Kosher – Vampyre Fangs (2024)

Off for Passover!

Like a salmon swims upstream, I go to Toronto for Passover.

This year, Passover begins the evening of Monday April 14.

I will return by Wednesday April 23.

Have a matzarrific Passover week!

See you soon!

Tichel:(Yiddishטיכלtikhl), also called amitpachat(Hebrewמִטפַּחַתmiṭpaḥat), is aheadscarfworn by many marriedOrthodoxJewishwomen in compliance with the code of modesty known astzniut. Tichels can range from a very simple plain color cotton square with a simple tie in the back to very elaborate fabrics with very complex ties using multiple fabrics. As with any other form ofclothing, the tichel is influenced by fashion.

The above Wikipedia definition is absolutely perfect… without actually being any good.

Tichels (or, more accurately,tichlach) cannot be described.

They must be seen.

They must be worn.

They must be experienced.

Luckily, I have my friend Tamar. [1]

Ever have one of those people you meet on Facebook whom you think is just incredibly amazing even though you’ve never met her in real life?

That’s Tamar.

Tamar lives in Jerusalem with her husband and baby boy. Tamar is a tichel maven.

She has kindly given me permission to use her photos to demonstrate how truly captivating a tichel can be.

Tamar ROCKS the tichel look!

Thanks, Tamar.

You are, as always, the best!

You are the coolest Italian Jew ever.

Except for me, of course. 😉

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[1]Tamar Eden Goldschmidt (née Courtney Ann Gagliano).

We’re approaching the end of the fall block of Jewish holy days (there are 7 of them in September alone!).

Just before Sukkot, my dear friend JRC gave me (among other things) a honey cake.

In the spirit of the season, I will share a standard traditional honey cake recipe.

Honey Cake

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 pound honey (1 ⅓ cups)
1 ⅓ cups sugar
1 cup strong coffee
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp margarine
1 tsp. baking soda
4 cups flour
1 tsp. cinnamon

(Some people put toasted shaved almonds on top)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 F. Grease and flour a 9″ x 13″ pan.
Beat eggs and honey together. Add sugar and mix again.
Mix coffee with baking powder, and then add with margarine to the egg mixture.
Add baking soda, flour, cinnamon, and beat together well.
Bake in greased 9″ x 13″ pan at 325 F for 55 minutes to an hour.

Enjoy!

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I originally got this Jewish holiday recipe from a Chabad Lubavitch calendar.

Hi, my little geeks and nerdlings…

Passover begins tonight (Monday March 25, 2013) at sunset.

I will be in Toronto for a little over a week.

Have a happy, kosher and joyful Passover.

I’ll should be back Wednesday April 3.

See you then!

Well, boys and girls – geeks and nerdlings – it’s that time of year again!

The Jewish holidays will soon be fast upon us. (Is that a redundancy?)

This coming Jewish year (5773), all of the seven (count ’em – SEVEN!) of Jewish holy days between September 16 and October 10 will fall on week days.

I will be spending almost all of them in The Heart of the Old World (i.e. the area of Bathurst Street between Lawrence and Wilson avenues)

As such, this blog (along with its ‘brother blog’ Kosher Samurai) won’t be posting articles as per its regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.

It’s a Jew thing. 😉

Not to worry. I will return to my usual full schedule by the middle of October, all refreshed and spiritually revived.

Wish all of my readers the best, now and always. Thank you for popping by and reading my musings.

As they say in the Vatican, “Gutt yontiff! A gutten un a gezinter yor! A gebentshed un a zeeser yor!”*

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* Translation (from Yiddish): “Happy holy day! A good and a healthy year. A blessed and a sweet year!”

In one of my blog articles last month, I set out my theory of the Stealth Hasidim.

Since then, I have been developing and expanding this theory with the help of my dear friend and fellow stealth hasid, SB.

Well, it was time to put theory into an even more extended practice and see just how stealthy and hasidish I could be!

