Rosh Hashana, Apple Cake and Getting Fat

The Jewish calendar reveals that it's almost Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the New Year, and despite our religion's lack of superstition, when our future hangs in the balance--literally, with our good deeds weighed by God against our bad--we bring on the symbolism.

With food.

Since early Jewish commentaries (Gemara tractate K'risos 6a) where "Abaye said '...at the beginning of each year, each person should accustom himself to eat gourds (squash), fenugreek (or sesame seeds or black-eyed peas), leeks, beets and dates...'," families have adopted the custom to put these and four other foods on their tables, eaten ceremoniously, each with a request to God.  The others are pomegranate, a whole fish, and the most famous, apple, eaten dipped in honey.

The foods were chosen because their names relate to ideas for increase and sweetness for the coming year, and protection from harm.

The apple dipped in honey idea has led to holiday menus incorporating permutations of both, including apple cake and honey cake.  I usually serve a first-night menu that features honey in every dish.  Even the challah, the egg bread that's shaped as a braid the rest of the year, gets a new form--round in a circle, representing the circular nature of passages in time.

Since our college-freshman son was in third grade, we've made apple cake from a class cookbook of the kids' favorites.  It's easy and delicious, more like chunks of apple held together with sweet crumbles:

Max’s Grandma’s Apple Cake

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
3 cups peeled and sliced apples
½ cup vegetable/canola oil
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a bundt or springform pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Combine flour, sugar, soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Mix in oil, egg and apples. 

Pour into pan and bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Every culture has its culinarily-based traditions, and certainly Jews imbue their food with more than flavors and guilt. We use it to elevate ourselves above animals by a "ritual" washing and blessings, and we are commanded in the Torah to "eat, be satisfied, and thank the Lord your God for the good land he has given you."  But even beyond all that, Rosh Hashana food is far more than merely reminiscent of the holiday.

Jewish scholars have noted that the point isn't the foods themselves, but rather the humility and respect for God viewing them invokes in us.  Even if you don't like the symbolic foods, or you're allergic, you'd still put them on the table to focus our yearnings.  As the one cooking and planning, I'd guess that all the extra effort that goes into gathering all these symbols earns a bit of God's attention.

An article last week in the New York Times bears upon America's food traditions, connecting changes in family habits with the sharp rise in obesity between 1980 and 2000.  Imbuing food with symbolic powers and emotional connections, like Jews do on Rosh Hashana, isn't the culprit in humanity's higher BMIs--instead it's the eeeevil corporations who market bounteous food at low prices. And it's irresistible sloth-enticements like television and computers, robbing the young of fresh-air playtime. 

A current series of articles in The Lancet, chock-full of politically-correct messages, say that no culture has ever reversed its obesity trends--which "increases the urgency for evidence-creating policy action, with a priority on reduction of the supply-side drivers."  In other words, government must mandate less food availability, so people have to eat less and thus get thin. In a reversal of the war on hunger, Lancet pundits suggest a war on plenty.

In the Times article, health writer Jane Brody reminisces about the good-old days of her childhood, when, lacking nearby vending machines and fast-food outlets, she had to "walk or bike many blocks to buy an ice cream cone," no doubt through ten feet of snow. Kids "went out to run around and play until dark," TV was a week-end special event, and nightly home-cooked meals included no "convenience foods" other than canned fruits and vegetables.

OK, I can play that game too.  When I was a kid, yes, my family did have dinner together, and when I'd ask my mom "What's for dez?" (dessert), she'd usually answer, "canned fruit."  You know, the kind in that heavy sugar-syrup.  Because fruit was healthy.  I'd be disappointed, but sometimes she'd bring home a coffee cake, which we'd devour slathered in butter.

We consumed lots of beef. Mostly ground, the fattier kind, because it was cheaper than the lean.  An eating-out treat was buying a big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  So greasy I'd use half a roll of paper towels blotting it first. It came with mayonnaisy cole slaw.

We drank our milk from those quaint glass bottles the milkman would leave by our back door.  Whole milk, of course.  It was better for children than the only other type, skim.

I didn't come from a family that kept kosher, and every Sunday, my mom would fry up a huge pan of bacon.  Pig bacon, and sausages, served with eggs and pancakes with butter and syrup and glasses of whole milk.

Being a girl, "going out to play" meant confabs or poring over Seventeen Magazine with my best friends.  It meant card games and sometimes sidewalk roller skating.  Good thing there weren't so many skateboarders around. (Why aren't those guys at their computers??)  I had a lot of homework, hand-written from notes taken sitting for hours at the library. 

