54: Simanim Explained

[Music] hi this is dr. Lasky welcome to the rabbi Lasky show a special extra edition before the young Narayan we're adding in some extra time and I got an email recently from a fellow who is not complaining not complaining of course complaints we don't we don't deal with Yura except for ranting and raving but he was just observing that I haven't done a recipe in a long time oh I have to Kufa when I was doing recipes on each one of the shows just to establish the fact that I can talk about whatever I want yeah but he says I haven't heard any recipes in a long time and he signs it hungry and Cedarhurst now I've been to see the Hearst I don't know how you could possibly be hungry however it could very well be that obviously reveal loskis traditional recipes alright just a lot more fun and let me just for a moment step onto my cell box so I can rant about the recipes sections in the Jewish publications which really I thought the only thing I was like I go through them every week looking for something that I might want to make and few and far between other times day so when you have an entire section dedicated to raw fish and I'm not gonna eat raw fish okay I want to go on record like this I know it is a delicacy I had a student of mine who was teaching in Japan and his friends took him out to this restaurant would they take this fish well it's still alive and they put it on a stick and they slice it open and you eat the fish and it's still moving and he was like he's I couldn't eat it when I left the owner said to me don't ever come back so I understand there's a certain appeal to using raw fish I don't get it I like my cooked Jackie Mason said sushi was invented by two Jews who said how can we open a restaurant without a kitchen but be that as it may I look at the various things so I understand it because everything that I make is easy and extremely tasty yeah so I thought it would be appropriate since now we're already getting ready for a Shoshanna I know already I'm shopping there are people who are still online in Osia I hear in Arusha Lyon since last Rosh Hashanah trying to get their stuff done you know they sent around that cartoon of like you know people shopping before the hurricane was a current like this and then people shopping before 3d so so I instead people if L you already shopping getting ready they were those kind of people who were you know all have everything baked and cooked and frozen and it's all said it ready it up other people are like us and then obviously the food plays an important an important role yeah in fact under Scottish hello I sat down with my family my children all of my loved ones getting together cuz it's L yo my dinners coming and I said let's understand we're gonna have the layers Chaves of the year we're gonna have two days Rosh Hashanah we're gonna have Shabbos Shuba we're gonna have the suitum of seconds before Yom Kippur and the break fast FTM Kippur we have an extra Shabbos in between M Kippur and circus we have circus we have homo it's circus we have mini arts errors and we have Shabbos voracious what are we gonna eat you wanna make chicken every meal there are people like this god bless them ah these people every meal no matter what it is it could be a young TIFF meal could be a Shabbos meal it could be a perm Sudha they make a roast chicken and potatoes well roast chicken potato kugel yeah and and you know rice this is the Jewish minute you have to have two starches here and once potatoes want rice you know and something was like that that's it yeah it doesn't matter what meal it is my children they're just bursting with creativity there has to be something exciting something new something yet so so this is this is a struggle to be able to achieve it just perfectly yeah so so we're discussing what to make so now I don't mean to be flippant because I found that some safer in at least three different places where he explains why we eat a particular food on a particular holiday and the see Mondamin what goes with it in the representation but when I was growing up before the article made the world once again safe for all the cameras yeah when I was growing up from Russia Shan tonight we'd have cholera and honey and we had an apple and honey and so now of course the Kamara brings many other things but I'm starving Europe they didn't have all those things somebody asked me why do we potato like is on Konica so I said because for seafoods fried in oil says but why potato latkes I said because that's all they had with potatoes so Hanukkah they fried it in oil and and paste up they pretend that it was a green vegetable and the rest of the time I used it for furniture I mean that was it all they have with potatoes yeah every now and then you could get a beat this was like you know you're one of the bigger families but but to get all these fancy types of food yeah so today today we can get all these things yeah but when I was growing up we had the obit Curtis apple and honey and you can find the Apple Nadia on Rosh Hashanah cards and it's it's the it is the symbol of Russia shana has the Apple honey now is that obviously it's it's sweet it's sweet yeah but there are other sweet fruit I mean you could argue that this was all that they could get in Europe also with apples but you