Eleventh Nisan - Celebrate

My Bubbie’s Brisket

(with translation)

Passover is coming. I am, once again, contemplating kashering my kitchen (making it ready for Passover and the clearing away of “chametz” - anything with leavening). I am also thinking about brisket, probably because it is almost Pesach. In my family, which managed to show its devotion to God mainly through food and only peripherally through prayer and ritual, brisket meant holiday and celebration. It was, for us, the 11th commandment.

I got this recipe from my bubbie. I’m sure she got it from hers, who got it from hers, who got it from hers – you get the idea: a long, forever line of amazing and strong and devoted women who cooked and fed and made sure that, no matter what was going on in the world, she would make sure that there was enough, and then some. Genug! Enough!

The Recipe	The translation, with commentary
Get a brisket, ½ a pound to a pound per person. Top cut is more expensive, but my bubbie swore by it.	The range is big because brisket has a magical shrinking quality. One year, you plan for ½ a pound per person (because last year, there was so much left over!), and the brisket shrinks enough that you contemplate only having soup for dinner, to make sure there is enough. Or, if you’re my mother, you buy a second brisket, just to be sure.
Rinse and pat dry.	Remember the movie “There Will Be Blood”? Do this part in the sink. Trust me.
A few yellow onions, sliced	Use a mandolin if you want to be fancy. Otherwise, cut away, until you have enough to layer the bottom of the pan, and then enough to layer the top of the brisket.
Place a layer of sliced onions in the bottom of your roasting pan.	No translation necessary – just throw ‘em in the roasting pan and be done.
The Dry Rub: Paprika Garlic Salt Salt and Pepper	Please don’t ask for exact amounts; no self-respecting bubbie of mine would deign to measure an ingredient if her life depended on it. These are things you’re just supposed to know. So – the brisket should be covered with the paprika. The other dry ingredients – “enough” is as specific as I can get here. As my bubbie would say, “You’ll know.” Reminder: all seasonings should be on top and bottom of the brisket.
The Other Rub: Ketchup	Yup – ketchup. Slather this all over the brisket. It’s a messy job. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Top brisket with more onions and sprinkle a packet of dry onion soup mix	Depending on the size of the brisket, you might want to use 2 packets. Again, this is cooking by sight.
Last Step: mix about ¼ to ½ cup of ketchup with about a cup of water. Pour this over and around brisket. Cover pan tightly with foil and roast at 350 for several hours.	So, you finally get to measure something! You only need to actually measure the first time or three until this, too, is cooking by sight. As for how long – what? You thought my bubbie would provide some exactness at this point in our cooking adventure? I usually cook the brisket for 4 or 5 hours. This is something that cannot be overcooked! You know when it’s done? When it smells like brisket, when it smells like it’s done.
Take it out of the oven. Let cool. Refrigerate at least overnight.	Remember to open the foil away from your face! There will be steam. (This is a bubbie quote, akin to “Blow on the soup; it’s hot." Behind all the words though, is the sentiment “I love you.” Bubbie spoke many languages - Yiddish, English, food. I miss them all)
Slice the brisket while cold	I can’t stress this enough. No self-respecting bubbie of mine would deign to use an electric carving knife. Cut it cold - but before you do, remove the hard orange shell (the polite way to say “fat.”) Dispose. Taste a piece (or two). This is the “testing for poison” phase. This is a critical step. Do not over-test however; you do have guests arriving soon. Replace sliced brisket in the pan with all the onions and the juice (and assorted vegetables, as desired) and cover tightly with foil.
Place in oven heated to between 325 - 350 degrees.	A lower heat won’t hurt. Again, this is cooking by additional senses. I usually keep the brisket in the oven for another 2 - 3 hours. The desired doneness is when the meat “fels’n part,” Yiddish-ish for “falls apart.” Brisket should be fork-tender; no knives required (just as matzoh balls should be hard as rocks - but that’s a different essay entirely).
Serve	On a huge platter. It is totally ok to forget the gravy, which is really just the pan juices poured into a gravy boat; this creates additional opportunity to apologize for the meal, and for the guests to show their love, and tell you how amazing the food is.  If you've planned it correctly, you will have made too much, the exactly right amount.   The onions can stay with the brisket; the other veggies, if any, can be placed around the meat or in a separate serving dish. Your call. Bubbie often forgot to serve these, but had enough other vegetables (all of which, for some reason, included things like honey, raisins, marshmallow and pineapple). The salad never came out until five bites before everyone was ready to burst, with cries of “Oy! The salad!” Wine and juice got poured and drunk and spilled. Matzoh crumbs littered the table and more than a few laps and the carpet. The kids fidgeted, their parents split their attention between the kids (allowing them some semblance of freedom until there was inevitable escalation from happy-to-see-the-cousins exuberance to a true-to-life demonstration of Moses masking an example of the Egyptian taskmaster and the events of the seder and silently pleading with the seder leader to speed it up and do we really have to talk about what the rabbi's said on their sleepover? And all around you is the happy chaos of a family celebration, in whatever iteration your family settles into - family by birth, by the beloved family you find along the way, by the orphans, acquaintances and disparate others who may have had no other place to spend the holiday - and you sort of get a sense of that original Pesach meal, all jumbled and joyous and not quite perfect as you rushed around, stretching your legs on the slippery new place of Freedom, and maybe no one knew everyone around, so you all just garnered together, to eat and remember and thank and hope and pray and love.

