Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Into the tent of Sarah


     "How did you know about this place?" I asked my wife. We were in Sarah's Tent Kosher Market, a sprawling supermarket/religious goods store on Oakton in Skokie.
     "I've been coming here for years," she said, narrowing her eyes. "You've been here before." 
    I have? No memory at all. 
    "Years ago," she said, in my defense. In its early manifestation as Hungarian Kosher Foods. We had come here now to pick up pupiks — chicken gizzards, somehow essential for soup — in preparation for Passover, which begins at sundown Wednesday. She picked out various esoterica needed for the holiday, and I began wandering the aisles, soaking everything in. Obscure Jewish foodstuffs. Ceremonials objects and garments. 
    Some was surprising, like a silicone mold to fake braided challahs. 
    "That's just wrong," I said, showing it to my wife. Who does such a thing? Is it really that hard to divide a loaf's worth of dough into three parts, rolling them into logs and braid them? Even I've done that. The mold seems an odd, unnecessary cheat. Though who am I to judge. Maybe when baking 50 challahs, you lunge for the mold.
      The vibe was different, and not just because some of the women were in sheitels — the wigs that Orthodox women wear. Shoppers greeted each other, paused, gathered, talked. When my wife accidentally took somebody else's cart, the woman laughed it off when my wife found her and returned it. I half expected them to go get a cup of coffee together.
     I puzzled over the "Sarah's Tent" name. It's a biblical reference, to a passage in Genesis when Isaac takes Rebecca "into the tent of Sarah, his mother." Without going into detail, it's considered a metaphor for "the quintessential Jewish home" where the candles never burn down and the bread never goes stale.
     For me, the store was a reminder of the vast world of tradition I generally turn my back on. It's kept going, by people who aren't me, and when I show up, on rare occasions, to load up on pupicks and kishke and carrot jam (how often do you get the chance?) it's always there, waiting.  I admired a display of beautiful havdalah candles — used to mark the end of the sabbath, and for a moment considered buying one. But then I'd have to use the thing, and that was a bridge too far.



    

     

10 comments:

  1. Belgian Chocolate shop on Main in Evanston sells chocolate covered matzoh...delicious!

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  2. T-shirt tzitzis! Made no doubt by Chanes...

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    1. That's a truly bizarre item! But I can't find a decent meat knish anywhere!

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    2. That could have been written by my husband! That said - together we do yartzeits for his Mom and Dad. We muddle through and it works just as if we “knew” what we were doing; it’s the memory of the bones I guess. Linda

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  3. wishing everyone a meaningful and joyful pesach-

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  4. My shiksa wife (and German, too) has somehow learned how to make her own matzoh. It's thick and crisp and better than any of those crumbly commercial crackers on the store shelves. Before my doctor told me to knock it off, I would spread brown mustard on matzoh and eat it with Spam. Drove her nuts. But I want to live, so I don't do that anymore.

    Like Mr. S, I have also turned my back on the "vast world of tradition" that is Judaism. I don't do yahrzeit candles anymore, either. Not a good idea when you have cats. Still do Hanukkah, though...with the same menorah I've been lighting for 65 years. Why only that one custom, and no other? Go figure. Maybe it's for the latkes and the presents.

    Most of my fellow tribe members would scoff, and dismiss me as a JINO...a Jew In Name Only. But just let fly with the S-word (as in Soros), and I'll rip you a new posterior orifice. When you're born Jewish, it's in your bones for life. We are what we are, and that's all that we are.

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  5. I trust you know that "pupik" actually means bellybutton. It's curious that it's transmogrified into meaning misc. viscera. Or is this just a family term?

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  6. T-Shirt Tzitzis of course. For the well dressed yeshiva scholar. II I yam what I yam an' tha's all I yam, Popeye.
    Good Yuntov all.

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    1. My mother, who spoke only Yiddish until she was five and went off to school, pronounced it as "YUN-tiff"...It actually comes from "yom tov"--which literally means “good day.” As Yiddish speakers poured into the US before and after 1900, "yom tov" was anglicized into “good yontif.”...or "good holiday.". Literally, it means "good good day."

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