But we know, suggests Jane Brody and the Lancet crew, that fast foods, corn-syrup-laden store products, aggressive advertising and TV and computers caused the rise in US obesity. 

What, then, has caused its slight decline over the last decade?  What has caused increased obesity in developing countries without these innovations? 

I suspect that alarm over the "obesity epidemic" is exacerbating it.  The more experts insert themselves in our eating choices, by law, policy or admonition, the more we feel guilty about food.  And the stress makes us eat. Or convolute our diets so our bodies don't get what they really need.

Which brings me back to Rosh Hashana, when particular foods are not seen as cholesterol, calories, trans-fats, raw or slow.  Instead, they're sweetness, plenty, protection, and entreaty to God.  In a sense, it's a good thing to have an occasion when we see beyond the sensory pleasure of food to the long-term meaning of sustenance--to continue through another day, and another year.

To my Jewish friends, have a stevia-sweet 5772 of svelte and active health.  And to us all, may every taste remind us of heaven.

A Child's Unusual Response to 9-11

Recollections are unavoidable a decade after that frozen-in-memory day when our sense of security as a nation was forever ruined.  The surreal understanding that America was attacked on our own soil--using hijacked airplanes filled with commercial passengers--shocked observers of those horrific events.  No one will forget his place or state of mind when he found out.

Because we live on the west coast, I was the one who had to inform our children as I awakened them for school.  Most concerning was the impact on our youngest, then a third-grader.

I told him our nation was attacked in New York, and that many people had died.  He started to cry, and I cried with him, holding him tightly.

He immediately wanted to arise to fight and kill the aggressors.  He wanted to defend and protect our land.  Realizing he couldn't act on that desire, and feeling an urgent need to make a difference, he asked what he could do.

I suggested he take on a mitzvah, a Jewish observance.  The recognition was that God is involved in human affairs; just as He notes the evil in the attack on America, He acknowledges the good in the effort to draw closer.

My son had always worn a kipa, a head covering, every day to his public school.  And he was regularly teased for it.  Frequently, mean-spirited classmates would grab his rather large, colorfully-embroidered yarmulke off his head, toss it from one to the next or run away as my frustrated son attempted to retrieve it.  He was different, and while I'd always felt it was character-building to cope with one's individuality, he always felt picked-on.

But he was willing to accept even more teasing, if it would redress or somehow cosmically balance the enormous loss of that September day.  So, despite inconvenience, he began to wear tsit-tsit, a four-cornered undershirt with knotted cords.

Predictably, his classmates mercilessly jibed him for his "strings," which tended to pull out of their place under his shirt and tucked into his pants.  But he continued to wear them, throughout his years in elementary and middle school, when children were most cruel.

That was what a nine-year-old boy could do, as a response to 9-11.  Yes, we talked, cried, donated money, put a flag on our car and in front of our house.  But my son also took on something that caused him personal sacrifice, and that related to an idea larger than his own comprehension of or emotions concerning our nation's wound.

I wish I could say that at 19, he still wears tsit-tsit every day.  But I do see him earnestly grappling with his relationship to God, and attempting to consider others' feelings in everyday interactions.  We Americans can never reconcile ourselves to the loss of life ten years ago, nor to the loss of blithe confidence in the goodness of the world.  But I am still impressed that on that traumatic day, my sheltered son was willing to fight the bad guys who perpetrated the attack, and stand up to the mean guys who would belittle his appeal to God.

College Freshman: Time to 'Build Character' with Challenges?

Our son started college in LA last week, a stressful but exhilarating time, leaving home, arriving in a strange town, adjusting to an unfamiliar campus and four professorial personalities who determine hours of his mornings and most of his free time.  Perhaps the most useful part of college, I hold, is learning to negotiate and navigate for oneself.

Then our son found himself in a situation where he needed to find a new place to live.  This caused some conflict between us, which was informed, upon reflection, by an underlying belief on my part that it's good for college freshmen to suffer.

OK, that's a more extreme version of my belief.  Actually, I think a large part of the benefit of college is learning to deal with poverty and discomfort, not getting what the freshman wants all the time, not "having it all handed on a silver platter."  I think 19-year-olds learn from grumpy and slothful roommates about their own desires for order, and how to deal with difficult people.  I think they gain empathy and a work ethic by serving in any of the many minimum-wage jobs typically handled by kids their ages.

Needless to say, my son disagrees.  He thinks the inherent difficulties of being a freshman in an awesome but unknown place are challenge enough, and that if we're blessed to be able to afford it, he shouldn't have to work just to have the experience.  He considers his job to be working hard in college and getting excellent grades, to enable him to continue his education pursuant to his career goals.