see the kymaro already says the purple our sister - this is a very old minute so the result has an amazing thing here I did not I would say don't I don't plan for this podcast I didn't go out and buy a more photogenic Apple this is in fact a Macintosh that I got in America and if you cut it lengthwise in the hemisphere we did this before Hanukkah yeah and I of course when it comes to cutting fruit I try to use my heat vision and you cut it in half you'll see an amazing thing now I don't know if you're able to see this or not in the middle of every Apple and I've tried this of many apples you will see a five-pointed star yeah pentagons if there's a five-pointed star then by definition there's five empty spaces in between the points five points and five blank spots and if you can see closely yeah around the star there are ten little dots if you can't see it then feel free to try this at home since theories aisle five is the letter hey the five spaces is the letter hey the ten dots of the letter Hewitt and gosh of that stem doesn't look like a volve you'd cave of K I I said this year over years ago and this one as far - a girl said now I understand I never understood what my grandfather always caught an Apple like this he never cut it down the middle and I said to him why don't you cut it down the middle and he said I don't want to erase Hashem his name and I never knew what he meant until now so we eat the Apple and the honey honey is obviously significant because honey is the only thing that's produced by a tummy creature that's not tummy and it's sweet we took about being mom tick the in sweetening the judgment and you'd cave of K is of course Hashem's name of Hesed of kindness as opposed to hello Kim which is the name of judgment and so we eat this Apple because as the Gemara says in several places Simona mill C there is a significance to C Mon him and so you can get the little restriction of cards where they have all the things written out you eat the roasted dog eat the head of a fish and you say we should be a head and not a tail not everybody can eat the head of a fish some people eat the head of a sheep not everybody goes for heads yeah I'm a friend of mine that boy his little jellyfish and he cuts off the heads of them they eat that the children have much less problem with that yeah there's you you eat beets silca rubia leeks gourd and all kinds of different kind of foods that in their name they have a significance it's an old thing that was going around where someone said can I use something else does it have to be these foods he says no Stephen Amell say it means you could use anything that has it so a guy took out a lettuce leaf and a raisin and a piece of celery and he said may we have a raisin celery but that was you can really use anything to see money one of them that some people have the minute to use is carrots and what we do we do this basically Rosh Hashanah yeah we might do it circus till we make our Flay sugar tzimmes my mother used to make a pledge of good service and I've changed my methodology a little bit take two packages of carrots you're gonna need two two bags of carrots because this is very popular yeah peel the carrots and slice the carrots you can do this by handle with the machine i I'm really the problem is that if you put it on the thin blade it comes out a little too thin you need a little thicker and you put that into a pan a little bit of oil and then take a package of flunkin and you put the flanken into the pan and I put a little garlic in the flanken and you bake it you bake it until it's mostly dye job mostly done like a halfway done you have to see that it looks cooked but it's not quite there yet yeah chemical Bendre saw you for those you familiar with the term from Shamas yeah then you stop you pour out the gravy now again I might be different in America because I've only been making this in its shell but it gets there's a lot of this kind of juice that's that's not so sweet when it's when it's mixed it over there's a lot of fat and things so we we tend to pour that off and then I take a lot of honey Mel a lot honey and I coat the meat then I coat the carrots with the honey and then we bake it until it's starting to look like it's mostly it's almost done and you cover it over and you bake it some more you have to make sure the carrots are soft and yeah you don't have to worry about doing it too much this is not one of those cone most of Karuk array of things it's not one of those things where if you do it too much you lose it if we want to get it like really caramelized and this is just delicious we have this and I Russia shot a meal and we say the Arizona on the carrots and it's sweet and everybody's happy so there's a recipe I haven't given you a recipe in a long time there is one of our rush and recipes and then we prepare all the other seem on him so the dates we don't do anything too fancy with we cut them in half or check them for bugs put them out on the plate the rubia which have black-eyed peas and there was this video going around last year I can't tell you the authenticity of it or not I don't know but this fellow bought what was supposed to be checked black-eyed peas and he was cutting them open and there were bugs inside of them so you know take that into account but we would