Lot and his wife were fleeing Sdom. Hashem told them not to look back to see the destruction of Sdom. But Lot’s wife look back and turned into a pillar of salt.
We thought salty pretzels, you know, the sort that have the large salt crystals stuck to them, big ones that you can actually see, would be a good reminder of this story. If you don’t like pretzels, you could use potato crisps. Or serve baked potato wedges with a mound of salt next to them for dipping in.
The parsha ends with the very famous story of the binding of Yitzchak. This is where Avraham is told by Hashem to take his beloved son Yitzchak up to Har HaMoriah and offer him up as a sacrifice. In the end Hashem provides a ram to be slaughtered, and Avraham and Yitzchak come back down from the mountain and return home.
The term “Akeidat Yitzchak” is often translated as “the sacrifice of Isaac.” However, this is not a accurate translation. A more precise translation would be “the binding of Isaac.” The term ‘Akeidah’ refers tying a persons arms and legs behind them, so they cannot move.
Serve roast lamb shoulder, or lamb chops
And of course, there always needs to be a way to incorporate lollies or candy into the food preparation. So this week one of the kids came up with the idea that we could use liquorice straps to represent the straps that Avraham used to bind Yitzchak’s arms and legs at the time of the Akeidah. This child also eagerly added that if you couldn’t get liquorice, you could use jelly (ie gummy) snakes for the same purpose (as he prefers them!!!).
I take this opportunity to give thanks to Ribbono Shel Olam (Master of the Universe) for putting this idea in my head and for giving me enough friendly people around me to encourage me to undertake this project. I ask Hashem that He show kindness to me and to anyone who reads this by removing any errors that I may have in my understanding of the material that I present. What I present is just a few ideas that I have found to make our Shabbat preparations, and in the end our Shabbat Table, more meaningful.
The idea of this blog is to come up with some interesting recipe IDEAS based on the weekly parsha. Note that I said “ideas”. I’m no great chef, but I do enjoy learning Torah and of course like most people I also enjoy eating, so I thought it might be a great opportunity to combine the two. I have prepared many of the recipe suggestions that follow with my children over the last decade, and I found it a terrific way to engage them in both learning about the parsha and participating in the Shabbat meals.
Let me just add that while I do enjoy reading Torah articles and listening to shiurim, I am just a regular Mum, not a Rabbi or Rebbetsin or anything like that. If there are any mistakes please let me know so that they can be corrected.
Most of the material here comes from books I have read or shiurim I have heard. I also often do quick web searches to lead me to original source materials. Where possible, I will include references in my blog posts.
I started writing a book on this topic many years ago, but raising a family got in the way. More recently friends have encouraged me to write my “book” as a blog. I am aware that some other people out there also write regular blogs or articles about food and the parsha, but all with a different perspective to this blog.
Please feel free to add your thoughts or actual recipes that you know work well in the comments section.
Hashem tells Avram to go from his father’s house to the place He will show him. Avram does so at the age of 75, with his extended family, including his nephew, Lot. But almost as soon as he gets there, there is a famine in the land, and he is forced to go down to Egypt to find food. Avram hides his wife Sarai in a box to protect her from the Egyptians, but she is found and taken by the Egyptians. They are punished with leprosy for this. Lot becomes rich because of Avram, but then the two go separate ways because their shepherds quarrel. Avram goes to Hevron, and Hashem promises to give the entire land of Canaan to him and his descendants. There is a war of the four kings against the five kings. Hashem makes the Brit Bein HaBetarim with Avram, where he is told to cut animals, but not birds, and let fire pass through them. Avram and Sarai have had no children for the 10 years that they have been in Canaan, so Avram married Hagar. Yishmael is born. Hashem tells Avram to circumcise himself and all the members of his household, which he does. Hashem changes Avram’s name to Avraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah. Hashem promises Avraham that Yizchak will be born.
In Lech Lecha, Avram has to do lots of traveling. From Haran to Caanan, down to Egypt and back again, and all around Eretz Yisrael in order to show that he owns it.
It could be fun to have specific travel food for nosh on Shabbat afternoon. Think trail mix, dried apricots, muesli bars, and so on.
Another interpretation could be to incorporate modern Israeli food into the menu, such as falafel or shwarma with humus, pita. Definitely an Israeli salad of tomato, cucumber, capsicum and green onions, with a dressing of garlic, mint, parsley, lemon juice salt and pepper. Or shashuka made by baking eggs in a sauce of tinned tomatoes, capsicum, onions and spices.
Avram went down to Egypt because of the famine in Eretz Yisrael. Sarai is taken away by the Egyptians and they and their houses are punished with tzaarat, leprosy.
Make gingerbread men and a gingerbread house. Decorate them with glace cherries to represent the boils of leprosy. Alternatively you could make 9 different gingerbread men and set them up as the four kings and the five kings.
