More Cool Rabbis

I've been receiving rabbinical wisdom from all quarters lately. This is from my old friend Larry in New York:

"Song is one of the degrees of enlightenment; prayer occupies a lower rung on the same continuum. When you are on the rung of prayer and have not yet reached that of song, you need to exert yourself greatly to begin to sing. Then you will begin to see with spiritual vision and become enflamed with the passion for God."
-- Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno

And here's another that Annie Dillard quoted in For the Time Being:

"When I see a bundle of straw lying in the street, it seems to me a sign of the presence of God, that it lies there lengthwise, and not crosswise."

And here's a response I got from God:

"Crosswise, lengthwise, what's the difference? What do they want from me, these nudniks?"

Another Babka Bites the Dust

It's not that I miss the old culture all that much -- let a hundred trendy restaurants invade the Lower East Side, I say, who needs the knishes and the dry goods stores? It's become such a cliche to lament the passing of some commercial semi-institution from bygone generations and to rail at the uncultured rich young vampires who move in. Yes, populations change, new immigrants replace the old, and demographic patterns shift. Otherwise New York [substitute the name of your own place] would become an ethnological museum.

What moves me about this very short New York Times article is not the disappearance of an old bakery or even of my parents' and grandparents' historical environment -- in which they were mostly miserable -- but the emotions of the reporter, which come through so strongly through his journalistic prose. It's not every day that a Times writer gets to tell the world how overjoyed his family was when their father brought home a cake after a day's work at the hosiery shop. The telling is better than the cake.

And let's face it, though I've never been to Gertel's, I'm one of those "grandchildren…of striving sewing machine operators." On both sides.

Am I Really a Cohen?

One of the Kohanim, that is, the sons of Aaron, the priests of ancient Israel.

Informal family genealogy says I am, but Cohen has been our surname for only two generations. Before that, on the paternal side, it was a long Polish name, and a few generations before that, we didn’t have surnames at all. But Ha-Kohane, “the Cohen,” was an honorific applied to my ancestors in their communities, which is why my grandfather took the name Cohen when he got to Ellis Island early in the 20th century.

Now I can find out by mailing a sample of DNA from my cheek to a company called Family Tree DNA, which is supposedly the most reputable of the many companies doing DNA testing for genealogical purposes. They’re the ones who are doing the DNA testing for National Geographic’s massive Genographic Project, which hopes to map how our prehistoric ancestors migrated out of Africa and across the world.

At Family Tree you can also get tested for Native American ancestry, African ancestry, and more. You can find out the time span to the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) between you and another individual (maybe you and your girl/boyfriend are cousins). They have Y-DNA tests for tracing your male line, and mito-DNA tests for tracing your female line.

Most Kohanim share a set of markers on the Y chronomosome called the Cohen modal haplotype, which originated 3,000 years ago. The same markers are sometimes found in Italians (yo, Tony!), possibly because of the presence of many Jewish slaves in ancient Rome; and in an African tribe called the Lemba, who have traditionally claimed to be one of the lost tribes of Israel and are now supported in that claim.

Supposedly something more than half of men who get the test get a positive result. I should get the results in a few weeks.

So what happens if I find out I’m a Cohen? Well, there are taboos associated with the status, such as not being allowed to touch the bodies of the dead, but I’ll cheerfully ignore them as vestiges of the primitive past. The rule about not having disheveled hair is the one that would really affect me personally. Also, only the kohanim were allowed to bless the congregation using the special salute -- hands uplifted, fingers separated into pairs -- that some Hollywood wise guy adapted for the Vulcan salute on STAR TREK.

The main function of kohanim in orthodox Judaism today is to read the first passage of the aliyah, the Torah portion, at Sabbath services.

By definition the test will also tell me whether my kids are kohanim, which would be nice. Mostly, I’ll just be a little smug. And if I’m not, I’ll find some way to be smug about something else.

Live long and prosper, y'all!

Lamb, Okra, and Honesty

Where can you find a good recipe for southern-style lamb stew with okra? That's right -- you guessed it -- on the blog of Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh, "Musings of a Jewish Soul." He's thinking of instituting a class wherein he cooks a dish related to the Torah readng portion for each particular sabbath. This week's portion, or parsha, is about Jacob tending Laban's sheep for twice seven years in order to win Rachel's hand in marriage.

Rabbi Karsh got the recipe from a southern cooking website.

And while you're savoring the aroma and flavor of that delicious stew, how about scrolling down to his previous post, which is about necessary lies and their consequences. Here's an excerpt:

we cannot
lie
without consequence
even
when it was
the right thing
to do.

this is not
just true about lying
the same is true
with cruelty
humiliation
miserliness
and so many other
tools of tough love

they all have their
place
and we always
suffer
for their use

You'll have food for your mind and soul then, too.