Sweeter Than Honey

Just shy of two weeks ago – September 21, to be precise – I sat in my kitchen late one night, laptop out, High Holiday sermon writing weighing heavily on my person. My children had long since gone to sleep, as had Debbie, and a predictable case of writer’s block set in. I reached for the New York Times, strewn on the table from the day gone by, seeking a momentary respite before diving back into the work at hand. The Food section beckoned, with the latest from Jewish food icon and cookbook author Joan Nathan, a Rosh Hashanah recipe for apple cider honey cake. The recipe came by way of an acclaimed young pastry chef by the name of Alex Levin. Ten years ago, Alex’s present celebrity was far from a given. A Yale graduate with a degree in applied math, Alex was on his way toward a promising career in finance. A few years in, he switched gears to follow his passions and applied to the Culinary Institute of America, going on to distinguish himself at Jean-Georges and Café Boulud, before landing his present post as Executive Pastry Chef at Osteria Morini in Washington, DC. Alex’s talents have earned him numerous accolades including the Eater Young Guns award of 2015, the 2016 Rammy (Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Award) for best pastry chef and the honor of cooking at James Beard House this past summer in New York with other great chefs of our time.

The inspiration for his honey cake, Alex explained, came by way of his beloved grandmother – the late Hadassah Nadich z’l, rebbetzin of Park Avenue Synagogue. Rabbi and Mrs. Nadich led our community from 1957–1987, a tenure marked by institutional growth, national prominence, and by way of Mrs. Nadich’s hospitality of spirit and deed, incredible communal strength. The Nadich children recall the gatherings their mother hosted, the Shabbat dinners of twenty followed by Shabbat lunches of just as many, the leadership events and cocktail parties, the dignitaries who sat at their table, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Sadie Rose Weilerstein of K’tonton fame, to the always open place setting for the traveler, member of synagogue staff, elderly congregant, or anyone in need. And at the heart of it all – the magic, if you will – was the cooking of Hadassah Nadich. Not once, not twice, but three times the rebbetzin’s recipes were profiled in the New York Times by Craig Claiborne: her gefilte fish, her matzoh balls, her challah and most of all, her desserts – sponge cake, lemon ambrosia, strudel, teiglach and of course, the honey cake, a staple at every Rosh Hashanah meal. Not just the taste, but the quality of presentation, decades of Park Avenue Synagogue’s history fed and bred by the woman who is still remembered as the quintessential hostess.

So you can only imagine what it felt like reading that article when I was struck by the realization – like an electric current – that I was sitting in the very place where the magic happened. Intellectually, of course, I knew that before me and my family, our home was occupied by my distinguished predecessors, most recently Rabbi and Mrs. Lincoln; as I like to tell people, I sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. Upon arriving in New York some nine years ago, Debbie and I enjoyed the honor of hosting the Nadich girls (now women) and their families – who regaled us with stories of growing up at 993 Park, the cutting board their mother would chop on, the biblical verse that Mrs. Nadich commissioned to be painted on the kitchen wall and, to the delight of my daughters, the battles for bedroom territory and closet space that continue to this day. This and much more I “knew” before two weeks ago, but there was something about reading that article, that night – in Hadassah’s kitchen, Susan’s kitchen, and now Debbie’s kitchen – that I understood myself as being part of something much, much bigger than I had ever realized.

So I reached out to Alex the next day through a technology of which Rabbi and Mrs. Nadich knew nothing – Facebook – and he was kind enough to expand on Joan Nathan’s article. You see, Alex was a student in the Park Avenue Early Childhood program, and on Fridays he was picked up by his grandmother who, rather than sitting him in front of a television, placed him on a stepstool in the kitchen. It began with small tasks, breaking eggs and retrieving items from the cupboard. Soon enough, Alex was empowered to mix the dough, braid the challah and roll the matzoh balls. In fact, much in the same way nobody actually remembers when they learned to walk, Alex has no memory of ever learning how to make challah; he always just knew, and by the time he was seven or eight, he could put together some of his grandmother’s treasured dishes by himself. Friday afternoon was sacred time; Rabbi Nadich would run sermon ideas by the rebbetzin, his respect for her such that if she didn’t approve, he returned to the drawing board. Hadassah was by all accounts a great intellect and feminist; in another day, it would have been she who was the Rabbi, though I have on good authority that in no way could Rabbi Nadich have been trusted to navigate a supermarket, never mind the kitchen. The Friday afternoons were not and never would be just about the food: as Alex grew up, he understood those hours to be time to talk about school, friends and relationships with his grandmother. It wasn’t just recipes Alex learned, it was the power of food to express relationships, to express love to him and to all the guests who felt honored and cherished to sit at Mrs. Nadich’s table. Alex understood that his grandmother’s gift was not merely her culinary talents, or for that matter her love for him, but her ability to make the everyday sacred, what we would call in Hebrew kedushah, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.

And it was at this point in the conversation that I understood that Alex and I were not just talking about food, nor for that matter about his grandparents of blessed memory. For me personally, it was a profoundly moving conversation. I was overwhelmed with a sense of stewardship, knowing I have been entrusted to shepherd our community forward no differently than those who came before me, or those who will follow. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the gracious generosity of this community, who have granted me the means to raise and educate and care for my family in a beautiful home, in this, the greatest city in the world. Most of all, I was overwhelmed with love: love for my wife Debbie, who as my partner in all things, gives of her time, wisdom, and leadership to strengthen our community, and who, even in the darkest hours, remains my most trusted confidante and fiercest supporter. Nobody, save for the exclusive sisterhood of Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Nadich, knows the terrain you walk as rebbetzin of our community. Like your predecessors, you do so with grace, and my love and gratitude know no bounds.

