Fish on the Table (which is made of wood and comes from trees)

Fish is prominent on the holiday table, especially on the New Year and Shavuot. In Jewish lore, it is a symbol of fertility, because Jacob gave his children a blessing that they should multiply like fish in the sea. It is also associated with the coming of the Messiah; according to a legend, the Messiah will come in the form of a great fish from the sea.

The custom of eating fish on the Sabbath is apparently an early one, as the rabbis of the Mishnah (oral law, codified approx. 200 CE) ruled that it was meritorious to eat fish with each of the Sabbath meals; references in the Talmud also indicate that it was customary among Jews to eat fish on Friday night.
In the Ashkenazi kitchen

East European Jews acquired a liking for freshwater fish from the hundreds of rivers which crossed the mainly landlocked areas they inhabited. In the shtetl, fish was brought live on Thursday. It was swimming in tubs at the market and was kept swimming in the bath till Friday, with several changes of water to get rid of the muddy taste; on Friday morning it was killed with a knife or a hammer blow.

Carp, pike, perch, sterlet and trout were all grand fish. Édouard de Pomiane, the French gastronome of Polish origin who wrote about the cooking of the Jews of Poland, remarked that "every observant Jew eats river fish. The wealthy buy carp and pike. The poor content themselves with a miserable roach or sometimes a piece of salt herring." (The poor also ate tench and chub.) Jewish traders on the silk route were involved in introducing carp from China to Central and Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century, and it was Jews who first farmed carp in Poland. They managed fish ponds and also bred fish from the Black, Azov, and Caspian Seas and from the river Don. It was the carp, which traveled easily live in tanks, that they adopted as their fish. Whereas carp became a symbol of the Sabbath, salt herring, which Jewish merchants also traded and which was a lot cheaper than fresh fish, was the symbol of the weekday and marked the contrast between the two.

Many of the old recipes for freshwater fish and herring are now used for saltwater fish like halibut, haddock, cod, plaice, sole, hake, flounder, and salmon. Salmon has become the great Jewish party dish, ever-present at weddings and bar mitzvahs. At my local fishmonger, Corney's, which specializes in salmon, both wild and farmed, there are always long queues of people waiting to have theirs filleted or cut into steaks for the Sabbath. For more of this essay and for some recipes go here.


Rebecca Shore manages to combine our two themes this week into one piece of art. The Tree of Life, symbolic of torah is filled with letters from God's name. They are embedded in the branches of the tree, embossed in gold. We also find the seven species- figs, olive, wheat, barley, grapes, pomegranates, and dates. Below fish swim, they as the sole survivors of "the flood" remain a talisman of good luck to the Jewish people.

Gefilte tastes tell story of ancestry

TORONTO -- How do you like your gefilte fish: sweet or peppery? The answer may reveal more about yourself and your family history than you might think.
You've heard of the Mason-Dixon Line? The 49th parallel?

Well, there's also the "gefilte fish line" separating the Eastern European regions where Jewish palates once favored the sweet, from those that preferred the peppery varieties of the tasty traditional dish.

Michael Steinlauf, who teaches Jewish studies at Gratz College in Philadelphia, told this to an audience at the 19th annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in New York last month.

With some 1,200 participants, this year's conference was by far the largest to date, indicating the continued mushrooming of interest in genealogy among Jews.

The "gefilte fish line" ran though eastern Poland.

Jews living to the west -- most of Poland, as well as Germany and the rest of Western Europe -- ate the sweet gefilte fish. Those to the east -- Lithuania, Latvia and Russia -- ate the peppery version.

But Steinlauf's tale is not just a fish story. It's also about language.

He said the "gefilte fish line" roughly overlaps another important line: a linguistic divide between two major variants of Yiddish.

Like Henry Higgins, the professor from "My Fair Lady" who could place Londoners by their accents, Yiddish linguists can determine a person's native region by his pronunciation of certain words. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Jews' taste buds carry significant clues about their origins.

Steinlauf wasn't the only speaker at the New York gathering to urge family-tree researchers to look around their own dinner tables and elsewhere in their homes for clues about the past. Rafael Guber, an American genealogist, artist and curatorial designer, spoke about "Using Documents and Ephemera to Retrace Your Ancestors' Footsteps."

