The Jewish Holiday Cookbook, by Gloria Kaufer Greene.

Soak the dates in the water for one hour. Then bring them to a boil, and let simmer for 30 to 60 minutes, stirring occasionally until they form a paste. Let the paste cool to room temperature. Stir in the wine, cinnamon, and nuts.

(From The Jewish Holiday Cookbook, by Gloria Kaufer Greene)

There were Jews who escaped persecution who thought that they were the only Jews left in the world. They lived completely isolated from other Jews for hundreds of years. This was the case of the Jewish communities in Calcutta, India, and Gondar, Ethiopia. The recipe for haroset from Calcutta reminds us that we come from a land flowing with honey, date honey.

Halek (Calcutta Date Syrup) Pareve Haroset

• 4 cups pitted dates
• 8 cups water
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts or almonds

Soak the dates in water for about 24 hours. Puree the dates and water, and let stand overnight. Strain the liquid in a linen towel. Simmer the liquid, stirring occasionally, until it thickens into syrup. This will take about an hour. When the syrup has cooled to room temperature, stir in the nuts.

(From an article by Gil Marks in the archives of the Jewish Communications Network)

Jewish Cooking in America by Joan Nathan.

The Conversos, or forced converts to Catholicism, came to the New World to escape from the Spanish Inquisition and gain the freedom to return to Judaism. It is especially poignant to savor Garosa balls from Curacao as we celebrate our festival of freedom, openly and without fear.

Garosa Balls Pareve Haroset

• 14 pitted dates
• 10 pitted prunes
• 8 figs
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1-cup cashew nuts
• 1 lemon, unpeeled and cut in chunks
• 1 cup sweet red wine
• 1 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon, to coat

Chop dates, prunes, figs, raisins, nuts and lemon in a food processor. Mix in the wine and honey. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Roll into balls about 1 inch in diameter. Toss in cinnamon to coat. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

(Source: Celebrating Passover with dishes of Curacao by Ethel Hofman and Myra Chanin, Philadelphia Inquirer (on-line edition), 3/25/99)

Passover has inspired the creativity of foodies in the United States. It is possible to serve a i> that is modern, fresh and different.

New American Pareve Haroset

• 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and diced
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 cup of fresh mango, peeled and diced
• 1/2 cup toasted pecans
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon port or sweet wine

Place all the ingredients in a food processor. Pulse once or twice, just to break up. Let sit for the flavors to meld.

(Source: Jewish Cooking in America, Joan Nathan)

This Passover is an opportunity to excite one’s taste buds and explore the world of Jewish cuisine. Whether it is cooked or raw, contains fresh or dried fruit, and is spiced simply or with more complexity, this concoction is still haroset. All the Jews are telling the same Passover story, no matter where they live. It is fun to reach across the oceans and taste each other’s food.

Charoset" & the Liberation of the World: An R-rated Recipe for the Passover Seder

-- Arthur Waskow

The seder plate - no charoset in sight.

"Why is there charoset on the Seder plate?"

That's the most secret Question at the Seder - nobody even asks it. And it's got the most secret answer: none.

The Haggadah explains about matzah, the bread that's baked so quickly it comes out so dry it blocks your insides for a week.

The Haggadah explains about the horse-radish so bitter it blows the lid off your lungs and makes breathing so painful you wish you could just stop.

The Haggadah even explains about that scrawny chicken neck masquerading as a whole roast lamb.

But it never explains charoset.

Yes, there's an oral tradition. (Fitting for something that tastes so delicious!) You've probably heard somebody at a Passover Seder claim that charoset is the mortar the ancient Israelite slaves had to paste between the bricks and stones of those giant warehouses they were building for Pharaoh.

But that's a cover story. Really dumb. You think that mortar was so sweet, so spicy, so delicious that every ancient Israelite just had to slaver some mortar on his tongue?

You think it wasn't leeks and onions they wailed for after they crossed the Sea of Blood, but the mortar they were pasting on their masters' mansions? You think they were whining, "Give me mortar or give me death?"

Forbid it, Almighty God!

OK, maybe it's a midrash? Those bitter-hearted rabbis, always fresh from some pogrom or exile, claiming that to the Israelites, slavery was sweet? So sweet that it reminds us that slavery may taste sweet, and this is itself a deeper kind of slavery?

No. The oral tradition transmitted by charoset is not by word of mouth but taste of mouth. A kiss of mouth. A full-bodied, full-tongued, "kisses sweeter than wine" taste of mouth.

Charoset is an embodiment of by far the sexiest, kissyest, bodyest book of the Hebrew Bible ---- the Song of Songs. Charoset is literally a full-bodied taste of the Song. The Song is the recipe for charoset.

You think they were going to tell you that when you were six years old, just learning how to stumble through "Mah nishtanah"? Or maybe when you were fourteen, just beginning to eye that curvy cousin sitting right across the table, so lubricious you couldn't even ask for the chicken breast without moaning? Or maybe the year you first noticed the drawings in that Haggadah where half-naked Miram and half-naked Pharaoh's Daughter were swimming in the Nile, ducking each other and giggling while they saved little Moses and tried to convince old Pharaoh he wasn't their baby?