Moved as I was, and remain, I also understood that my conversation with Alex was neither about me nor Debbie – but about each one of us and the families from which we come. It was Proust who best understood the sentimental powers of food, a simple Madeleine cookie drawing out a remembrance of things past, to return – as the psalmist of the season writes – to the homes for which we long. Of course, the holidays are about the cantor’s voice, the sound of the shofar, and the order of the prayers. But it is the power of taste and recipes passed from one generation to the next that are our most reliable repositories of memory. Important as the synagogue may be, Jews are a table-centered religion. Sephardic, Ashenazic – traveling from land to land – the recipes are the ingredients, literally, that define us and connect us as a people, keeping old traditions and adding new ones along the way. The recipe that has been handed down in your family, the one that makes your family different from other families and that is shared when new people enter your family. The smell of the matzoh ball soup, the conversations with loved ones as food is prepared and as dishes are cleared from the table. It is the songs that are sung, the spilled wine on the tablecloth and the break-fasts from one year to the next.

Alex’s relationship with his late grandmother is instructive because it signals the most authentic and reliable manner by which tradition is passed down from generation to generation. In all our anxiety over the Jewish future, we forget that the most potent intervention to ensure Jewish continuity is not necessarily a Birthright trip or some other well-intended outsourcing of Jewish engagement. It is each one of us! By modeling our Judaism, by living it lovingly in the company of our children, grandchildren, and those we love most. And while the obligation lies primarily on parents, it is not solely their responsibility. Grandparents have a critical role to play, even when, perhaps especially when, our grandchildren’s homes are not the Jewish homes of their parent’s youth. Studies demonstrate that the most reliable predictor of future synagogue engagement is the memory of having attended synagogue with your grandparents. We should all support those institutions committed to building a Jewish future, including and especially this one. But in the year ahead, if you are really interested in building up the Jewish future, then know that your most powerful gesture need not involve reaching into your pocketbook. Bring your child or grandchild to shul. Cook a shabbos meal with them at your side, filling their hearts, their stomachs, and their memories with the seeds of love that will, I promise, bear fruit in the years to come.

A final thought. Since that night, I have sat in Hadassah’s kitchen many times. The cutting board is long gone, the walls painted over, and thankfully, the kitchen has been redone. Times change. In fact, I found the 1958 Times clipping with Mrs. Nadich’s original honey cake recipe, and as Alex himself notes, while inspired by his grandmother’s recipe, his is not the same. He omits her cloves, allspice, and raisins and adds an apple cider compote to the batter – moistening the cake and giving it a caramelized apple flavor. Truth be told, Alex shared with me, honey cake tends to be dry – probably the reason why most people usually have one slice and call it quits. So notwithstanding his reverence for his late grandmother, Alex embraced the opportunity and obligation to innovate on her recipes and transform her labors into something even more extraordinary, a dish that would speak not to the palate of 1958, but 2016. No differently than Rabbi and Mrs. Nadich themselves, who, though traditional in their sensibilities, would always embrace change. Be it recipes, women’s roles, LGBT inclusion or any other issue of the day, it is likewise incumbent upon our generation to step forward boldly. “What would his grandmother think of his modern takes on her baking rituals?” Joan Nathan asks Alex. “They might seem strange to her,” he replies “but she’d love them.” Park Avenue Synagogue has always been a place that has sought to strike a balance between respecting tradition and embracing change. In the days ahead, we will hear new melodies, and in the years ahead, in prayer, in learning, in all that we do, the ingredients will undoubtedly change. To do otherwise is to abdicate our responsibility to our present and future. As Hadassah Nadich once said before this entire community: “the word Halakhah [Jewish Law] means literally, movement or a going forward. To be true to its real nature, Jewish teachers will have to restore the spirit of change to the Halakhah, a spirit by which it has always been characterized.” (Sisterhood Shabbat, March 25, 1972, p. 6).

Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashanah. We are on the precipice of a new year, opening a new chapter in our lives, the lives of our families and the Jewish people. And yet with all the new, each one of us must understand ourselves as a transmitter of our people’s traditions passed from one generation to the next. The apples and honey, the brisket, the bagels, the strudel, the soup, and the honey cake. And no one should be without a piece of honey cake. Which is why as you leave shul this evening, I invite everyone to help yourself to a slice of Hadassah’s honey cake. Not as she prepared it in years gone by, but as her grandson Alex does today. This is, after all, a synagogue, not a Jewish museum. I am grateful to Alex and his colleagues for honoring his grandmother’s memory and our community with this gesture of characteristic Nadich hospitality. We are all honored by the presence of members of the Nadich family here with us this evening. And as we walk home tonight, honey cake in hand, let us embrace the new year, by embracing the traditions of our people – some new, some old and some . . . a blending of the two. Tonight, we seek to bridge the gap from one year to the next, from one generation, dor l’dor, to the next. May this year be filled with health, happiness and most of all honey-like sweetness for you, your families, the entire people of Israel, and all of humanity.