch, or the light meal at Sabbaths close. In fact, two widely divergent chopped fish recipes, gefilte fish and Middle Eastern ground fish balls like Egyptian bellahat, may both owe their origins to the injunction against Sabbath work, which includes borer (picking over bones). Removing the bones from the fish and chopping it up in advance afforded Jews from Eastern Europe and North Africa a delicious, pleasurable way to enjoy their Sabbath fish.

In Talmudic times (70 to 500 CE) a hot meal was not an everyday occurrence. To honor the Sabbath, it became a mitzvah (good deed), to serve hot food at the Saturday midday meal. Here we dish up robust, slow-cooked , roasted eggs, and perhaps an Ashkenazi Sorrel-Onion Noodle Kugel.

Saturday night, when it is time to bid farewell to the Sabbath, she is escorted off in the enchanting Havdalah ceremony. Jews burn a braided candle, pour a full cup of wine, and breathe in fragrant spices, reminding them of the special Sabbath sweetness they have tasted. This sweetness will fortify them as they return to the routine world. Just until Wednesday, when they begin anticipating the beautiful Sabbath to come.

Many American Jews, even if they are not Orthodox, still find some way to mark the Sabbath as sacred and separate it from the workaday week. For some, this is the special Friday night dinnerperhaps the only time during a busy week when the family sits down togetheror the quiet Saturday spent with loved ones. For others, it is the unique aura of shalom beit (peace in the house) that settles over the family: the commandment in Exodus 35:3 (Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitation upon the Sabbath day) may also refer to flaring tempers and simmering anger.

For me, as a child, it was the Kiddush, the blessing chanted before the Friday evening meal to usher in the Sabbath. Never bound by custom, my father always let me, his daughter, make the Kiddushthough traditionally the benediction is recited by menbecause I, a passionate eight-year-old who had just begun Hebrew school lessons, was burning to take over the ceremony.

And so it became my job as much as setting the table every evening. I chanted the prayers and sipped the sweet, syrupy wine from my fathers worn Kiddush cup, shined so often and so hard that no inscriptions were any longer visible. Then Id pass the cup around so everyone could drink in the Sabbaths sweetnessmother, father, sister, brother, grandfather, usually a guest or two, and back to me. A circle that was a warm embrace and inviolate family nexus.

There were times, of course, that I absented myself, when I was a guest at a friends, or later a boyfriends, home. And I can still hear the note of disappointmentand chasteningin my fathers voice when I told him I wouldnt be home for dinner: Do you know its Friday night? hed ask.

But next Friday, Id be back. No Kiddush wine ever tasted so sweet as at my fathers table.

In homes in which the Sabbath is not observed in the traditional way, the routine demands of contemporary life can make even simple Sabbath observance seem difficult. A Friday night dinner when your daughter regularly performs in the school plays and her older brother wants to grab a pizza and hang out with friends on weekends? Saturdays that begin with carpool for the soccer team?

But the ancient wisdom of setting aside one day of the week and noting it as special still applies today. Shabbat not only rests our bodies and renews our spirits but also nourishes our families.

Many families decide to begin celebrating Shabbat when their children are small. For others, Friday evening seems the perfect time for their grown children (and their families or significant others) to come home for dinner. And, for some, Shabbat becomes the night to break bread with their family or friends.