Old prayerbooks, marriage contracts, ritual washing cups and phylacteries are among the items that may help understand how and where one's ancestors lived, Guber said. Prayerbooks, for instance, may indicate whether one's ancestors were Ashkenazim or Sephardim, and if Ashkenazim, whether they were Chassidim or their opponents, the Mitnagdim.

Displaying photographs of various types of head coverings worn in the Old World, Guber indicated when and where each regional variant of the fashion could be found. Even a tombstone in an old photograph can offer a geographical clue, he explained, since only in central and western Galicia did tombstone carvers place clearly visible inset stones within larger tombstones.

Guber ended his talk with a Jewish version of the popular British TV program "Antiques Roadshow," inviting audience members to come forward with documents, photographs and other ephemera for instant and public evaluation.

The boom in Jewish genealogy began in 1977 with the establishment in New York of the first postwar Jewish genealogical society. Today there are more than 80 such societies around the world, including groups in Belarus, Sweden, Jamaica and Brazil.

One of the most successful innovations within the genealogical community has been JewishGen -- www.jewishgen.org -- an Internet information service that started in 1986 as a bulletin board for 150 people. It now sends out 30,000 pieces of e-mail daily and receives some 3 million hits on its Web site every day -- an increase of more than 600 percent over last year.

Make your gefilte fish even more special than fresh grated horseradish... use a wonderful special dish like this one from Wynter Rosen.

A fish tale

A demographic study of the cities (in this week's torah portion) of refuge described in this week's Torah portion reveals a surprising element in their population. One would assume that the cities would be comprised solely of the Levites who lived there permanently and of any individuals who killed accidentally who were seeking protection from their pursuers. However, there is another group: Rabbis. The Talmud (Tractate Makkot) explains that any individual who fled to the city of refuge must take his rabbi with him (not his lawyer, accountant, or doctor). By analyzing this law, we can gain a deeper appreciation of the primacy of Torah in one's life.

This obligation emerges from the verse, "He [the accidental killer] must flee to one of the cities and live" (Deuteronomy 19:4). Physical sustenance alone does not enable the killer to "live". Only when it is coupled with spiritual sustenance (i.e. his rabbi) can he truly live. An uncharacteristic comment of Rambam (Maimonides), one of the leading Torah scholars of the Middle Ages, supports this notion. Although Rambam's style in his legal magnum opus is to elucidate Jewish law, he adds a revealing comment when articulating the requirement to bring one's rabbi to the city of refuge. He writes that wise individuals devoid of Torah knowledge and studying are considered devoid of life. The Torah infuses life.

A story told about Rabbi Akiva crystallizes the indispensability of Torah. Rabbi Akiva lived during the period of Roman persecutors who forbade Torah study. Despite the ban, Rabbi Akiva continued his studies and was captured and sentenced to death by the Romans. When asked by his students why he took such a risk, he shared with them the story of the fox and the fish. A clever fox offered a fish a wonderful proposal: "Come onto land and you will be saved from the fisherman's net!". The insightful fish responded, "While in the water, there is a possibility that I may live by evading the fisherman's net. However, on land I am sure to die." Without the potent waters of the Torah, we too cannot survive.

Upon leaving this world, one of the questions that Hashem will ask every human being is whether we set aside time to study Torah every day (Talmud Tractates Sanhedrin 7a and Shabbat 31a). The Torah is not merely a legal guide to life. Through learning the Torah, we deepen our appreciation of the mitzvot and reinvigorate our relationship with Hashem. As we approach Rosh Hashanah, let us make a commitment to immerse ourselves in the sea of Torah and may we be blessed by its living waters each and every day.

Perhaps I am trying to bait you, dear blog reader, but here is a mezuzah from Daniel perfect for the person who loves to fish. In the Jewish tradition, fish are symbolic of fertility and abundance. They thus appear on a wide variety of Judaica objects and manuscripts. The prevalence of the fish symbol on illustrated ketubbot (wedding manuscripts) and on amulets for barren women is quite obvious. We have seen other fish on JJ... like this one and and this one. I am sure there are other fish in the sea; I will be sure to bring them to you.