So, this is the recipe - the pared down, out-loud version that was given to me, handed down much as the Torah went from God to Moses to Joshua to a thousand generations of our people, to your niece who chanted so beautifully at her bat mitzvah not too long ago, or your son who is struggling with its ideas (much as you did - and still do) and perhaps this recipe goes back to  Sinai as well. Perhaps.

And every time I make it, I remember, and give thanks and feel love. And then we gather, the chaos of family and friends and kids and love - and we remember, just like we were there, and we tell the story of our redemption, and we tell the story of our family, and we celebrate wroth brisket and matzoh and stories and love.

Thank you to my bubbies, both of them. Your memories have been a blessing to us all. Chag pesach sameach!

Ninth Nisan - Perplex

I'm going to slip this in, under the wire, for PERPLEX, the prompt for ninth Nisan in #blogexodus.

I am perplexed by much of the story of our redemption, our Exodus from Egypt. Why did it take 400 years for God to finally hear our cries? Why would Moses, let alone God, expect this newly freed people, who had only known a taskmaster's lash, who had not tasted the sweetness of freedom and the joy of being bound to God - why would they expect the Spies to behave any differently? Trust? After all that history, on a seeming whim? Really? Why does it appear that Aaron got off scott free after the gossip transgression, while Miriam was doomed to suffer and be exiled from the community, until she was healed, until she was deemed fit to re-enter? Why was she not mourned?

I am perplexed about so much of our story. But today, I really don't so much care about the tangles of our story. I really don't care about its themes of redemption and hope and freedom and binding.

Today,.I am perplexed by a world that tacitly condones murder by hunger, by medical need, by neglect and indifference. Our texts are clear - there shall be no needy. Yes, yes - there will always be needy. Our text comments on that as well: If there are needy, give them what they need, with open hands and open hearts. I am, again, perplexed that we can be so blithe and blind to the ravages of need.

I am perplexed at the murder of anyone. I don't understand, in any way, the killings that we witness, every day. My mind absolutely boggles at the battlefields we have made of our homes, our cities, our seas.

We witness these murders daily: in Syria and Russia, Paris and Turkey. Senseless and horrific, they are atrocities, because of their scope and numbers. In Chicago, where I live, there are parts of this glorious city where children must walk through war zones to get to school and back; where innocents become collateral damage and we tag the murders of the not-innocents as something a little less than murder, and more like just desserts. As if the death of ANY person does not diminish us all.

We witness these deaths - murders and killings and atrocities - and we shake our heads, draw our families closer (even for just the moment, grateful that we can). We feel genuinely bad: shocked, perplexed, angered, saddened. We are indignant, and demand that something be done, dammit! All the right things, all the civilized, compassionate feelings. We witness, we feel. We know, down to our bones, this is a great and terrible wrong that must be stopped.

And the next day - hell, the next hour - we witness it all over again. Our perplexity consumes us.

Here's the thing: I don't have an answer. There is probably no one answer anyway, in such a complex, worldwide, ancient sin of ours, of all of us humans. I know that you have to feed people. Make them healthy. Educate them, clothe them, give them skills and jobs and hope. And you know what? In my naivete, I can bet that if we were only to place our efforts in saving people over making profit - if a human life were actually more valuable than an ounce of gold - we could change the world almost overnight.

