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Jewish Soups
-- also see:
Jewish Soups Recipes
Soup for
the Soul
A simple
definition of soup is:
"Soup is a
food that is made by combining ingredients,
such as meat and vegetables with stock,
juice, water or another liquid. Hot soups
are additionally characterized by boiling
solid ingredients in liquids until the
flavor is extracted,
forming a broth.
Traditionally, soups are classified into two
broad groups: clear soups and thick soups.
The established French classifications of
clear soups are bouillon and consommé. Thick
soups are classified depending upon the type
of thickening agent used: purées are
vegetable soups thickened with starch;
bisques are made from puréed shellfish or
vegetables thickened with cream; cream soups
may be thickened with béchamel sauce; and
veloutés are thickened with eggs, butter and
cream. Other ingredients commonly used to
thicken soups and broths include rice, flour
and grains."
And that is all. That definition doesn't
really 'fill you up,' does it? It doesn't
say anything about the deeper meaning of
soup: it leaves us unsatiated and empty,
wanting much more. For we know in our hearts
that soup is a most special, almost
primordial food.
Soup has been a human mainstay from time
immemorial. One of the earliest records of
soup date from 6000 B.C.E. The great sage
and physician Maimonides in the 12th century
wrote about the beneficial medicinal
properties of chicken soup, in his medical
treatise "On the Cause of Symptoms." For
centuries, chicken soup--either with
kneidlach, the traditional Jewish dumpling
made from ground matzah (matzah meal),
schmaltz (chicken fat), oil and eggs, or
kreplach, that luscious Jewish dumpling
filled with ground meat or potato--has been
a Jewish staple at the Shabbat and holiday
table for centuries. But no matter what kind
of soup it be--whether chicken, fish, or a
hearty vegetable soup--soup is symbolic of
home, hearth, warmth and nurturing.
How can we describe what soup really means
for us? Well, let's take, for example, what
we as parents want to say to our children
about life. Don't we want the best for them?
We want them to be healthy and happy; we
want to nurture them so that they may grow
into responsible, good, moral adults who
have eternal values.
Just as soup 'fills us full' with
nourishment and warmth, we want our children
to lead meaningful, fulfilling lives. And
this is what soup really is--a very special
food. It evokes long-lasting values and deep
relationships. |
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It played a central role in the Torah story
of the two brothers, Yaakov and Esav, as "nezid
adashim" (Genesis 25:34)- the famous lentil
stew-which Yitzchak's son Yaakov cooked when
his brother Esav was returning from his
wild, idolatrous and idle ways in the
fields, and from his animal hunting.
Esav had no interest in eternal values and
deep relationships--only in immediate
physical gratification--and so he sold his
Birthright to Yaakov for that bowl of soup
and just chugged it down, as it says in the
Torah, in Genesis 25:30, "hal'iteni na min
ha-adom ha-adom hazeh"-or, 'pour this
red-red thing down [my throat]!' The family
Birthright, which meant
responsibility, morality and mature
leadership--in essence, the family's
future--didn't matter; only the immediate
satisfying of his hunger. Like an animal who
can't wait until next week to eat, but needs
to constantly be satisfying its physical
needs in the here and now, Esav
self-indulged and lived in the moment.
The great Torah Commentator, Rashi, says
that Esav's grandfather Avraham died on that
day, so that he should not see his grandson
veer off the path of righteousness, into
evil ways.
In today's modern world, we are obsessed
with immediate gratification, with 'speed.'
Everything needs to be fast: computers need
to be ever-faster, accessing and
disseminating information at the speed of
light. Cars are faster. Work is faster: you
have to get those projects out FAST, because
Time is Money. Life is speeding by us: even
food is faster!
The proliferation of fast food eateries
attest to this. If you don't keep kosher,
you could go to Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger
King, Arby's, Chapotle, Subway (-but there
now are kosher Subways in several cities)
and 'grab' a meal on the run. And the
obsession with 'fast' has migrated into the
kitchen: people now have in their homes the
most modern, electronic kitchens, with
appliances to do everything for them. Many
of us have in our kitchens refrigerators,
electric or gas stoves and self-cleaning
ovens. But many more also have microwave
ovens which cook foods in mere minutes, and
electric dishwashers, electric food
processors, coffee makers, mixers, toaster
ovens, rice cookers and blenders, to make
food preparations ever faster--and some also
have electric coffee grinders, slow cookers,
deep fryers, freezers, steamers, popcorn
poppers--right down to electric can openers
and electric apple and potato peelers!
Now, let's think back a few years. What did
our great-grandmother have in her kitchen?
Probably just a wood burning or coal stove,
an ice box and an iron skillet and pot or
two for fleishig and a second one for
milchigs. But what a difference! Whereas out
of our modern-day all-electronic
twenty-first century kitchens comes a
microwave pizza, our great-grandmother's
kitchen, with its sparsity and bare
essentials, produced nourishing, wholesome
foods, wonderful, multi-course nurturing
meals, from homemade breads and morning
pancakes to dinners of roasted meats and
chickens, vegetable sides and savory soups.
We are missing something today, in our
modern fast world. We are missing the warm,
nurturing connection of our roots, of our
great-grandmother's kitchen, to guide us
through life.
Soup harks back to this relationship. The
relationship of a mother and child; a
mother, giving sustenance to her newborn
child by nursing him or her with warm
mother's milk. This food called "soup,"
evokes deep, internal feelings, of love,
focused attention, and security. It reminds
us of the first physical relationship we
have after being born on Earth and, because
we were created in the spiritual image of
G-d as written in the Torah ("b'tzelem
Elokim"), this food is a kind of 'bridge'
between the physical and spiritual worlds.
Soup is a spiritual, as well as physical
phenomenon, because it warms our hearts and
reminds us from whence we came.
Just as bread is
considered the "staff of life,"
soup connects
us with our relationship with G-d. |
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