Perhaps it's because I had to work in a minimum-wage job I hated from the age of 16 that I feel "the school of hard knocks" confers a worthwhile degree.  After awhile, I got a better job, and then a darn good one, but a stint at the bottom was valuable.  Or do I just like to think so?

In my mind, dorm life is helpful to the development of a college freshman. At the least, sharing a domicile with a diverse array of styles prepares for family life and forces roomies to forge some sort of relationships. Eating dorm food with others is a socializing step. But my son replies that having his own apartment will let him avoid the strife, noise and mess of an unpredictable cohort, and control of his own fridge and own kitchen is even more "adult."

In my heart-of-hearts, I hold there's a time of life when overcoming obstacles girds one to endure trials sure to occur later on, and part of me feels that by smoothing the way I'm denying him a gift.  On the other hand, do I wish I didn't have that horrid job when I was 16?  I resent to this day sitting inside a building tending 300 clients of an answering service (stuck sitting in front of two vertical boards of holes into which I plugged octopus-like cords) while my friends enjoyed all the fun of after-high-school activities.  But it taught me to be responsible for myself, and that I could do whatever it takes to survive.

I've tried to inculcate that in my children while sparing them from such resentment or burdens. What parent wouldn't give her children the carefree youth she craved?  What parent doesn't delight in fostering his child's success, as long as the child comes through and actually performs?

I'm still conflicted, though. As my son prepares to move into his apartment, intent on staying abreast in his studies and integrating into the LA Jewish community with classes and synagogue, am I depriving him of important learning opportunities, or encouraging his flourishing?  He insists, with ample gratitude and reassurance, that it's the latter, but I suppose it all remains to be seen.

All that Fast Food in Tonga is making them Fat

Writing a book about fat and dieting means when I see a related news story, I read it.  I'm a contrarian when it comes to the idea that an "obesity epidemic" in the US is the fault of eeeevil Big Food corporations who sneak extra sugars and fats into our food and force us to buy it.  My research convinces me that obesity isn't foisted on us, or grew because we're spoiled and lazy and victims of too many Cheetos flung in our faces. It's a much more complex phenomenon.

So I was amused to find a scolding Reuters piece distilling four Lancet articles about the state of the globe's obesity.  Oh, we Americans are fat.  Depending on who you believe, a quarter to a third of us are obese.  And the world, too, is going to health hell in a breadbasket, warn researchers from Columbia University, as Reuters reports: "Due to overeating and insufficient exercise, obesity is now a growing problem everywhere and experts are warning about its ripple effects on health and health care spending."

A quarter of Brits, Canadians and New Zealanders are obese. Mexico boasts 30%, Chile and Ireland 22%. Iceland and Luxembourg 20%.  Seventy-five percent of black women in South Africa are obese.

Then there's the South Seas island of Tonga, where ninety percent of the population is obese.  Must be all that fast food.  Must be the Cheetos and eeevil Big Food Corporations.  We in America are exerting pressure, and threatening legislation, to force food-makers to make products healthy.  Must Tongans more urgently do the same?

An interesting article in The Guardian explains Tongan's source of flab:  they like to eat fatty meat.  Roast pig is a great treat. Corned beef is an everyday staple. They eat the taro root and yams they grow there.  And they value heft as beauty.

I don't know obesity trends in Tonga, but are we to believe that its citizens have only recently fattened into obesity, just as we in America are almost daily alarmed by new studies warning that we're inflating and soon to bust?

Except that it's not true.  Women's obesity rates in America stopped swelling a decade ago.  While at significantly higher rates than 1980, when the stats climbed after little change since records were kept, obesity figures have even dropped slightly since the overall peak six years ago.

Also, US obesity rates have risen in tandem with an increases in life expectancy.  Correlation does not imply causation, but isn't that an interesting co-incidence?  Paul Campos, in The Obesity Myth, discusses the lack of evidence that rising body weights can be blamed for disease.  In fact, being overweight is associated with longest life and best health outcomes.

That's why the headline "Half of Americans to be Obese by 2030" makes me chuckle, though I'm sure it makes many well-meaning folk gag.  First off, we're not on a trajectory to balloon endlessly. And secondly, the admonition that our horrendous food options and choices are for sure the cause of obesity (along with the eeeevil computer that keeps us sedentary) is simplistic and unproven, and after all these years of mandatory health education, ineffective in changing the fat of the land.

Launching Youngest Child is Far More Complex than Rocket Science

Our youngest son just set off to start college in Southern California.  He was bubbling with anticipation of his independence and the exciting new frontiers awaiting him.  Meanwhile, his mother was incredulous that her baby could be launching into adult life (without her).

