Ruth Abusch-Magder is education director and rabbi in residence at the San Francisco-based think tank, Be’chol Lashon.
Ruth Abusch-Magder
By Ruth Abusch-Magder
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Food Turkish Rosh Hashanah Delights
Start the year off well, be bold, shine forth with simplicity. Rosh Hashanah foods are meant not just to tickle our taste buds but also to inspire. The flavors and textures of holiday foods are meant to encourage the turn towards new possibilities. According Gilda Angel, the author of the “Sephardic Holiday Cooking,” Turkish Jewish…
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Food When in Rome: Celebrate Shavuot With Italian Foods
What food goes with fire and brimstone? What do you eat in honor of divine revelation? These are questions I’ve been pondering lately. The holiday of Shavuot, which starts at sunset tonight, recalls the giving of Torah, that pivotal moment when the people of Israel gathered at Mount Sinai and experienced direct divine revelation. It…
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Food The Sipping Seder — 6 Cocktails Inspired by the Seder Plate
At first glance one might assume that a Sipping Seder, made up of six potent cocktails inspired by the Seder plate, is simply the grown up equivalent of the primary school’s set’s chocolate Seder — an excuse to over indulge, or a means to induce an alcoholic haze to counter the stress of a family…
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Food Expanding the Definition of Jewish Food, One Rice Ball at a Time
Homemade inari sushi, mandle bread, rice balls, spicy edamame, hamantaschen, and rice crispy treats. If there was anything incongruous about the offerings at the recent bake sales for Japan earthquake relief at Brandeis Hillel Day School, a pluralistic Jewish day school in San Francisco, no one seemed to notice. The mix of Jewish, Japanese and…
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Food What’s Inside? ‘Hidden Foods’ for Purim
Masquerades, double identities, and hidden truths are the very essence of Purim, the story, the parties, the carnivals, and as it turns out the food too. Traditionally, across the Jewish landscape, food was as integral to Purim celebrations as it was to Passover or Rosh Hashana. In addition to gifts of food, there is the…
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Food ‘Eating the Fat’ and ‘Drinking the Sweet’ on Sigd
The 29th day of Cheshvan (November 6th, this year), exactly 50 days after Yom Kippur, marks the Ethiopian Jewish holy day of Sigd, a celebration of the Ethiopian fall harvest and a day where Jews in Ethiopia historically reaffirmed their belief in the Torah and expressed their yearning to return to Israel. The holiday is…
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Recipes Cooking New Recipes for a New Year
Since arriving in California twelve months ago, I’ve tried the dry flesh of Chinese Jujubes, zest from the green and orange Yuzu lemons, ventured the tendrils of the Buddha’s hand and tried no less than 100 varieties of stone fruits. For this dedicated fruit lover, all of this is marvelous. Still this leaves me with…
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Life A Meaningful Holiday for Parents of Young Children
Recently, a friend announced that she was not attending High Holy Days services this year. It was not a sign of protest but rather of resignation. Having attended services last year with a toddler, there was no way she was going to try this year with two small children. Even when a congregation offers tot…
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