Eggs at Easter. Matzah at Passover. Dates at Ramadan. Before reading became fundamental, the lessons and remembrances of faiths were passed on through spoken stories, songs, artwork — and food.
“Many of these symbols were ways of communicating ideas to a large public that had no ability to read or write,” explains Peter Mena, an assistant professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego.
What made the traditions stick around even after most believers could read and write?
“I imagine it’s because we like rituals,” Mena says. “They connect us to our past and offer rich and powerful connections to our ancestors and to each other.”
But as one San Diego rabbi cautions, don’t stop with just repeating the ritual. “I tell my students to ask questions, to understand,” says Rabbi Mendel Polichenco of the Chabad of Carmel Valley. “It’s not enough to eat the matzah. You have to know what it represents.”
With the arrival of Easter today, the ending of Passover this evening and the start of Ramadan next week, consider this a primer.
Easter: Ham and eggs
Today is Easter Sunday, Christianity’s celebration of Jesus’ resurrection after being put to death three days earlier. Even in COVID times, where there are children, there are bound to be Easter egg hunts.
The egg, which Mena says didn’t become an Easter icon until several centuries after the resurrection, is often used to illustrate both the sealed empty tomb and new life. “The egg sort of symbolizes the relationship between Christians and Christ and this resurrection moment,” Mena explains.
Orthodox Christians traditionally painted the eggs red, to signify the blood of Christ. “Of course today we’ve taken on all sort of pastels and lovely colors.”
Mena himself uses the egg in his classes to illustrate the trinity — the Christian concept that God exists in three “persons,” God the father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The PowerPoint slide “shows an egg and it has a yolk and the white and then the shell, all the things that are separate but you think of as one thing.”
The symbolic power of bread and wine harks back to the Last Supper in the New Testament. Today, they comprise the sacrament of Communion (although some substitute grape juice for the wine).
The origin stories of a few Easter foods, however, may be more folklore than fact. Among them: hot cross buns and pretzels. The buns, which are said to be marked with a cross to remind Christians of the crucifixion cross, are sometimes credited to an Anglican monk while other versions suggest they predate Christianity. And again depending on what you read, pretzels either were the creation of a seventh century Italian monk to illustrate the crossed arms in prayer or go back to Celtic observances.
Which brings us to Easter dinner. While ham may be the more popular entree at American tables, lamb is the tradition in many other parts of the world. Lamb is said to symbolize Jesus’ sacrifice on Good Friday — the sacrificial lamb for humanity, hence the phrase “lamb of God.” It also pays homage to the Passover story in Exodus.
There are some who question the appropriateness of ham at Easter, since Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew — and ham is not kosher. It is, one Christian writer observed, a “strange and deeply divisive act.”
However, how ham became a menu centerpiece appears to have more to do with plain old secular practicality. Basically: pigs were slaughtered in the fall and by spring the cured hams were ready to eat.
Passover: Seder’s symbols
When it comes to symbolic foods, Passover is on steroids.
The weeklong Jewish holiday, which concludes this evening, commemorates the Hebrews’ liberation from bondage in Egypt as recounted in the book of Exodus.
Traditionally, the first two nights feature choreographed dinners called Seders, which come with a special plate of foods to help retell the Passover story. The Passover checklist includes matzah, an unleavened bread that signifies the haste in which they fled Egypt (there was no time for bread to rise), a bitter herb like horseradish to symbolize the bitterness of slavery, a paste of fruits and nuts that represent the mortar they made as slaves, salty water for the tears and sweat of their plight, and so on.
“There are many rituals and everything has a spiritual meaning,” says Rabbi Polichenco of the Chabad of Carmel Valley.
But Polichenco, who also directs the Chabad Without Borders program in Mexico, urges Jews to push beyond the surface of the symbolism to analyze more deeply how each one may relate to today’s challenges. “The Seder, the exodus, all those are beautiful stories, but the secret to keeping those is to understand and to experience what everything means and how it improves our lives when we live with those traditions.”
Take the matzah, for example. “What’s the difference between bread and matzah?” he begins. “The difference is that bread is full of air.”
He launches into what it means to be full of air. “Bread represents a person who has a big ego. Why? Because having a big ego, being too proud of something, you’re full of hot air.” And just like fire cannot exist without oxygen, “all of our behavior that is destructive to humans is fueled by this air, by this ego.”
Horseradish is traditionally symbolic of the bitterness of Jews’ time in bondage. But Polichenco says it also should help people to remember that life isn’t a smooth road. “You have to go through bitter in order to appreciate the sweet.” And in remembering that suffering, to also remember something else: “Don’t treat others that way.”
Ramadan: Absence of food
While Easter and Passover use food to help reteach the lessons, the holy month of Ramadan is about going without food and drink during the daylight hours. Then, each evening, Muslims break the fast with a special communal meal, called an iftar, that often begins with eating dates or drinking water — reminiscent of the way the Prophet Muhammad did in his lifetime (but this practice is a choice, not a rule).
This year, Ramadan is expected to start here on the evening April 12.
Marwa Abdalla, a Ph.D. student in communication at the University of California San Diego and a frequent community speaker about Islam, likes to describe Ramadan as a spiritual boot camp. If you have the strength to fast during all those daylight hours, consider what else you can accomplish.
“So if I’m able to give up food and drink for that many hours in the day, then I can also cultivate in myself certain spiritual strengths and I can purify or remove spiritual vices,” she explains.
Maybe you have a bad habit of lying or feeling jealous. “And so in the Islamic tradition, those would be things that we seek really strongly to rid ourselves of in an effort to not only get closer to our Creator but also to serve the people around us in goodness and to work toward justice,” Abdalla says.
The Ramadan fast also is a way to help build empathy for those who face the challenge of hunger every day — and to try to do something about it, such as feeding those who don’t have enough and setting up more lasting solutions. “That is a huge, huge emphasis.”
Reading the entire Quran during that month also is emphasized. For Abdalla, there’s something about fasting that helps clear the mind so she can focus on what she’s reading. “It’s almost like without the distraction of anything material, I can sit down every day for an hour and study Quran and I feel like I get so much more benefit out of that practice during Ramadan than I do outside of it.”
After sunset, the iftar meal is a special time of coming together with others to share food, prayer and community. “It’s such a beautiful moment,” she says.
Last year, COVID nixed those communal moments. “It was the first year we had a completely virtual Ramadan,” she remembers. This year? “I think we’re still waiting to know what exactly is going to be OK.”
For the record, several other religions also have holidays — and food rituals — this month. The Hindu new year, which will overlap with Ramadan, calls for using bitter parts of the neem tree in food dishes, offering a symbolic reminder that life has its bittersweet ups and downs.
Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: sandidolbeecolumns@gmail.com.
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