PaRDeS

Rabbi Abdimi of Haifa said: Before a man eats and drinks he has two hearts, but after he eats and drinks he has one heart, as it is said (Job XI, 12): A hollow man is two-hearted.

                                             Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Bathra, Folio 12b
 



The joy of cooking and the pleasure of eating are two separate mental and emotional entities. I will resist the temptation to say that they are two opposite sensations, almost mutually exclusive – but at times of heightened sensitivity this statement most certainly seems to hold some truth in it. Hosts and hostesses often end up eating very little of the magnificent meals over which they have slaved for hours. It is as if the joy of cooking satisfies the senses in a way that leaves little room to enjoy the food produced by the cooking process.

As a man who tremendously enjoys both worlds and spends a lot of his time crisscrossing between them, I like to create the following pseudo-theological distinction: cooking is divine, while eating is human. The cooking mind is god-like: active, innovative, intellectual. The eating mind, as opposed to it, is human: passive, nostalgic, sensual. The eating mind is childlike. It allows itself to be swept away by the senses, to be carried away by them to the most remote and sentimental realms of the soul, places that are terra incognita, hidden safely from the scrutinizing gaze of the intellect. The pleasure of eating can sometimes take us back to our deep memories, to times where our minds and senses were at one, before the painful separation of I and Thou – to Eden, to paradise.

This stairway to heaven does not necessarily have to be a dry-aged-for-god-knows-how-many-days Chateaubriand, seared to perfection and accompanied by a really expensive wine whose name no one in American history could pronounce with confidence (not that there’s anything wrong with perfectly seared steaks and fancy wines with unpronounceable names). It does not have to be organic, local, or labeled as “gourmet.” Sometimes all it takes is a tepid cup of deli coffee, a phosphoric-red Italian ice sold on a street corner, a slice of Sal and Carmine’s pizza, or a hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard to create the alchemy of transforming one’s mind into a fleeting, momentary paradise that transcends time, space, logic, or religion – a place where human frailty transforms itself into gold, a place of wholeness, of oneness.

These rare moments often happen when one is alone. Most people don’t like to eat alone; something about it scares them. But for the seekers of poetic eating it is imperative to conquer that fear. There is something intimate about eating alone (and drinking alone, but that’s for a different essay...), something resembling the embarrassingly intense narcissistic intimacy of masturbation. There is no external ritual, no etiquette, no need to justify, explain, or apologize. It’s the real thing, eating for eating’s sake.I strongly recommend mastering the art of eating, of letting go and allowing food to take you where it may. You will not be thin, ever – but you’ll get to know yourself and be with yourself in ways that I can call nothing but spiritual.  

* Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 1

Passover contains one of the most interesting forms of utopia: the utopia of memory.

Even its first mention in the Book of Exodus contains both the plain reality of the occurrence and an intense emphasis on memory. When God is telling Moses the “work plan” for the last night in Egypt, he says:

 13: And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I
14: And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
15: Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
16: And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you.
17: And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.
18: In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.
(Exodus 12)

A commandment to remember a historical event is usually given after it happens. Impressive historical events are translated to rituals over time, and with repetition the presence of a miracle tends to grow. Collective national memory and our private, personal memory exist simultaneously in our mind. Holidays, which are also ceremonies, are special moments set apart from daily life and are maintained in our memory as a landmark in itself – a landmark on the landscape of our personal or family memories of special days overlaid on a mythic or national map.

Passover, even before it happens, is formed on both the level of reality and the level of memory. When Moses gives the “order of the day” scenario for what would be that night’s dramatic departure from Egypt, the Israelites – waiting with their bundles in their hands, are given a rather long-term command: “and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.”
 
The Passover ritual has changed with the absence of the Temple in Jerusalem; there has been a transition from a Passover holiday concentrated on observing the Passover sacrifice in national communal space to a Passover holiday based and celebrated at home, around the family table. The Haggadah structures the Seder as a multi-generational night that focuses on the nature of memory – both the creation of it and the conjuring of it – in a number of ways. We are moved through different activities – conversation, reading, singing, eating, drinking, viewing, listening – and, simultaneously, through different levels of time. We move between present and past, between the time of the formation of the Haggadah and the time of the Exodus, and even between the different layers of time represented by the ones gathered around the table.

There is a Passover liturgical poem that repeats the line “and you shall say Passover sacrifice” that beautifully focuses on the tension created between the action and the memory – between the Passover sacrifice and the pronunciation of it as a phrase, as words, and as a poem. Instead of directly observing the Passover sacrifice, our efforts focus on the memory of it through singing about it, remembering it and celebrating the memory. We create a ritual that keeps the essence of the night of the Exodus from Egypt but frames it in the private, local, domestic, and meaningful present experience.

Listen to the liturgical poem here.