Or maybe when you were 34 and they were all nagging you to settle down already, get married --- that's when you thought they might finally tell the truth about charoset? Or 52, when they were so embarrassed about your mid-life "crisis" and its little fling -- just the moment for nibbling on the spicy raisins of the woman whose breasts were like twin fawns in beds of flowers, the man whose ivory belly held bright gems of sweet delight?

Face it: They were never going to tell you. Maybe they might mention that the olden rabbis thought the Song should be recited during the festival of Passover, but quickly they'd explain it was about God's loving effort to free the Israelites from Pharaoh. Indeed, they'd mutter, if you think you notice "two breasts" mentioned, it's really about Moses and Aaron. After all, who could God want more to love, to suckle, than those heroes of freedom?

Time to tell the passionate truth: The Song of Songs is the recipe for charoset.

Verses from the Song:

"Feed me with apples and with raisin-cakes;
"Your kisses are sweeter than wine;
"The scent of your breath is like apricots;
"Your cheeks are a bed of spices;
"The fig tree has ripened;
"Then I went down to the walnut grove."

There are several kinds of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach:

The freedom of people who rise up against Pharaoh, the tyrant.

The freedom of earth, the flowers that rise up against winter.

The freedom of birth, of the lambs who trip and stagger in their skipping-over dance.

The text of the Song subtly, almost secretly, bears the recipe for charoset, and we might well see the absence of any specific written explanation of charoset as itself a subtle, secret pointer toward the "other" liberation of Pesach -- the erotic loving freedom celebrated in the Song of Songs, which we are taught to read on Passover.

The Song of Songs is sacred not only to Jews, but also to Christians and to Muslims, and especially to the mystics in all three traditions. Its earth-and-human-loving erotic energy has swept away poets and rabbis, lovers and priests, dervishes and gardeners.

Yet this sacred power -- "Love is strong as death," sings the Song -- has frightened many generations into limiting its power. Redefining its flow as a highly structured allegory, or hiding it from the young, or forbidding it from being sung in public places.

Even so, long tradition holds that on the Shabbat in the middle of Passover, Jews chant the Song of Songs.

Why is this time of year set aside for this extraordinary love poem? At one level, because it celebrates the springtime rebirth of life.

And the parallel goes far deeper. For the Song celebrates a new way of living in the world.

The way of love between the earth and her human earthlings, beyond the future of conflict between them that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of love between women and men, with women celebrated as leaders and initiators, beyond the future of subjugation that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of bodies and sexuality celebrated, beyond the future of shame and guilt that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of God so fully present in the whole of life that God needs no specific naming (for in the Song, God's name is never mentioned).

The way of adulthood, where there is no Parent and there are no children. No one is giving orders, and no one obeys them. Rather there are grownups, lovers -- unlike the domination and submission that accompany the end of Eden.

In short, the Song of Songs is Eden for grown-ups. For a grown-up human race. (Check out the wonderful translations by Marcia Falk, Ariel & Chana Bloch, and Shefa Gold.)

Whereas the original Garden was childhood, bliss that was unconscious, unaware, the Garden of the Song is maturity. Death is known, conflict is recognized (as when the heroine's brothers beat her up), yet joy sustains all.

So the "recipe" points us toward apples, quinces, raisins, apricots, figs, nuts, wine. Within the framework of the free fruitfulness of the earth, the "recipe" is free-form: no measures, no teaspoons, no amounts. Not even a requirement for apples rather than apricots, cinnamon rather than cloves, figs rather than dates. So there is an enormous breadth for the tastes that appeal to Jews from Spain, Poland, Iraq, India, America.

Nevertheless, I will offer a recipe.

1. Take a pound of raw shelled almonds, two pounds of organic raisins, and a bottle of red wine. On the side have organic apricots, chopped apples, figs, and dates (no pits), and small bottles of powdered cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
2. Assemble either an electric blender, or your great-grandmom's cast-iron hand-wound gefulte-fish chopper brought from the Old Country. If it's the blender, put it on "chop" rather than "paste" frequency.
3. Start feeding the almonds and raisins into the blender or mixer, in judicious mixture. (How do you know "judicious"? Whatever doesn't get the whole thing stuck so it won't keep grinding.) Whenever you feel like it, pour in some wine to lubricate the action. Stop the action every once in a while to poke around and stir up the ingredients.
4. Freely choose when to add apricots, apples, figs, and/or dates. Taste every ten minutes or so. If you start feeling giddy, good! -- that's the idea.
5. Add in the spices. Clove is powerful, sweet and subtly sharp at the same time; a lot will get you just on the edge of dope.
6. Keep stirring, keep chopping, keep dribbling wine -- not till the charoset turns to paste but till there are still nubs of nuts, grains of raisin, suddenly a dollop of apricot spurting on your tongue.

You say this doesn't seem like a recipe, too free? Ahh -- as the Song itself says again and again, "Do not stir up love until it pleases. Do not rouse the lovers till they're willing."

Serve at the Pesach Seder, and also on the night when you first make love to a delicious partner. And on your wedding night. And on every wedding anniversary. And every once in a while, but not too often, on a night when you simply want to celebrate and embody your love.

For the printable text of Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s “New Freedom Seder for the Earth,” which you can use in whole or in parts for your own Seder, see http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1489. Rabbi Waskow is director of The Shalom Center and the author of "Godwrestling — Round 2; Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life"; and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on US public policy. The Shalom Center voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life. To receive the weekly on-line Shalom Report, click on -- http://www.shalomctr.org/subscribe

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