I live my life by lists. I have lists for food shopping, and daily to-do's, and longer term to-do's, and morning routines, etc. When reading through Kedoshim this week, it felt like a list of NOT TO DO's. Our tradition teaches that there are 365 mitzvot in the Torah and 248 of them are positive (DO this...) and 365 are negative (DON'T do this.) Our parsha has 38 negative mitzvot and 13 positive. In my plans for the menu, I found myself drawn to the negatives and finding creative ways to represent them.
The first menu item is actually about the punishment of being "cut off from the people." This is the stated punishment for a few things in this parsha, such as eating the sacrifice after the 2nd day, giving your child to Molech (a Cannanite god associated with child sacrifice), or turning to ghosts.
Relying on the same pun used in a siman on Rosh Hashanah where leeks symbolize being cut off (because leek in aramaic is karsi which is a close cousin to karet, the Hebrew for cut off), the first dish is a Rustic Leek Soup.
Next, the Torah tells us not to plant our fields with mixed seeds. I'm not sure if there's an agricultural benefit here or one of the mitzot that you just do because God said so, though I did
find some very interesting discussion on the internet by people considering how to best mix this prohibition with farming practices to encourage plant growth. Since this prohibition is only about
planting and not eating, the menu item here is actually purposely mixing the seeds up! Try this mixed seed dressing on your salad.
Finally, we get this prohibition:
לֹ֣א תַקִּ֔פוּ פְּאַ֖ת רֹאשְׁכֶ֑ם וְלֹ֣א תַשְׁחִ֔ית אֵ֖ת פְּאַ֥ת זְקָנֶֽךָ׃
You [men] shall not round off the side-growth on your head, or destroy the side-growth of your beard.
This is the source for the practice followed by some of growing peyot (more commonly called peyes and often translated as sidelocks). I find it hard to discern what the text is saying with these parts of the head, but years of tradition have yieled the answer of peyes. Of course, different
families have different traditions about length, curl, etc. The most stereotypical in my mind are small curls, which made me think of cavatappi pasta. So, our 3rd dish this week is a simple pasta using cavatappi mixed with olive oil, carmelized onions, sauteed garlic, salt, pepper, and pasley. Worth noting - my 16 year old suggests the alternative of curly fries.
Shabbat Shalom & B'Tayavon
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