Not an uncommon scenario this season.  And not even novel for this son and this mother, as last fall he took off for a gap-year program in Israel.  That was certainly much farther away from home, and fraught with greater dangers.  But that environment was more structured and sheltered than the freedom offered in La-La Land.  And he was enveloped in the reassuring mission of studying our religion and its values.

And now, while he's discovering that LA drivers aren't nearly as polite as those in our "capital of nice" town, grateful for a GPS as he navigates the look-alike streets of the city where he (and his mom) were born, I'm here noticing that our home is eerily quiet and shockingly neat.  That the gallon of milk he didn't finish will soon start to stink in our fridge; that I don't have to replenish pounds of spaghetti and jars of red sauce and Costco boxes of Eggo waffles, the "all white" diet he prefers.

I have plenty to do, plenty to work on, and not enough time in the day, still. But very little of my time now goes to mom duties, like retrieving stray half-filled cups of juice from various parts of the house, discovering piles of damp towels behind the bathroom door, washing mounds of sweat sox and grubby jeans.  Why do I miss the mud-tracks of his tennis shoes on the stairs?

No more sharing my car with a kid who'd rather buy his face-wash with his girlfriend than with me anyway.  No more trying to write while my son plucks his ukulele and sings into his laptop creating another contribution to his YouTube channel.

Some would call it peace and quiet. Others would call it a giant hole in the whole, a loss not because I need him here, but because I like him here.

That's the issue for us weepy newly-empty nesters.  We enjoy our children; we appreciate their presence, even with all the sloppiness and noise, grousing and demands, because we engage with them and through that ongoing connection know they're thriving and healthy.  We want to watch their blossoming.

There's Skype, and cell phones and texting.  But nothing compares to knowing they're safe in their own beds under your own roof with you at night.  When their home address is yours.

Isn't this what we raised them for, ask well-meaning friends.  Well, no.  When you fall in love with a little baby that's miraculously emerged from your own body, you don't imagine him thrilled to leave you.  There's a difference between intellectually understanding that they grow up, and the emotional moment when it occurs.  "Someday" becomes today too soon, and you just don't feel any older.

Part of it for me is relinquishing the idea that I'm on the cusp, bursting onto an exciting future, and realizing that the next generation is competent and moving into the spotlight as we glide out of it.  When you've got energy and ideas and motivation, passing the mantle to some pipsqueak is uninviting.  Not that generations can't share the mantle--but for some reason media and its consumers are more enthralled with up-and-comers than had-their-turn oldsters.  We all recognize the culture's fascination with new and nubile, and nowadays kids have hundreds of "followers" intrigued by their internationally-visible online output before even setting foot out the door.

So bye-bye dear son, and so-long established roles and expectations.  The term "reinvent" isn't just for out-of-work victims of the economic downturn, it's for lots of us, at every turn. The security of tradition dictating just where to land no longer exists; both my son and I are finding our ways, he on an unfamiliar campus and me through the newly-cleared pathways of my home and my mind.

MoveOn.org Protests for Jobs Hits Home--and Makes No Sense

Today I drove smack through the middle of a 150-person protest in the heart of my little Seattle suburb.

On one side of the street, green-t-shirted protesters held signs demanding jobs, even imploring passing motorists to "honk for jobs."  As I drove by, I withheld my inclination to honk: yes, I'm for jobs!  Who isn't?  But MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood and the politically left Center for Community Change, stationed in the sleepy center of this 20,000-resident community today didn't want to strengthen employers' ability to hire more, by loosening regulation and taxes.  They demand that taxpayers either pay more or swell the deficit by creating government jobs.  Across the street, a dozen holding signs "Tea Party Patriot" counter-protested, with the retort, "cut spending to create jobs!"

The scene got noisy, with one side of the street shrieking at the other, punctuated by the blare of occasional car honks.  A handful of police stood by in amusement.  Moms with strollers and toddlers gawked and took cell phone photos.  A broadcast truck with three-story antenna parked in a supermaket lot.

I called my husband, fave radio host, to apprise him of this surprising event in our usually dull midst.  I was soon called by the local news radio station, KIRO, for an on-the-scene report.  Turns out this is the third such demonstration at that site, each a "day of action" the Center for Community Change stages as part of their "American Dream Movement."

Seemed a lame and pointless endeavor, something to keep college kids busy before the new semester begins.  This site was chosen as it's about a half-block from the suburban office of our local congressman.