take the Black Eyed Peas and we would cook them up with a lot of sugar brown sugar little little honey maybe more maple syrup and they got to cook for a long time too they're soft and that's how we prepare the rubia and the leek we used to put into the soup chicken soup and obviously don't put it on the same plate with the fish Ramon of course we just cut up pieces of the remote the Qura which is also gorg yeah so we actually buy gourd some people use squash that'll get pumpkin or they'll use butternut squash you know way by that gigantic green gourd you know cut it up into cubes and put it with water and a lot of sugar let it cook a long time because a long time it'll become soft and sweet this is true about most things by the way yeah and I think of the sea but I'm at we make fish of course that we serve make a sweet fish and and that's the we go through that's we go through at the beginning my wife makes these delicious solids with honey colors you have that with the honey finish to see my name take a shot of insulin and I'm done but then you want to move on to that to the main course and you wanna have a big timís don't miss out on that service it's a it's a delight thrilling a delight yeah okay but the point here of course is mcmorrises seem on a mill sahih let's understand what that means it's not just that it's a it's a nice idea there is something about physically taking something sweet and putting in your mouth and experiencing the sweetness the Gemara Bubba , talks about this and it talks about how yummy Yahoo was told to make these metal horns then we're gonna be used to Gore and and yet to physically make them you had to physically make them to be able to to get the understanding and the power that was inherent inside of them when we eat the semen em it's not just a nice idea eating something is gives it gives it a reality you were tasting this thing and it's becoming part of me especially when you eat something you know it becomes part of you on Rosh Hashanah we all passed before cutters burrow hole could burn a Marone which as we mentioned the tomorrow gives three shuttin either like sheep or which you bring through the gate single-file in order to count them or it's really been a grown this mountain pass that you can only walk single file or it's like the army of governor Mela where there was so strong they marched single file any way you slice is its everybody has to be as an individual I have a general rule yeah fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me if you get caught with the same question two times and you don't know how to answer it that's just because you you're lazy well if somebody makes a point that I don't know how to answer or I answer it in an ineffective way I go back at me view it to see how I could do it better I was speaking once in Hebrew University and I didn't know there were these two reformed students who were there in order to counteract what I was doing and I gave a very nice about yeah and this one guy says well the important thing I'm Hashanah is to get forgiveness from people right and I said no that's him Kippur Rosh Hashanah it's about you know us making God King and realizing the judgment denied that but it's also about people right and I kept saying no and he kept pressing me and I I I didn't realize I was being set up so I was like yeah okay you know it's also nice to be nice to be by man so this other girl like makes eye contact with them and says well how am I supposed to go into Shoshanna when there are these people at the Western Wall who you know are throwing rocks at reform people now what I said was that's ridiculous what are you talking about where does this things happen and then they just started screaming what are you talking about I know person got hit with rather than I'll like this anyway I lost our room what's over so I don't know if I'll ever find myself in that situation again but what am I gonna do I played over my head so now what would I have done she said to me how can I go into Asha show when I see these Jews throwing rocks at people at the worst of all I said I'll give you the same answer if it was attacks Jews says to me how can I go into a Shoshanna when I see these reformed Jews you know it's sanctioning intermarriage how can I go into Rosh Hashanah when I look at all the people who are doing wrong things and here's the answer the Mishna says we passed before cutters burro who kept in a maroon one at a time people here it's a judgement day yeah Linus says to Lucy and peanuts everyone was put into this world to make people happy and Lucy thinks about it and says there are a lot of people in this world and not doing their job when you hear Judgment Day see all a great Judgment Day let me judge my mother and my father and my and my friends and my roommates and the Orthodox Jews and the reformed Jews and the Chinese it means the day of judgment could be made Marone you stop looking at everybody else you're gonna walk into Russia shudder and spend your time judging everybody else do you want everybody else to judge you that they are judgment you and me and God can be named aronia as an individual man I wish I'd said that anyway we'll talk about regrets but I have a podcast I might speak about regrets before you keep a bit anyway would you you see