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November 16, 2006
B’nai Mitzvah: Celebrate sunrise prayer with breakfast outdoors
If you were in Jerusalem at the crack of dawn on a Monday or Thursday, you would see dozens of bar mitzvah boys davening by the Western Wall, being taught to lay tefillin for the first time. In Persian families this practice includes a morning prayer service and a breakfast for close family and friends.
Since the b’nai mitzvah ceremony is rife with spiritual meaning, a lovely way to start the sacred day is an early morning gathering to greet the sunrise.
“In our morning service we recognize the glory of the sunrise and the announcement of it by the rooster, who was given the intelligence to distinguish between night and day,” said Matthew Simon, rabbi emeritus of Conservative B’nai Israel Congregation of Rockville, Md. “Even though we don’t always appreciate his ‘cock-a-doodle- doo’ at 5 in the morning.”
Simon suggests that scheduling an early morning celebration during the week (Monday, Tuesday or Friday) might be a little easier on the nerves of the bar mitzvah and his mother.
For Joel Rembaum, senior rabbi at Conservative Temple Beth Am, the idea of an outdoor early morning service seems perfect.
“I’m an old Jewish camping guy,” he said. “I’ve put on tefillin in front of Sequoia trees in Yosemite. It’s good for the bar mitzvah to learn to express himself in different settings.”
For the occasion, Rembaum suggests bringing prayer books and ritual garb to the location. If the honored child is up to it he can also conduct the prayers, Rembaum said.
To make it more personal the bar mitzvah could lead a recitation about the spirituality of nature or intersperse a meditation on renewal. He can recite a beautiful poem, or even play a piece of inspiring music.
Although it can be meaningful to combine prayer with music and creative writings, it’s important not to disturb the rhythm or flow that exists within the service, Rembaum said.
Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann of the Reconstructionist Congregation Kol Tzedek of West Philadelphia emphasizes the value of humor and compares the ritual to the tish, which is part of a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, where all the men gather around the bridegroom and kibitz with him, making jokes and offering support and advice to alleviate the tension he feels before the wedding.
“This translates perfectly to the bar mitzvah where the young man would be encircled by the love and community of his parents, siblings and friends of the family,” she said.
Because all celebrations deserve a little sustenance, a light repast in the morning will sweeten the experience. You can make these delicious recipes or supplement with store-bought goodies from your favorite bakery.
Assemble all the dishes in a few wicker picnic baskets, making sure to separate hot and cold foods. Include plates, coffee mugs, napkins, silverware, including extra serving pieces, tablecloth and butter.
Fruit Salad With Tangerine Juice and Fresh Mint
1 pint basket blackberries, blueberries or raspberries
2 kiwi fruits, peeled and sliced into circles
1 medium-size ripe honeydew melon, cut into balls with melon-baller
1 ripe mango or papaya, peeled and diced
1/2 cup fresh tangerine juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Handful of fresh mint leaves, stemmed and chopped
1/4 cup slivered almonds
Gently mix together fruits and juices in a serving bowl. Sprinkle with mint and almonds. Chill.
Before you leave, transfer the Fruit Salad to in an insulated bowl with a tight cover and a cold pack.
Makes six servings.
Frittata Contadina
From “Little Italy Cookbook” by David Ruggerio (Artisan, 1997). Don’t worry if it’s not “piping hot” when you get to your destination. It’s just as delicious at room temperature.
1/4 cup olive oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
8 eggs
1/4 pound mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
Salt to taste
Optional: 1/4 cup of spinach, potatoes or tomatoes
Preheat oven to 350 F. Heat olive oil in nonstick sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion, mushrooms; cook until onions are translucent (about 3 minutes). While vegetables are cooking, place eggs and two tablespoons water in a bowl, beat with fork. Add salt; mix in cheese and basil.
Pour mixture on to vegetables in pan. Cook for about one minute; place in oven for five to 10 minutes or until firm in center. Carefully flip on to plate and serve.
To transport the frittata, keep it in the pan, wrap it in foil; then wrap in a heated dishtowel, tablecloth, or other insulated material. Anchor Hocking makes a thermal insulated zippered pouch, which comes with its own pan and lid.
Makes four servings.
Victorian Currant Scones
From “Monet’s Table” by Claire Joyes (Simon & Schuster, 1990).
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
About 5 ounces of milk
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup currants
Preheat oven to 400 F. Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Cut in butter; stir in currants and enough milk to make a soft dough. Roll out to 1/2-inch thick. Cut out two-inch circles with biscuit cutter or glass, place on a greased baking sheet.
Bake for 15 minutes or until they rise well and are lightly browned. Serve hot, slicing them crosswise with butter and jam.
Place in a napkin-lined small basket and cover loosely with foil.
Makes 12 scones.
Clementine Marmalade
Recipe by cooking teacher Jean Brady.
If clementines aren’t in season, use best quality seedless tangerines or oranges.
1 pound clementines, left whole
2 cups sugar
In a three-quart saucepan, cover tangerines with water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Drain off water. When tangerines are cool, cut into 1/4-inch crosswise slices. Place tangerines and sugar in heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat until sugar dissolves, juice thickens and rind looks candied, about 15 minutes. Pour into sterilized jar. When cool, cover and store in refrigerator. Will keep for three months.