Everyone's distressed at the stalled economy, and everyone would love to see jobs created.  But the American Dream, for which this politically left protest "movement" is named, calls for individuals to create their own success, by availing themselves of the democratic system's opportunities in our free market economy.  In America, where Horatio Alger stories were once the symbol of industrious, self-motivated success, we are not dependent on a super-power, on government largesse or elected officials for our individual improvement.  The American Dream is of the self-made man or woman, whose great idea and effortful execution brings not only personal rewards, but uplifts all those he/she carries forward.

I'll honk for jobs, but of the type that empower individuals without the fetters of severe regulation or government subsidy.  We're all of one mind nationally, that our president's current approach to the problem of unemployment stimulated little but despair and cost more than we can afford.  Now, the question is:  do you spend a summer's day holding signs begging for outside help, or do you get going and invent something new?  Dependence on the government isn't the American Dream; proud, creative, independent achievment is.

Israeli Protests in a Broader Context

As Israeli press reports 300,000 people protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I watch from afar and wonder what they think will result from their efforts.

Summer evenings in Israel are warm, the lovely Mediterranean warmth that bathes your skin and lures you to outdoor cafes and the bustling carnival of vendors on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street that forms at the conclusion of the Sabbath. Tonight there's a solidarity among people who work hard and find their paychecks barely allow them necessities beyond rent, food, internet service and cell phones.  They swarm the streets, calling for "the system to change," according to a story in the New York Times.  Organizers, mostly university students, say they're keeping the marches purposefully non-partisan, joining together Israelis from all political persuasions to direct their national passion--and there's plenty--to something all share.

“We want a more correct balance between the free market and the human economy," said Itzik Shmuli, head of the National Union of Israeli Students, reported in the Jerusalem Post. "We are demanding serious attention to closing social gaps and for a more far-reaching answer to be given to the basic needs of the citizens of the country, in particular the country’s weakest citizens.”
Last time I spoke to The System, however, I didn't hear anything.  What "far reaching answer" do all these people expect?

They know they're the only Western-style free market Democracy in the region. They've got socialized medicine in an advanced, fair national program. Organizers insist they don't want to overthrow their leaders--to the contrary, they say they have confidence in their elected officials; they just want to earn more money so they can enjoy more of the pleasures and advantages that their society offers.

Also in the headlines the last few days is the pathetic and horrific plight of Somalis, dying of starvation in a famine that a heartless but justifiably paranoid government exacerbates, in the face of Shabab Wahhabi Islamist rebels.  Front-page photos of skeletal children and stories of aid spurned or stolen are wrenching and bring deserved sympathy and concern.

What the poor Somalis would give to have the system protested by the Israelis.

At the same time, one can understand Israelis' frustration at seeing so many accessories to modern life just out of reach.  The cost of real estate, food, restaurants, and durable goods in Israel is comparable to prices in the United States' most desirable cities, but the average wages of workers is about $2,476 per month converted from shekels. That's $29,712 annually. (Average wage is $40,711 in the US.) Technology is slightly cheaper there; housing a bit more; gasoline triple. Housing is especially high in Jerusalem, which draws people for religious reasons. They're not making many places considered to be closest to God anymore.

Back to the question: Given that Israel has an open, free-market economy, what can the government do to increase wages or hold down costs?  Israel, with a total population of not quite 7.5 million is smaller than the city of New York, which is more than 8.1 million as of the 2010 census.  Its national government has the intimacy of a city government; people's protests and complaints much more easily reach their leaders and gain response.

But the change these students seek is generic.  And perpetual.  It echoes the same vague, altruistic sentiment chanted on US college campuses in the early 1970s: "We want social justice!"  There's a spring or summer fever that propels students to the streets and quads where they can surge together in an aura of righteousness to assert their youthful beliefs.  The fact that the closely-knit country of Israel can join in this festival of both frustration and longing proves once again that it is a free society.  No one is asking for that to change.

The government can pass laws that like New York's rent control, suppress rental charged tenants, but it can't, nor should it want, to depress real estate prices.  And as long as willing buyers pay high prices for homes and businesses, they'll need to charge enough rent to cover that expense.  I just don't see how citizenry surging in the streets can effectively bring reductions in rent or real estate sales costs. Regarding other necessities, health care is socialized; cost for food is determined by its availability and production expense (and given Israel's small size, much must be imported).

There's something cathartic and therapeutic about protesting; it binds Israelis into a cohesive unit, and reminds leaders of their constituents' priorities.  But beyond that, sign-carrying, chanting and massive presence in the streets can accomplish little when the goals are so amorphous. And when the free market is, in the end, the arbiter of both wages and prices for goods and services.

The message I take away, reading the headlines so far from their datelines, is that democracy and a free market system allows us to claim ever-expanding expectations, and sometimes keeps us from remembering just how lucky and privileged we really are.