how this works now here's the fascinating thing maroon if you move around the letters spells Rimon that do it yeah pomegranate says the Gomorrah just as a pomegranate is filled with seeds so the worst Jew is filled with good deeds you can open a pomegranate and there's a lively business certainly a hard note well you go into the fruit stores and they finally figured out yeah they peel pomelo for you pomelo is this gigantic mutant grapefruit that is so hard to peel and when you peel it there's so much just like pith that's the word thank you and when you try to pull apart the pieces the skin is all over the place that's it it's a it's a major avodah to be able to get the fruit separate them you can get them into a whole separate slices so they sell those they do this view in the fruit store they charge you a lot for it the other thing they do is they sell you a container of pomegranate seeds because to get the pomegranates out of the pomegranate is very difficult especially if you ever want to use those clothing again because the juice spritz is all over the place and gets on you and it's a problem one year we brought a pomegranate seed separator where basically you do a lot of banging and it was supposed to come out and you know somewhat effective but otherwise you just get to the old way you peel them apart you got to pull them out and keep removing the pit it's all over the place but those seeds are very sweet most of it is stylist most of it is peel most of it is wasted but those little sweet dots every single Jew is gonna stand before it Curtis broke on Rosh Hashanah tip a name around and on Rosh Hashanah night we're gonna eat a Ramon a pomegranate and we're gonna say who's bar who far from perfect but I've got so many sweet spots all over me yeah you're gonna have to work hard to pull him out but the words jus is filled with them and if I can find those points of sweetness and eat them Rosh Hashanah night I'm saying tuckerton boro whoo look how much sweetness there is you know what kind of a year I want I want an apple which is sweet dipped in honey that's sweet and I eat these foods and these foods have the ability to be able to affect the reality within which I live see madam LLL see you can you you start your Russia shut up by making it clear what kind of a you know I want and you should know it's a it's a tricky thing because what do we want so they give him Marshall I'm gonna give him mushroom the King got angry at his son and he kicked him out of the palace I had to make it on his own now this kid had no marketable skills yeah it was a prince hey he didn't know how to do anything yeah Prince Charles has spent his entire life waiting for his mother to die that's it his only marketable skill hey does not do plumbing or carpentry anything else that's it his entire life is waiting for me mom to die is it that's it yeah and she's not going she knows who Charles is and she doesn't intend to give him a you can't take away the original take it with her anyway but the idea of being able to say what am i doing anyway so the Prince gets thrown out of the palace and after all the King feels bad from so he sends out his trusted advisor to find him and he's sleeping in an alleyway but this point is finery has been reduced to rags you know he's got old newspapers around him you know studying with some homeless people buy a little fire in a garbage can yeah trying to warm himself yeah and they will see who the Kings representative is here and the kid looks up and he says I've been sent by the King to ask if there's anything that you want and he says yes I'm so cold do you think I could get a coat and he says you fool if you want the King will take you back into the palace and make you a prince and you'll have everything in this world the most you can imagine is a winter coat as we think small a friend had this beautiful piece where he went to speak in square and as part of it he got to me with the Ramba so he thought okay meaning with the rubber rubbers grant grant requests what should I ask for and he said he spoke to his wife he spoke to his children he spoke to his friends you know what should I ask the RAM before and suddenly I realized I'm gonna shun I'm going to Kadesh burrow hole he'll give me anything I want I'm worried about the rabba do we before Shoshanna decide as Bonet Moroni chrisberg we're gonna pick us up as an individual and say what do you want for this coming year I have want a year as sweet as apple and honey I want to be seen as filled with mitzvahs like a pomegranate as filled with seeds I want to be seen as as something that that is able to have a year without gazzarri's Rose remove our enemies destroy all the bad things all the oldest Iman them that we go through and as we eat those things and we take them in we give them my mushes we give them reality and that should be the year that we're looking for you have sweetness and Abraha and all good things that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the podcast please go to Rabbi Orlowski comm or you can leave as a comment you contact me you can find about our upcoming events and you could sponsor an episode by going to real luskey dot-com slash podcast and click on the spots for the episode button I'm Deborah Lansky and this is the raviolo ski shop [Music]