This morning our son delivered his senior drash, one of the special milestones of the senior year at his school. I know my opinion is potentially biased, but I think he did a GREAT job. It was informative, funny, and so classically him. As he was preparing for the drash, we spoke about the text and how it covers the ritual of Yom Kippur, as the kohanim and kohen gadol were to perform them.
While Yom Kippur is high up on the list of holidays celebrated by most Jews (way above something like, say, Shavuot) and, therefore, if you asked people about the rituals of Yom Kippur many people would know them (things like fasting, not wearing leather, and a lot of prayer), the rituals described in this week's parsha are not familiar. These center on sacrifice and kohanim, which is not the Judaism we practice today. I think it's a striking lesson in how modern Judaism has maintained a connection to the Torah's text (Yom Kippur as a day of atonement), while changing and morphing into something that works for the realities and spiritual needs of today's Jews.
So, in honor of the connection to Yom Kippur, my parsha-inspired menu is referencing Yom Kippur break fast.
Also, I'm not cooking Shabbat dinner this week; instead I am hosting for Seudah Shlishit ("the 3rd meal" aka Saturday night dinner) so I doing a lighter meal. This week's parsha-inspired menu includes standard Ashkenazi-style break fast foods: bagels, butter, lox, cream cheese, salad and veggies, and Grandma Janet's noodle kugel (savory and cheesey, btw and recipe below),
along with a new addition I'm trying, a Sephardi/Mizrahi traditional break fast food (Morrocan Harira Soup.)
Grandma Janet's Noodle Kugel
1lb egg noodles
1/4 lb butter
5 eggs
1 1/2 lb cottage cheese
1 pt sour cream
Preheat oven to 350. Boil noodles. Once cooked, mix with butter until melted. Then add eggs and mix. Add cottage cheese and sour cream and mix. Spray a 9x13 baking dish and then place kugel mixture in the pan and bake for about 1 hour, until golden brown on top. And then, as Grandma Janet wrote on the recipe card "Enjoy"
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