How about this - how about we treat a person, not a need? We talk about the Hungry, the Poor, the Other, as if each need were a monolith of sameness, as if every person there were exactly the same, needed in the exactly same way. Every person in need is a person - a face, a heart, a soul, a voice. We want to create a little box, control it tightly, fit all the people with Need A into the box labeled Need A, then slap a lid on it, tie it up with string, and put it on a shelf, as we dole out a solution crafted to blanket the box - but not the people we've put there.

Those people - and the very fact that we can say "those people" is testament to the problem - are faceless. Those people are numbers. Those people are Them, inherently different from, less than Other. We reduce a person to a need, so we can discuss the problem of that need at a healthy, intellectual distance. We can provide solutions, that, if they don't work, we can shrug our shoulders and know that at least we tried - and then return to our regularly scheduled lives.

Forgive my broad brush here. Forgive the soap box upon which I've climbed. Notice that I say "we," not "you." This is my sin as well. Here's a novel thought: how about we unpack those boxes, and really see the people for who they are? How about we understand that we are all made from the same dust of stars and earth.

I am perplexed by how easily we can reduce people to the lowest common denominator - and then find even the trap door to that.

The people who were murdered, most likely by their own government earlier this week, whose homes have been made into bombed out shells, who have been forced to flee, again and again, until there were no roads left upon which they could flee - they are not Syrians, or Muslims or Christians or whatever label we attach to them to make them something Else - they are humans. They deserve our respect and compassion. They are not a sad little box to put on a shelf already over-crowded with other sad little boxes filled with human fodder and faceless Others.

They deserve honor. They deserve their names. Zichronam liv'rachah, may their memories be for a blessing. May their names be remembered.

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1. Molham Jihad al-Yusuf

2. Yasser Ahmed Al-Yousef

3. Child- Ammar Yasser Al-Yousif 7 years old

4. Child- Muhammad Yasser Al-Yousef 10 years old

5. Ms. Sana Haj Ali, wife of Yasser

6. Abdul Karim Ahmed al-Yusuf

7. Child Ahmad Abdul Hamid Al - Yusuf 9 months old

8. Child Abdul Hamid al -Yusuf 9 months old

9. Ms. Dalal Ahmed Al-Sahh, wife of Abdul Hamid Al-Yousuf

10. Ibrahim Mohammed Hasan al-Yousuf

11. Child Muhammad Hassan al-Yusuf 11 years old

12. Ms. Hind Turki Al-Yousef

13. Omran Suhail Al-Yousef

14. Ahmed Suhail Al-Yousef

15. Nihad Ahmad al-Yusuf

16. King (Malak?) Turki al-Yusuf, wife of Nihad al-Yusuf

17. Nur Nihad al-Yusuf

18. Hassan Mohammed Al-Yousef

19. Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Yousef

20. Imad Al-Din Al-Qudh - Pharmacist

21-23. Children of Imad al-Din al-Qudh We did not get their names

24. Turki al-Qudh

25. The wife of Turki al-Qudh

26. The child Hind Turki al-Qudh

27-28. My baby Turki Qudh We did not get their names

29. Ms. Raja Mohammed Al-Mohammad

30. Anas al-Khalid - Teacher

31. Mr. Fatima Al-Sousi, the wife of Anas Al-Khalid - a school teacher

32. The child Mustafa Anas Al-Khalid

33. The child Alaa Anas al-Khalid

34. The child Shahd Anas al-Khalid

35. The child Abdul Rahman Ans al-Khalid

36. The child Khadija Anas al-Khalid

37. Ahmed Khalid Halawa

38. Khaled Halawa

39. The child Shaima Ibrahim al-Jawhar

40. Ahmad Shahoud al-Reem Abu Muhanna

41. Abu Ayman al-Jawhar

42. Ms. Safia Haj Kaddour, wife of Abu Ayman al-Jawhar

43. The child Meyar al-Mari

44. Amer Al-Naif- lawyer

45. Alaa Al-Naif

46. ​​Mohammed Al-Naif

47. Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

48. The wife of Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

49. Wife of Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

50. Jamila Hafez Al-Qasem - A pediatrician.

51. Dirar Al-Aliawi Abu Emad

52. Mohammed Jamal Al-Qassem

53. The wife of Muhammad Jamal al-Qasim

54. Fatima Jamal Al-Qassem

55. son of Mohammed Said Barhoum

56. Hayyan Al-Ali

57. Wife of Hayyan Al-Ali

58-59. Children of the children of Hayyan Ali

(found on the Facebook wall of a friend)