The Space In Between (And Black Eyed Peas)
- margaretwnorman
- Oct 12, 2019
- 3 min read
I've been thinking a lot about the space in between observance and practice, ritual and religion. What does it mean to be a "cultural" Jew? What makes a person (like me) identify as Jewish beyond a belief in God, the obeying of religious rules, or regular practice; family, history, national belonging, experience, memory? Recently, the question of the space in between was posed to me in a form that spoke to my food studies soul. What does the space in between taste like?
(Above: Goat cheese whipped with pomegranate seeds. Below: Upside Down Apple Cake)
That space tastes like apples and honey and forgoing the one night you could make services in lieu of spending the day on a home cooked meal, hosting recent friends for the first time in a new home; pomegranates, prioritizing. It tastes like brisket, which you always have at the High Holidays, but a new recipe, picked and prepared by a three-month husband on his third Rosh Hashanah. It tastes like almost burnt Challah, rectified with Za'atar, and like loubia, a black eyed pea dish served on Rosh Hashanah in certain Sephardic tradition.
I was surprised to find this last recipe in a book gifted to me a few months back (folks love to gift me Jewish cookbooks), "The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden. Roden states, "In Egypt we served this salad for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. It represented new life and fecundity." To me, coming up on a fourth Southern New Year's, black eyed peas make me think of apartments that are steamy with hot greens and the smell of pork fat; collards, and black eyed peas eaten for good luck on the first day of the new year. A bit of Google research reveals it may have actually been Jews that first imported the tradition of black eyed peas/New Years luck to the US. Possibly it's in the Talmud, possibly black eyed peas resemble coins and signal prosperity, maybe both. Of course, when loubia becomes Hoppin' John it incorporates rice, which is African in origin and speaking to the history of enslavement in the American South, and the culinary presence and contributions of those populations in foods we think of as "Southern."
The space in between is this confusion. It's the mingling of traditions and histories and mixed nostalgia at a table chosen over Temple. It's homesickness for the folks who make you Hoppin' John on New Years converging with tastes ranging on the spectrum from new to old (a spectrum of apples and honey to a revelatory brisket). It's a sense of turning the year with new friends, and of feeling one's own Jewishness at a table sat with by folks with a range of backgrounds and High Holiday familiarity. It's an awareness of the complexities of new ingredients mingling with the old. It's practice without God, but not absent of something hard to grasp. So what are these murky spaces where we negotiate who we are? What do they taste like?
(Belated) Shana Tova!
Loubia
Altered slightly from Claudia Roden's "The Book of Jewish Food"
1 lb black eyed peas (soak for an hour or cook per instructions in pressure cooker) *
1/2 red onion, chopped fine
4 Tablespoons chopped flat-leafed parsley
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
5 Tablespoons olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper to taste
Cook the black eyed peas until tender with one of the above methods (use stock!). When the peas are done cooking, salt and pepper to taste and drain (if needed). Add chopped red onion, parsley, cumin, olive oil and lemon. Mix to incorporate. Cover to keep warm, I found this was wonderful served slightly above room temperature, or added to salads the next day.
*I highly suggest chicken stock for the boiling of the peas, whichever method you use
Brisket and Upside Down Apple Cake can be found in:
"Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes and Customs for Today's Kitchen" by Leah Koenig (Red Wine and Honey Brisket and Upside Down Apple Cake)
Links:
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