Today I had the opportunity to have a reunion lunch with a group of interfaith Clergy who recently traveled together to Israel. (I had been involved in organzing the trip.) One thing we did was learn together and one of the participants brought up how important language is in the Torah and how translations don't always give the full story. This reminded me of the first item that caught my attention for this week's #parshainspiredmenus. Jacob prepares to meet Esau again after years of being apart (the last time they saw each other was when Jacob ran off after tricking Isaac into giving Jacob Esau's blessing) and to try and appease or win over Esau, Jacob sends
ahead messengers with a lot of livestock to be given to Esau. He tells them that when Esau asks about who they are and whose livestock they have with them, they should say
לְעַבְדְּךָ֣ לְיַעֲקֹ֔ב מִנְחָ֥ה הִוא֙ שְׁלוּחָ֔ה לַֽאדֹנִ֖י לְעֵשָׂ֑ו וְהִנֵּ֥ה גַם־ה֖וּא אַחֲרֵֽינוּ׃
‘Your servant Jacob’s; they are a gift sent to my lord Esau; and [Jacob] himself is right behind us.’
The word for gift used in this pasuk is מִנְחָ֥ה, mincha. Actually, מִנְחָ֥ה is used to describe this gift 5 times in the description of these events. Mincha is sometimes translated as offering, and in many ways this is the peace offering from Jacob to Esau. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. When Jacob actually meets up with Esau he describes the giving of the livestock this way:
קַח־נָ֤א אֶת־בִּרְכָתִי֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הֻבָ֣את לָ֔ךְ כִּֽי־חַנַּ֥נִי אֱלֹהִ֖ים וְכִ֣י יֶשׁ־לִי־כֹ֑ל וַיִּפְצַר־בּ֖וֹ
Please accept my present which has been brought to you, for God has favored me and I have plenty.
The language changes to בִּרְכָתִי֙, translated as present, but that translation loses the connection to the root ברך, barech, which we might recognize from bracha or baruch, all about blessing. Having taken Esau's blessing from Isaac, Jacob is now trying to give blessing back! I thought the only fitting food for this would be something that looks like a gift box. You can always make sugar cookies and decorate them as a gift box, but I am going to try to make a zucchini kugel and then use zucchini strips to look like ribbons and a bow.
In the midst of the prepration to meet Esau, Jacob wrestles with the angel (man? angel?) and we get one of the lines in the Torah is a "you see folks" style line. Where it connects the dots between the Torah's words and actions. When at the end of the wrestling, Jacob's hip has been wrenched from its socket, we are told "That is why the children of Israel to this day do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the socket of the hip, since Jacob’s hip socket was wrenched at the thigh muscle."
The halacha l'ma'aseh (practical Jewish law application) is that we can't eat the sciatic nerve and this means certain steak cuts are very hard to get in kosher butchers. In an ideal world, in honor of this I'd make kosher filet mignon, but instead I'll use another cut of meat to represent how hard it can be to get filet mignon. I will probably make a London Broil, perhaps like this Shabbat London Broil from Jamie Geller.
Finally, towards the end of the parsha God tells Jacob to go to Bethel and as part of passing along that instruction to his family, he also tells them to get rid of alien gods and to purify themselves. As part of that process the Torah tells us "They gave to Jacob all the alien gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the terebinth that was near Shechem." It's interesting that rings get specifically called out and some commentators note this and offer details. Chizkuni suggests they are rings that were in the ears of the idols. All explanations note that these rings must have been involved in idoltry in some way, be it as charms, amulets or as a source of material from which to make idols. I was thinking of making onion rings, both for the ring reference in the parsha and to go with the steak, but I couldn't easy find kosher, parve onion rings pre-made, so I found curly fries, which looks enough like rings to work for this purpose!
Shabbat Shalom & B'Tayavon!
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