Food Tourah – A Food Tour through the Torah

October 30, 2024 in Food Tourah

Summary from Sefaria*: Noach (“Noah”) begins as God decides to destroy mankind with a flood. At God’s command, the righteous Noah builds an ark, where Noah, his family, and select animals survive the flood. Noah’s children bear children, and several generations develop. God confounds the speech of people building the Tower of Babel.

Because life so often happens around food, we thought it would be fun to spend a year exploring the weekly parshiot and finding connections to each week’s Shabbat dinner/Shabbat afternoon offerings.  This parsha-inspired recipes project grew from a shared desire to spend a year exploring the weekly Torah portions in a fun, modern way, and also inspired by another friend’s insightful weekly blog – Parsha Inspired Menus. Sarah, a seasoned Jewish educator, brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussions, while Alison is excited to explore the weekly portions in greater depth.

Each week we will give a brief overview of the parsha and then suggest ways to incorporate its themes into your Shabbat menu. This is our version of Julie and Julia – the charming movie in which a blogger challenges herself to make all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just one year.  Lucky for us, we only have to cover 54 parshiot!

This week we have another well loved story from Genesis.  Of course the parsha includes the story of Noah’s ark and his multiple animal pairs.  When the floods end, God gives Noah a rainbow as a symbol of his covenant that he will never flood the earth again.  Also found in this portion, is the Tower of Babel.  So the story goes that in the beginning everyone had the “same language and the same words”. The Babylonians wanted to build a tower that went up into the heavens to demonstrate their power and achieve fame. To stop this effort and punish their arrogance, God confounded their language and spread them all over the earth.

In the story of Noah, Genesis 9:3 states, “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these.”**  This marks the earliest reference to eating meat in the Torah, so we thought we’d share a recipe for mouth-watering brisket: https://omgyummy.com/braising-brisket-perfect-for-fall-and-rosh-hashanah/.  Because everyone loves rainbows, try this Rainbow Salad: https://toriavey.com/rainbow-israeli-salad/.  And lastly as a nod to the story of the Tower of Babel, enjoy this recipe for Alphabet Soup by another local chef Pati Jinich: https://patijinich.com/alphabet-soup/.

B’tayavon and Shabbat Shalom,
Alison (Baraf) & Sarah (Roark)

* Sefaria. (n.d.). Torah Portion Summaries. Retrieved from https://www.sefaria.org/topics/category/torah-portions

** Sefaria. (n.d.). Genesis 9:3, Torah Portion, Parashat Noach. Retrieved from https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.9.3?lang=bi&with=Navigation&lang2=en