Comfort food & how to fight for truth from your sofa

(Lentil Soup recipe)

Are you crying? 

I’m crying because, despite my advice from last week, I am still doom scrolling. 

But at the same time, I am no longer watching mainstream media. You see, I live in the UK, and BBC News makes me want to throw things at my TV. Quite frankly, BBC News does not deserve my TV, so I have just stopped turning it on. 

That said, I am totally addicted to Instagram. It has become my window to the outside world. Though I say I want to move past this and live my life, for anyone on Instagram or anywhere else in my life who isn’t at least half-focused on what is happening in Israel and around the world to Jews, I scroll right past them. I can’t watch them or consume their content on a social media platform, nor can I have a conversation with them in person. 

In real life, I’m really not that selfish (I hope). I try to listen; I try to be there for others. But not today, not for the last three weeks, and not for however long (Hashem, please make it short) this lasts. For now, I require that the world be with me. 

But my content, at the very least, here at WineandChallah.com, is meant to be all about connecting Jews to their heritage through food. So what am I doing? I know we require food, we require connection, and we need to get back to entertaining our friends, family, and community members. 

It isn’t that life goes on; it doesn’t, and for many people in our world, it won’t. 

But rather, in this new/old reality we are living in, we need those connections more than ever. We need to gather our friends around our table and share food, break bread, cry, laugh, and sing together. So let me share with you a few recipes, for the soul and for the body. Let them comfort you and lift you. Share them, or eat them alone while crying over your phone. But as with last week’s message, EAT. We need you to, because the way we will face the days to come is with bodies and souls that are full. Full of love for our fellow Jew, love for our country, love for humanity, and love for morality. And we need fuel to be able to hold onto that much love. So EAT.

When this war started, we were shocked, but not shocked, because we are Jews, and many of us didn’t expect any different. Exhausted but enraged. Exhausted from the tears and yet dried out from crying. Our motivation is low and high all at the same time. We cry at weddings and shout at funerals. We feel like the whole world is blind while we show them the truth. We are Joan of Arc, Mulan, and Boudicca. My arms, which have lifted nothing more than a fork filled with cake in a repetitive motion towards my mouth, are exhausted. 

What can I do with my phone from my sofa on the other side of the world?

Here are some ideas: 

1. My old boss used to say, “Esau gets tired; Jacob does not.” It used to frustrate me so much as my body was screaming of exhaustion. Now I can understand what he was saying clearly. One of the seminal moments between Esau and Jacob happens over a bowl of soup. Esau has gone hunting, and he is literally “dying of hunger,” “starving,” “could eat a horse,” “kill for a burger” – though we have all said something along those lines at some point in our lives, Esau actually means it. He comes upon Jacob, who is preparing lentil soup, and Esau begs him for a bowl. In fact, he says, “I am so tired I am going to die without a bowl of your soup.” He is so desperate for the soup that he actually offers up his birthright as the eldest in return for the bowl of lentil soup. I kid you not – the power of food and hunger makes us all do crazy things. That is the kind of tiredness my boss was referring to, a tiredness that is so all-consuming you forget who you are and what you want to achieve. As Jews, we cannot, nor have we ever been able to afford the luxury of being so tired that we let our guard down. So I know you are exhausted, but find the energy to move forward. Each and every one of us counts.

2. Each and every one of us counts. Think you are speaking into an echo chamber? Are your friends people just like you who agree with you completely? That is fantastic, but you don’t know who all their friends are. So keep spreading the truth. We need to combat every lie and every misrepresentation with the truth. This war is being fought on so many different fronts, and the home front or rather the social media front is one you can also engage in.

3. Engagement – there are the social media warriors, and the worriers, and the spreaders of fear, and the spreaders of joy. It’s okay to be just one of these or all of them, and if you are none of them, that is okay too. At the very least, like what you are seeing if the content feels like it is helping to spread the truth. The more we like posts, the more engagement they have, the more widely our messages of truth spread.

4. More on engagement – All the comments, good and bad, uplifting and disgusting, actually help posts appear more often. So hate the disgusting comments, but know that it actually helps videos appear more often, and more people will see them.

5. Turn it around: I saw an Israeli soldier on Instagram pledge that for every Palestinian flag that appeared in her comments, she would give a dollar to charity. After just two days, she gave hundreds of dollars to the army base outside Gaza. We are the people who turn this on its head. We are the people who stand in the middle of hate rallies, singing songs of peace. Do not forget that.

6. Do not be afraid. I’m not naive, nor am I stupid. Bad things have happened and keep on happening, and more and more of the atrocities of October 7th are coming to light, and it is actually terrifying. But here is the truth. WE ALWAYS WIN.

WE ALWAYS WIN: What does that mean? I’m a Holocaust educator. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I have relatives who were killed in the Yom Kippur War. I have distant family that was murdered on the 7th of October, and family that has been displaced from their home in the south of Israel. I have family on the front line of this war. How can I say we always win? It would seem that Jews are the constant losers in this thing we call history. But that is just not true. If we had lost, you and I would not be having this conversation right now. You and I would not be here if we weren’t the descendants of the strongest and most resilient people on earth. We are the children of Abraham and Sarah. We are the children of the slave nation that crossed the Red Sea, traversed the desert, made a home, created a kingdom, were set for annihilation by the Greeks, the Romans, the Spanish, the Nazis, expelled from almost every country in Europe and the  Arab countries. Though so many innocent souls were murdered by the Nazis, we are still here to talk about it. Our resilience DNA is not something you can see when you look at our genetic makeup; it is only something you can understand when you look at our history. You and I, and our children, our friends, our families are the children of the most resilient people on earth.

So now that I have had my rallying cry, it’s time to cook, because for me, feeding people is the way I tell them I love them and they are precious to me and important in my life. It’s time to host at our Shabbat tables because it brings Jews closer together. It’s time (at least for me) to speak to people who aren’t actually speaking about what is happening in Israel and change the conversation. Every single one of us has a responsibility. So do what you can; every little bit helps. Sending lots of love and strength, and don’t forget to EAT.

COMFORT FOOD:

This week I’m sharing some of the most comforting food I make for my own family. I hope it helps you as well. 

NEW Recipe! Lentil Soup – this soup is so good that my nephew Mordechai asked me to make it for him as his bar mitzvah present.

NEW Recipe! Krupnik (Mushroom Barley) Soup – this soup is like a hug from a Yiddishe Bubbe. Literally comfort in a bowl.

NEW Recipe! Cauliflower Vegan Curry – warmth, comfort and a full meal all in one. Seriously, what more can we ask for? Oh, I know – world peace. But until then, eat curry. 

Noodles and Cabbage – honestly any time I was down as kid, my mom would make noodles and cabbage. It helped so much. Not only is it delicious, but the best part of it was knowing that my mom loves me so much that, seeing me sad, she would drop everything, to stand over a pot and fry cabbage to comfort me. 

NEW Recipe! Snickerdoodles – just saying the name of these cinnamon-loaded cookies makes me smile; the warmth of cinnamon combined with a “crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside” cookie. Serve with a tall glass of cold milk for 2 minutes and pretend (honestly, I have no idea what you should pretend to be or where you should pretend you are, so perhaps lets say) or escape.

Lemon Cake – I know I posted this last week, but posting it again as so many of you made the cake, loved the cake and said – as I promised – it is the best cake ever. I’m posting it again as everyone deserves this one-bowl-wonder-cake in their repertoire of comfort baking.