In the Brit Bein Habetarim, the “Covenant Between the Parts”, Avram was told to take three calves, three goats three rams, a pigeon and a dove. Each animal is split in half, but the birds, which represent the Jewish people, are left whole. After dark, a fire passes through the animals and birds.
If you can find a kosher dove and pigeon, that would be terrific, but I think it is probably unlikely. So you could roast, or even better, barbeque two small chickens, or two spatchcock, to serve for Friday Night dinner.
When Hashem promises Avraham that he will have many children, he says that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars, if they are meritorious and, if not, they will still be as numerous as the grains of sand in the world. In fact there is a wonderfully exciting (especially for children) explanation which says that Hashem actually took Avraham into outer space in order to see the stars. This is because it says that Hashem took Avraham outside to see the stars, and that it only became dark only AFTER Avraham saw the stars. The idea is that he was taken into outer space so that he could see ALL of the stars whilst day was still day.
Okay so several options here. Make the “crumble” part of an apple crumble, and serve is with sliced star fruit. Or candy stars if you can find them. I think a lot of kids would also find it VERY exciting to make a spaceship cake.
This week’s Parsha tells the famous story of Noach and the Ark. Hashem tells Noach to build the Ark. He does, for 120 years. He is told to take two of each animal, and seven pairs of each kosher animal, into the ark, to re-inhabit the world after the flood. Then the rains come. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights. The waters take a full year to recede. Noach and his family leave the ark and he plants a vineyard.
The parsha finishes in shvi’i with the story of Migdal Bavel, the Tower of Bavel. The generation of the dispersion (dor haflaga) tries to rebel against Hashem by building an enormous tower. Hashem punishes them by mixing up their languages and scattering them all over the world.
There are some very obvious food choices here. Any cake can be decorated to look like Noach’s Ark. Think chocolate bars “glued” on with icing to look like the gopher wood beams. Animal biscuits coming on two by two, with seven by seven for the kosher animals.
You can see in the photo our fabulous home-made Noah’s Ark cake. Note the three levels, (animals should only be on middle level, but they didn’t fit!) Fish in the water.
It’s just a simple chocolate cake cut in three and glued together with store bought chocolate spread. That represents the “tar” with which Noach covered the Ark from inside and out.The animals are a simple packet of animal biscuits. On the top is a lollipop to represent the window/light source at the top of the Ark. The sea is made of lemon jelly with some blue food colouring added to make it a blue-green sea colour. Inside there are gummy fish to find. Yum! It looks very “home made” and that’s because it is! All the kids helped. We had fun. It does not matter that it does not look perfect. What does matter is that it helps us have a focus that can lead to discussing the Torah.
Other ideas you could use for the basic story include: something to represent the rainbow, like a very colourful salad, a rainbow cake, or, more simply, “fairy bread sprinkles” on challah. Or you could do a whole lot of small square cakes on top of each other represent the tower.
אמר רב חנא בר ביזנא אמר ליה אליעזר לשם רבא כתיב למשפחותיהם יצאו מן התיבה אתון היכן הויתון א”ל צער גדול היה לנו בתיבה בריה שדרכה להאכילה ביום האכלנוה ביום שדרכה להאכילה בלילה האכלנוה בלילה האי זקיתא לא הוה ידע אבא מה אכלה יומא חד הוה יתיב וקא פאלי רמונא נפל תולעתא מינה אכלה מיכן ואילך הוה גביל לה חיזרא כי מתלע אכלה
Rav Ḥana bar Bizna says: Eliezer, servant of Abraham, said to Shem the Great, son of Noah: It is written: “After their kinds, they emerged from the ark,” indicating that the different types of animals were not intermingled while in the ark. Where were you and what did you do to care for them while they were in the ark? Shem said to him: We experienced great suffering in the ark caring for the animals. Where there was a creature that one typically feeds during the day, we fed it during the day, and where there was a creature that one typically feeds at night, we fed it at night. With regard to that Zikis, my father did not know what it eats. One day, my father was sitting and peeling a pomegranate. A worm fell from it and the Zikis ate it. From that point forward my father would knead bran with water, and when it became overrun with worms, the Zikis would eat it. (Gemara Sanhedrin 108B)
The Gemara in Sanhedrin 108B explains that it was Noach’s job whilst on the Ark to feed all of the animals. Some needed food in the day, and some at night. The whole year that Noach was in the Ark, he did not get one night where he could have a full sleep.
There was an animal called the Zikis and Noach did not know what to feed it. Then one day he cut open a pomegranate and a worm crawled out. The Zikis ate the worm. From then on, Noach was able to feed it worms.
Cut a pomegranate in half and serve with gummy worms. Remember the whole point is just to use the
food to get people to talk about the Parsha. It is a good opportunity to talk about the need to check fruits and vegetables for worms as we are not allowed to eat these creatures.