Spoon Clementine Marmalade into a jar to transport.
Festive Coffee
1 cup heavy cream
B’nai Mitzvah: Celebrate sunrise prayer with breakfast outdoors Read More »
Books: Interest grows in neglected 19th-Century female author Amy Levy
“The Romance of a Shop,” by Amy Levy, edited by Susan David Bernstein (Broadview Press, $15.95).
“Reuben Sachs,” by Amy Levy, edited by Susan David Bernstein_(Broadview Press, $15.95).
Oscar Wilde adored her, calling the young writer “a girl of genius,” while modern critics, in their flippancy and an attempt to articulate who this virtually unknown Victorian author was, have coined Amy Levy the “Jewish Sylvia Plath,” referring to both her precocious talent and her early, tragic demise. Levy committed suicide by charcoal asphyxiation at the age of 27. And yet, to most, her life and work remain unknown.
Born in November 1861 into a middle-class, Jewish, London family, Levy, the second of seven children, received a progressive education in school and in synagogue. She attended Brighton High School, founded in 1871 by feminists Emily and Maria Shirreff, and later went on to Newnham College, one of two women’s colleges in Cambridge University, where she also happened to be the first Jewish student. Her family belonged to the West London Synagogue of British Jews, a pioneering institution for the Reform movement that paved the way for acculturated Jewish practices of the Diaspora.
Levy’s extraordinary interior life is echoed by the circles in which she moved — Victorian London’s intelligentsia. Along with Wilde, she cultivated friendships in the reading room of the British Museum with Olive Schreiner, Clementina Black and Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl), among others.
In the past few years, there has been an uptick in interest in Levy’s work, including the publication of a biography in 2000, a conference held in 2002 in London specifically on her work and scholarship tied to it and, most recently, the annotated editions of Levy’s two novels, “The Romance of a Shop” and “Reuben Sachs.”
Published this year by Broadview Press and edited by Susan David Bernstein, a professor of English, Jewish and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, these well-culled editions of Levy’s otherwise out-of-print novels include an assortment of other pertinent writings.
“Her work revises, critiques and updates Victorian representations of women and of Jews,” Bernstein said, also noting that Levy’s writing can be seen as a precursor and most likely an influence to such modernists as William Butler Yeats and Virginia Woolf.
Perhaps, though, one thing is certain: Levy’s writing illuminates not just the terrain of Anglo-Jewish life but also the Victorian notion of the “new woman” — the equivalent of today’s feminist.
Originally published in 1888, Levy’s first novel, “The Romance of a Shop,” is built on what was, at that time, a radical premise: Four sisters, ranging in age from 17 to 30, are left to tend to themselves and to one another after their widower father’s death and their resulting loss of financial security. He’s left a legacy as a photographer who owned a studio, and the young women — instead of accepting the various offers of house and home from distant relatives and then sadly having to separate — open a shop as photographers in their own flat, joining the working world and essentially the romance of being young women making their way in an urban environment.
“Despite its nod to the conventional happy ending of marriage and children in the epilogue,” Bernstein noted, “the vision of a woman with a husband, children and a career was a radically unusual one for a mainstream novel in Levy’s day.”
Levy’s feminist leanings developed early in her girlhood (it’s been noted, too, by many scholars that she was most likely a lesbian). Biographer Linda Hunt Beckman saw Levy’s feminism “revealed in drawings of a woman on a soapbox with a sign saying, ‘Votes for Women!'” Levy’s proto-feminism was no less pronounced in her nonfiction: “What woman engaged in art, in literature, in science,” Levy wrote in an essay, “has not felt the drawbacks of her isolated position?”
But if it was confusing to be a woman in the Victorian era, it was equally obfuscating to be a Jew — especially one who felt the tug of acculturation.
Levy’s work specifically takes to task their portrayal in fiction.
Her second novel, “Reuben Sachs,” which many argue was written in reaction to George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda,” revolves around the relationship between two cousins, Reuben Sachs and Judith Quixano. But it was her subtle commentary on “materialistic values and preoccupations of the middle-class London Jewish community,” as Meri-Jane Rochelson, associate professor of English at Florida International University, put it, that raised the ire of many critics.
“[Levy] apparently delights in the task of persuading the general public that her own kith and kin are the most hideous type of vulgarity,” one reviewer wrote in The Jewish World in 1889. “She revels in misrepresentations of their customs and the modes of thought.”
At a moment in the beginning of “Reuben Sachs,” the protagonist’s mother and sister sit “in the growing dusk, amid the plush ottomans, stamped velvet tables, and other Philistine splendours” of their drawing room. Reuben, upon returning home late, enters the house and asks, “Why do women always invariably sit in the dark?”
Levy had the courage not to be one of those women — a contribution that, at times, may have isolated her. In her essay, “Middle-Class Jewish Women of To-Day,” written in 1886 for The Jewish Chronicle, she asks, “What, in fact, is the ordinary life of a Jewish middle-class woman?”
Levy’s extraordinary work certainly brings readers closer to understanding just what it was at that time.
Jessica George Firger is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. This article originally appeared in the