The perfect opportunity provided itself the other day when my friends, D&RB, were in short supply of kosher baby food. Apparently, in Toronto, there is now a dearth of baby food with an acceptable hechsher (kosher certification mark). Baby food brands such as Gerber and Heinz don’t make the grade. They have either cut or lost their COR kosher certification in Canada. [1]

(A small sample of various kosher certification symbols)

Bottom line… the only brand of baby food that my friends would accept were those produced under the name Beech-Nut, manufactured under strict rabbinical supervision and bearing the ‘Circle-U’ hechsher of the Orthodox Union.

Now while many kosher food retailers do carry the Beach-Nut brand, the selection of flavours in Toronto is somewhat limited. My dear friends were, in a word, distraught. Running low on supplies, their options limited, D&RB were in a tight spot, and no mistake.

(Note the ‘Circle-U hechsher’ to the right of the word ‘Bananas’)

This looked like a job for… The Stealth Hasid!

Living, as I do, a mere hop and a skip from the Canada-U.S. border, I hatched a plan whereby I, with the assistance of my not-so-stealthy hasidic cohort (i.e. the local Chabad rabbi), would slip across the border, infiltrate a certain supermarket in a largish western New York State city (which store carries a wide variety of kosher foods including Beech-Nut baby food), obtain about 50 jars in a variety of flavours, make our way back across the river to The Great White North whereupon I would personally transport the goods to my dear friends in Toronto in time for Shabbes.

I arranged a rendezvous in scenic Niagara-Falls. My cohort suggested I meet him across the street from the Jewish cemetery at 5:45 yesterday morning, which totally appealed to my Orthodox Goth (OrthoGoth?) side!. Now while I am usually an early riser, the thought of me standing in the snow in the pre-dawn hours waiting for my cohort to arrive did not help me leap to the task with my usual alacrity.

(Looks nice, eh? Try standing in this kind of weather at 5:45 am and see how much you like it!)

However, a stealth hasid must be made of stern stuff. “Suck it up, princess!” I said to myself, peering into the night as I held my Tim Hortons coffee cup in both hands. “A baby’s health and nutrition is at stake! And you are helping fellow frummies in their hour of need. Stealth Hasid to the rescue!”

OK, so… I drove up to the Canada-U.S. border by 6:00 am. The process was uneventful. While my cohort was an old hand at crossing into the States and back, I was a bit nervous as this was my first foray into the U.S. since the Passover before 9-11. A lot’s happened since then, homeland-security-wise. Notwithstanding the fact that I had my brand-new spiffy enhanced drivers licence which permits me to drive into the U.S. without a passport, I didn’t know what to expect. I need not have worried. Things went smoothly with the border guard asking only a few questions. Before I knew it, we were in The Great Republic to the South. [1] A quick in-and-out and we’d be back in the land of Mounties and maple syrup, beavers and butter tarts before you could say, “How’s it goin’ eh?”

Did I mention that my cohort goes into the States every day? No? Well, he does. Why? He attends morning services at the holy Young Israel of Greater Buffalo orthodox congregation. I had never been there before and I must say, it was quite enjoyable. As it was Rosh Chodesh, we had a Torah reading and, after services, my cohort did a little one-on-one learning with an extremely UN-stealth hasid. Not exactly the quick in-and-out I originally imagined but you have to learn to roll with the proverbial punches in this line of work.

(Young Israel of Greater Buffalo orthodox congregation)

Eventually, we made it to the supermarket. I stocked up on Beech-Nut sweet carrots, sweet peas, squash and sweet potato, getting about a dozen of each. I found out, to my chagrin, that not all Beech-Nut flavours were kosher. We cleared the shelves of all kosher flavours D&RB needed but we fell a bit short of the 50 jars I was hoping to get and there was no time to drive to the other supermarket around the corner (my cohort was already late for a meeting on the Canadian side). I cashed out and before long, we were heading back home. Crossing into Canada was smooth. All went according to plan.

