Food for the soul – and body

As we have reached the period of the year when culinary thoughts are directed to yom tov specialities, I thought it important to remind ourselves that Shabbat and its specialities should also not be forgotten.

Many years ago I was approached by a person with an unusual request. Cholent was not in their family tradition but an invitee family due to come for lunch on an approaching Shabbat had indicated that they were looking forward to trying the cholent that they anticipated would be part of the lunch menu. How should one go about ensuring they were not disappointed?

My first reaction was to lightheartedly question the questioner’s Jewishness. After all we are told in one of the classic Zemirot for Shabbat (hymns sung at the Shabbat table), that “one should check one who does not eat chamin (hot food, equalling cholent, though consuming any hot food or beverage is indicative of following rabbinic tradition) to see if they are heretical”. My second comment was to express disbelief that a Jewish family could survive without cholent (although I accept that too much cholent may not be particularly conducive to good health). The response that some consider it peasant food rather than one associated with respectability was an interesting reflection on cultural difference between those in our community of recent immigrant extraction and those who see themselves in a different, more established light.

Anyway the day was saved by reference to a cooking guide (interested readers might try the multitude of Jewish cook books out there or refer to Google) but a number of interesting issues are worthy of exploration.

Why consider as a heretic one who does not consume chamin? Cholent (perhaps etymologically derived from the French words “chaud – hot” and “lent – slow”) involves by definition a food largely cooked prior to Shabbat and then kept hot as it continues to simmer in a manner permissible on the Shabbat itself while no prohibited cooking action is actually done on Shabbat.

Cooking is actually one of the 39 types of prohibited work identified by the rabbis as the basis of Shabbat laws. However it is also the subject of a specific Torah verse: “You shall not burn any fire in all your habitations on the Sabbath day” (Shemot 35:3). Over a millennium ago this fact led to a dispute between rabbinic Judaism and sects such as the Karaites, who only followed the written law. The latter banned any form of fire and heat from their homes on the Shabbat, while rabbinic Judaism allowed fire for purposes of heat and light as long as it was kindled before Shabbat and no action was taken on Shabbat by a Jew in regard to it. (That latter fact of the principle applying specifically to a Jewish action breaching Shabbat restrictions while allowing heat and light within premises, is the source of the concept known as a “Shabbes goy” – allowing a friendly gentile, perhaps one employed by communities, to assist with light or heat on occasions of necessity.) Accordingly the question of eating of chamin or cholent became a test of whether one was a rabbinite (read, in today’s terms, Orthodox) Jew or a heretic who did not follow rabbinic teaching. (For the record, Karaites in the Crimea survived the Holocaust; there are to this day small Karaite communities in Jerusalem and Ramle.)

Basically cholent involves a stew of beans, barley and potatoes and perhaps meat prepared on Friday and left on the stove till required. However, as meat was a luxury in the shtetl, the latter often just took the form of a few bones perhaps smoked for preservation purposes in the pre-refrigeration age. An alternative was “kugel” – basically a mixture of flour and flavouring or schmaltz, stuffed into a bit of poultry skin such as a chicken, duck or turkey neck (a “helzel”) – effectively, like so many of what today are considered delicacies, a cheap substitute for meat.

Regional variants also abound. I once saw a book with 100 recipes for cholent; differences ranged from inclusion of chocolate (in Mexico) to paprika (in Hungary). Perhaps an Australian version would incorporate vegemite.

While today we generally make our cholent at home, back in the shtetl (where an eruv allowed carriage through the street) individually marked pots full of the chosen ingredients were taken to the baker and placed in his oven after the baking of challot for Shabbat was completed. The heavy baker’s oven with stone walls maintained its heat for the 24 hours from midday Friday to midday Saturday when the cholent pots were collected by their owners.

Interestingly once while I was perusing the catalogue of a Judaica auction I noticed a fascinating item: a ticket issued in the Litzmannstadt ghetto to allow collection of a cholent pot from the public bakery where it was obviously left for cooking.

But while on the topic, I once opened an Italian coffee table cookbook and happened upon a recipe for “smoked beans and bones”. It was identical to a recipe for cholent – except that the meat component involved smoked bacon bones.

Yet more interesting than the recipe itself was the information that followed. Apparently this dish was traditional in the Piedmont region, where it was placed on the stove on Saturday nights and (in a religious Catholic community that avoided cooking on their day of rest) was ready for the family lunch when they returned from Mass on Sunday. Regarding which the late Rabbi Ronald Lubofsky commented that the gates of the ghetto of Rome were indeed more porous than we may otherwise have believed.

To conclude – why cholent on Shabbat but not yom tov? Because other than on Yom Kippur which has laws similar to those of Shabbat, cooking is permitted on yom tov unless of course it coincides with Shabbat – not the case in the coming weeks. The only proviso in that regard is that the flame you use must be lit prior to yom tov or you take your flame from a pre-existing flame as, for example is done when lighting candles on second night of yom tov.

Shabbat shalom,
Yossi

Yossi Aron OAM is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.