The secret gardens of the mind

Years ago, when I was still new in New York and religiously read the hidden messages of fortune cookies, I stumbled across a bit of pseudo oriental wisdom that stuck hard with me. “Learn” said the secret sage of fortune cookies “to cultivate you solitude as if it was a secret garden”. The word garden itself is enough to fill me with yearning and the thought of a secret garden hiding in the solitude of  my mind has immediately ignited my imagination, sending  it back across time into the pleasure domes and hidden gardens built and planted by the wisest of all men, king Solomon, or Koheleth son of David as he is referred to in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Vanity of vanities, saith Koheleth; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Few texts, few words, have stirred my as did the immortal, bitter-sweet words of the sobered old king. I have identified with them, internalized them as if they were my own – way before I had a chance to indulge in every pleasure, master every wisdom, grow old or celebrated my coronation. Koheleth, while on the path leading to the inevitable grand disillusionment, made a point of maximizing:

I said in my heart: 'Come now, I will try thee with mirth, and enjoy pleasure (...) I searched in my heart how to pamper my flesh with wine, and, my heart conducting itself with wisdom, how yet to lay hold on folly, till I might see which it was best for the sons of men that they should do under the heaven the few days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit; I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the wood springing up with trees; I acquired men-servants and maid-servants, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in Jerusalem; I gathered me also silver and gold, and treasure such as kings and the provinces have as their own; I got me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, women very many (...) I spoke with my own heart, saying: 'Lo, I have gotten great wisdom, more also than all that were before me over Jerusalem'; yea, my heart hath had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly (...)

The love of wisdom is one of those delights: it is intertwined with the love of beauty, the lust for power and the passion for riches. It is laced with fine wine, perfumed with the fragrance of jasmine and myrrh, accompanied by the sweet voices of men-singers and women-singers. Kohelet plants his secret garden, nourished by pools of fresh water and shadowed by beautiful fruit bearing trees. Wisdom, madness and folly frolic in this garden like playful nymphs – what a perfect setting for disillusionment, for sobriety, for declaring that all is indeed vanity.

I take my fortune cookies seriously. I did learn to cultivate the solitude of my mind and marvel in its hidden delights as if it was a secret garden: my obsession with oriental rugs, my love of vintage port, my appreciation of modern art and of antique hammered copper, the structure of my sentences, my intimacy with the Hebrew of the Bible and rabbinic literature – handsome, fruit bearing trees and hidden flower beds, wet with dew and nourished by pools of fresh water.

8: And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9: And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 10: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11: The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12: And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13: And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14: And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15: And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

How many times have I read this text? Who knows! I’ve studied it, taught it and alluded to it so frequently that I often feel an absurd sense of ownership over it – which, by the way, is not an uncommon thing, as the history of religion proves. And yet, after all these years, I never quite gotten used to it, I cannot take it for granted. There is such a searing quality to the language, to the inner dynamics, to the intensity of description – the text itself resembles the rough gems and nuggets of good gold that are mentioned in it.

What I find most striking is the tension, the near-contradiction, between the rawness of its style and its structural perfection – a tension which resonates the inner conflict of the text: the tension between reality and myth, between place and placelessness.

On one hand the description is very real, concrete, geographic: we are given the co-ordinates of an imaginary map of the ancient world, names of famous rivers are dropped and coveted materials are mentioned as if in passing, creating a halo of beauty and richness around its nine dense verses. But on the other hand it is totally poetic, absolutely dreamlike, positively unreal.

The river flowing from Eden is a key metaphor for this duality: It is the father of all rivers, yet it does not have a name. The four rivers which stem from this mythological fountainhead are the best known rivers of the ancient world, surrounding the known universe and defining its boundaries. The Hiddekel and the Euphrates, the two large rivers of Mesopotamia, are still known by their ancient names. Pishon is argued to be the Nile and Gihon a large river in north-western Persia. The specific “realness” of the rivers is emphasized by more concrete geographic information: Assyria, Havila and Kush, all real and well known, are mentioned together with a short list of the natural treasures that can be found in them. Those rivers, all steming from an unknown source, symbolically expand the boundaries of Eden, stretching them to the very ends of Terra Cognita. This movement of water pushes the place vs. placelessness paradox to an extreme: Eden is at the same time nowhere and everywhere, all and nothing.

Another striking tension in the text is the safety vs. danger equation. The Hebrew word Gan (garden) comes from the stem G.N. N. which signifies protection or safety. The garden is by definition a protected place, a safe haven. The intimacy of the garden stands in sharp contrast to the vastness and “objectiveness” of its geographic boundaries. The text places the garden in an eye of a metaphoric hurricane, its flimsy existence made even more human, more vulnerable by the harshness of the elements with which it’s surrounded. Danger lurks not only outside the garden but also within. The lively and sensuous description of the eye-pleasing trees and their tasty fruits, of the living water of the river and the infant like nakedness of the human creatures for whom it was planted – all these just highlight the chilling effect of the matter-of-factish statement: thou shalt surely die, of the clear and immediate danger personified by the two mysterious trees which stand in its midst, two loaded pistols bound to shoot at the third act, as pistols in all good drama tend to do.