All Stealth. All Hasidic. No Sweat!

Sadly, a snow storm in Toronto today and tomorrow has prevented me from coming in this weekend. Luckily, D&RB have enough food to last them until next weekend.

This coming Friday, I hope to arrive in Toronto on the eve of the Sabbath and deliver the much-needed supplies to my dear friends. D&RB will, I am sure, be quite relieved and happy. As far as baby food is concerned, they will be flush until my next foray into the wilds of western New York.

Yesterday morning’s jaunt taught me several things. Crossing the border at 6:00 am isn’t all that rough, really. I enjoy the Young Israel of Greater Buffalo congregation and intend to continue going there at least twice a week (tentatively Tuesdays and Thursdays) when I am not either in court or in Toronto. Food prices, even kosher food prices, are much lower in the States. Aside from pain in the tush of getting up so early (4:00 am!!), it is nice to share a couple of hours chatting with my cohort, the local Chabad rabbi.

Tentatively, our next cross-border raid is this coming Tuesday. Time permitting, I am hoping to hit that other supermarket in search of more Beech-Nut baby food and maybe even a few provisions for myself.

UPDATE: (As of 9:40 am Friday Feb. 24/12)

It turns out that the bad weather has been averted! The snowfall anticipated for this weekend is not nearly as bad as originally predicted and that I am indeed heading off to Toronto after all. I will be leaving as soon as possible, dropping off the baby food for D&RB, picking up some provisions for dinner tonight and enjoying the Sabbath with friends and loved ones! Yay! The Stealth Hasid scores again!

A good, restful, peaceful and spirit-filled Sabbath to all.

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[1]COR is the kosher certification trademark used by the Kashruth Council of Canada, the largest kosher certification agency in Canada. COR has been servicing the Canadian food industry for over 65 years and now certifies over 45,000 products at over 1000 facilities across Canada and around the world.

[2] Technically, where I live, The Great Republic is to the East… but that’s another story.

A week ago, my SigOth (i.e. Significant Other) and I were at a hasidic bar mitzvah. Afterwards, we were kindly invited to have lunch over at the bar mitzvah boy’s house. As we were getting to know the various members of the extended family and trying to figure out who was what, religiously, my SigOth asked a married couple if they, like the bar mitzvah boy’s parents and grandparents, were hasidim. They answered that they were hasidim but they were ‘under-cover’… that is, while they defined themselves as hasidim, they did not overtly dress or speak like hasidim. They were, in effect, ‘plainclothes’ hasidim.

It occurred to me that we knew a few people like that. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my SigOth and I were also, to a some extent…‘Stealth Hasidim!’

(Hasidic man with payess and a shtreimel)

You’d never know it to look at us.You won’t see payess, a shreimel or a bekishe being worn… at least not yet… not even a black Borsalino fedora. We look frum, I suppose… but not ‘ultra-Orthodox’ (I hate that term)!

(Hasidic man with shtreimel and bekashe)

So the thought of us being Stealth Hasidim holds an enormous appeal for me!

(Not like us)

For example, we both dress conservatively, but not out of the 18th or 19th century.

(Well, the woman looks about right… but not so much the man)

Aside from a hat (a greek fisherman’s cap, btw, not a black fedora), ayarmulke and a sheitel, I don’t know that a non-Jew would instantly spot us as Orthodox.

(Eeek! Not THAT kind of Orthodox!)

So, Gentile World (i.e. 98.3% of the population out there!), be aware that the nice conservatively dressed people next to you on the sidewalk or the grocery store or the coffee shop may notbe who or what they appear. Outwardly, they might be missing the fur hats and side curls and long coats… but inside, they may be not a heck of a lot different from those bearded ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Jews you sometimes see in the movies or on TV.

They may be us! They may be… Stealth Hasidim!

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