The Lilith Blog

My foray into vegetarianism began in 8th grade, and, if I correctly recall, had something to do with a dead squirrel. It was a year of rebellion for me: I got kicked out of class for the first time; cut class for the first time; and even joined an illicit “pizza group,” composed of me and a bunch of guys who would call the local pizzeria from the school’s pay phone every week, and share a pie behind the school cafeteria. My proclamation that I would no longer eat meat was, according to my parents, part of a “phase,” and my mother continued to serve chicken soup and brisket every week on Shabbat.

When my husband and I began dating seriously, we had long discussions about the values of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, and concluded that vegetarianism was an important extension of the philosophy we believed was underlying the system. Kashrut is part of an overall scheme of enhancing awareness; its focus is the relationship between the external and internal worlds. The Torah’s injunction not to eat certain animals and not to mix milk and meat could be understood as an imperative to be hyper-conscious of what, and how, we consume what is beyond us and make it our own. In keeping with the interpretation of Rav Kook, who argued that the Torah’s ideal was that all human beings be vegetarian, with our sensitivity to environmental factors, and with our shared desire to accumulate as little “stuff” as possible (kosher kitchens include two sets of everything – pots & pans, cutlery, sponges, sometimes sinks – to keep meat and dairy separate), we decided to keep a vegetarian kosher home.

Everything began to subtly unravel when kids came into the picture. When I was pregnant, I learned that, in terms of satisfying my appetite, one piece of chicken equaled at least three pints of ice cream. I started cooking chicken on Friday nights in aluminum pans. We ate on paper, convincing ourselves that it was temporary. When the kids were born and we visited my parents, I watched with wide eyes as they shoveled meatballs and schnitzel , meatloaf and stuffed cabbage into their mouths, as if they were starving. Friday night chicken dinners on throw-away dishes became our norm. One year, my parents visited for Thanksgiving, and my mother convinced us to make turkey. We bought a mammoth aluminum pan and a real knife, which, after devouring the bird, we subsequently wrapped in red tape and stuck it in the back of a drawer with plastic ice-pop holders.

This week marked another landmark in our losing battle; I decided to make chicken soup. You can’t do that in a tin foil pan. The kids have had nasty stomach flus, and, after three days of their losing fluids and refusing to eat anything, I decided that it was my responsibility as their Jewish mother to make a big pot of chicken soup. I borrowed a pot and a ladle from a friend, and improvised on my mother’s recipe. In went the chicken, the onion, the carrots, the sweet potato. I realized I had no celery, and the vegetarian in me was already raging. Something green! Something must go in the pot to reveal that this is a chicken soup de resistance, a pot of fluid cooked by someone who believes in vegetables! In went the droopy green beans from last week’s farmer’s market. In went the forgotten cauliflower from the back of the fridge. In went the turmeric. Yes, turmeric. I lowered the flame and took a whiff, a blushing bride, a novice once again. My first chicken soup.

The kids refused to eat it. My mother was aghast that I put cauliflower in chicken soup. It’s supposed to be a clear broth! That’s the whole point! Have I taught you nothing? My husband and I didn’t think it was too bad. As we sat and ate bowl after paper bowl with our little plastic spoons, the kids asleep and dreaming of kneidelach, I said to my husband: we should really buy our own pot and ladle. Maybe a bowl and a soup spoon or two, while we’re at it. He grunted from the kitchen, where he was trying to fit the enormous pot into the fridge, and muttered something about Tupperware.

–Maya Bernstein

Ah – crisp September – You are most welcome here! O Chill in the Air, Dear Crunch of the Apple, Ye Shavings of Sharpened Pencils.

This time of year has taken on precious new meaning for me in motherhood: it marks the return of blessed routine. This year, our eldest daughter started Pre-K, a joyous occasion, marked by nightly readings of Knuffle Bunny Too, and the purchase of a pair of shoes that are two sizes too big, to compensate for the fact that all summer long her sandals were two sizes too small.

But, alas, each gain comes with loss. The summer days, their lazy, lingering, twilight evenings are gone. And the introduction of school marks the return of normal work-life for parents, and the incorporation of a new parent into the house – the teacher – creating a sometimes vicious love-triangle. We know that at some point in our daughter’s schooling, it is of course inevitable that she will come home with information that we disagree with, and may even conflict on a profound level with our beliefs and practices.

When I was in fifth grade, in the mid 1980s, the AIDS epidemic was raging. I asked my mother what AIDS meant, and my understanding after that conversation was that it was a terrible sickness one could get if one was married, at the same time, to multiple people. At the time, I was learning about Jacob at school. The teacher explained that he married Leah, and then Rachel, and then Bilhah, and then Zilpah. Well, I put two and two together, raised my eager little hand, and asked “Why didn’t Jacob get AIDS?” Let’s just say that the teacher didn’t appreciate the question. A diatribe of “that’s a STUPID question, how could you ask such a thing, etc.” ensued. My parents talked to the teacher, but, ultimately, it appeased them more than it helped me. I had learned my lesson – sometimes the worlds of school and home don’t align.

When our daughter came home from Chabad last year and pronounced that all boys wear kippot, we gently told her that some Jewish boys wear kippot, and some don’t, and some Jewish girls do too. She countered with – “but Morah (Teacher) told me that only boys do,” and when we said, yes, some boys do, but some don’t, and some girls do too, she burst into tears.

Can we trust our children to sift through conflicting information? And – at what age, if any, is it appropriate to tell a child that her teacher may have been mistaken? That her teacher shared one perspective, but there may be others? Is home-schooling the only answer? Or is this how children learn that there is a complex, multi-faceted universe of truths, facts, beliefs, and opinions out there? Maybe our job is to hold them as they cry, mourning each year the coming of September, and the annual loss of innocent simplicity it brings in its autumnal wake.

–Maya Bernstein