In My Mother's Kitchen: Challah
Although we may not have kept kosher, my family did go to synagogue and observe a number of Jewish rituals in our house when I was growing up. In particular, on Friday nights we nearly always did kiddush over the wine followed by hamotzi over the bread, with the lighting of the Sabbath candles later. The wine was usually something red, in a small kiddush cup from my father's bar mitzvah. The bread was typically home made by my mother. She varied through a few different kinds of bread, but the best was always her challah.
As I've noted in this series, my mother was and is a good cook, but as a baker of bread she is at a level far beyond anyone else I've met. In particular, she makes the best challah I've ever had in my life, and I've had more than a few good ones from other people. One advantage of her not working full time for most of my childhood was that the challah was often fresh from the oven on Friday night, which of course it the optimal way to eat challah. It doesn't hurt to have a house that smells like freshly baked bread, either. Butter was more or less an unneeded extra on my mother's fresh challah. This was also true for honey when she made the round challah for Rosh Hashanah - nice to have, but totally unnecessary.
Oddly, although I've baked bread on many occasions, I've never actually tried to make challah myself. This is clearly a lack I will have to address. I don't actually seem to have my mother's recipe anywhere in my cookbook. I do have my sister's go to challah recipe, which she made for my supper club when she helped host. It is superb, but not as good as my mother's.
In addition to the usual start of Sabbath rituals, we did Havdalah at home for many years, and of course observed the major holidays at home. We went to our main synagogue (B'nai Israel) one a weekend a month. This was because my synagogue didn't have a full-time rabbi. Very early in our time in North Dakota the then full-time rabbi from Fargo would come down once a month, and after he moved on to another congregation we had a student rabbi from the rabbinical school in Cincinnati once a month. Since student rabbis would graduate after a year or two, we got to see a lot of different rabbinical styles over the years, and most of the members of my peer group were the "first" bar mitzvah for their respective rabbis.
In addition to services, we also had Wednesday night Hebrew school, which for most of the years I went was taught by Jimmy & Orna, an Israeli couple who were studying at the University of North Dakota. UND and the Grand Forks Air Force Base were steady suppliers of new members of the congregation, albeit usually short-time ones who'd move on after a few years. My sister and I and a few other kids from our synagogue drove down to Fargo every Sunday for Sunday school. This was because that congregation, Temple Beth El, was much larger and had correspondingly more kids and a more sophisticated Sunday school. We went there through Confirmation in tenth grade. That congregation also went to student rabbis for most of my childhoods, so the net result is that I've seen a couple of dozen different student rabbis practice their way through a service over the years.
After our bar/bat mitzvahs, my sister and I also went to B'nai Pizza, which was took the relatively small number of post bar/bat mitzvah kids from our main synagogue and we watched and discussed Jewish-themed movies and discussed them with the student rabbi, with pizza. I remember very few of the movies this far out, but I had fun.
As I've noted in this series, my mother was and is a good cook, but as a baker of bread she is at a level far beyond anyone else I've met. In particular, she makes the best challah I've ever had in my life, and I've had more than a few good ones from other people. One advantage of her not working full time for most of my childhood was that the challah was often fresh from the oven on Friday night, which of course it the optimal way to eat challah. It doesn't hurt to have a house that smells like freshly baked bread, either. Butter was more or less an unneeded extra on my mother's fresh challah. This was also true for honey when she made the round challah for Rosh Hashanah - nice to have, but totally unnecessary.
Oddly, although I've baked bread on many occasions, I've never actually tried to make challah myself. This is clearly a lack I will have to address. I don't actually seem to have my mother's recipe anywhere in my cookbook. I do have my sister's go to challah recipe, which she made for my supper club when she helped host. It is superb, but not as good as my mother's.
In addition to the usual start of Sabbath rituals, we did Havdalah at home for many years, and of course observed the major holidays at home. We went to our main synagogue (B'nai Israel) one a weekend a month. This was because my synagogue didn't have a full-time rabbi. Very early in our time in North Dakota the then full-time rabbi from Fargo would come down once a month, and after he moved on to another congregation we had a student rabbi from the rabbinical school in Cincinnati once a month. Since student rabbis would graduate after a year or two, we got to see a lot of different rabbinical styles over the years, and most of the members of my peer group were the "first" bar mitzvah for their respective rabbis.
In addition to services, we also had Wednesday night Hebrew school, which for most of the years I went was taught by Jimmy & Orna, an Israeli couple who were studying at the University of North Dakota. UND and the Grand Forks Air Force Base were steady suppliers of new members of the congregation, albeit usually short-time ones who'd move on after a few years. My sister and I and a few other kids from our synagogue drove down to Fargo every Sunday for Sunday school. This was because that congregation, Temple Beth El, was much larger and had correspondingly more kids and a more sophisticated Sunday school. We went there through Confirmation in tenth grade. That congregation also went to student rabbis for most of my childhoods, so the net result is that I've seen a couple of dozen different student rabbis practice their way through a service over the years.
After our bar/bat mitzvahs, my sister and I also went to B'nai Pizza, which was took the relatively small number of post bar/bat mitzvah kids from our main synagogue and we watched and discussed Jewish-themed movies and discussed them with the student rabbi, with pizza. I remember very few of the movies this far out, but I had fun.