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The Sacred Table

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The Sacred Table

Name: The Sacred Table
Author: Rabbi Mary L. Zamore
ISBN: 9780881231700

Creating a Jewish Food Ethic

Edited by Rabbi Mary L. Zamore

Foreword by Rabbi Eric Yoffie

Preface by Nigel Savage

562 Pages6.00 × 9.00 × 1.20 in

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ISBN: 9780881231700
Published: 1st Jan 2011

$24.95

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The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic is an anthology of diverse essays on Jewish dietary practices. This volume presents the challenge of navigating through choices about eating, while seeking to create a rich dialogue about the intersection of Judaism and food. The definition of Kashrut, the historic Jewish approach to eating, is explored, broadened and, in some cases, argued with, in these essays. Kashrut is viewed not only as a ritual practice, but also as a multifaceted Jewish relationship with food and its production, integrating values such as ethics, community, and spirituality into our dietary practice.

The questions considered in The Sacred Table are broad reaching. Does Kashrut represent a facade of religiosity, hiding immorality and abuse, or is it, in its purest form, a summons to raise the ethical standards of food production? How does Kashrut enrich spiritual practice by teaching intentionality and gratitude? Can paying attention to our own eating practices raise our awareness of the hungry? Can Kashrut inspire us to eat healthfully? Can these laws draw us around the same table, thus creating community? In exploring the complexities of these questions, this book includes topics such as agricultural workers' rights, animal rights, food production, the environment, personal health, the spirituality of eating and fasting, and the challenges of eating together.

The Sacred Table celebrates the ideology of educated choice. The essays present a diverse range of voices, opinions, and options, highlighting the Jewish values that shape our food ethics. Whether for the individual, family, or community, this book supplies the basic how-tos of creating a meaningful Jewish food ethic and incorporating these choices into our personal and communal religious practices. These resources will be helpful if we are new to these ideas or if we are teaching or counseling others. Picture a beautiful buffet of choices from which you can shape your personal Kashrut. Read, educate yourself, build on those practices that you already follow, and eat well.

Acknowledgments
Foreword, ERIC H. YOFFIE
Preface, NIGEL SAVAGE
Introduction: A Buffet of Educated Choices
Voices: Small Bites

PART ONE • Perspective: History and Trends of Jewish Dietary Practices within Reform Judaism
1. Making Every Forkful Count: Reform Jews, Kashrut, and Mindful Eating, 1840–2010, CAROLE B. BALIN
2. The Myth of the T’reifah Banquet: American Culinary Culture and the Radicalization of Food Policy in American Reform Judaism, LANCE J. SUSSMAN
3. Kashrut: A Reform Point of View, SIMEON J. MASLIN, ED.
4. Adventures in Eating: An Emerging Model for Kashrut, RACHEL S. MIKVA
5. Kashrut: A New Freedom for Reform Jews, RICHARD N. LEVY
6. On Kashrut, SETH M. LIMMER
7. Kashrut and Autonomy, ALAN HENKIN
8. Is Dietary Practice Now in the Reform Mainstream? A Survey of Attendees at the 2005 Houston Biennial, RICHARD N. LEVY AND MARC GERTZ
9. Real Life / Real Food: A Holy Moment at McDonald’s, EUGENE B. BOROWITZ

PART TWO • Buffet of Educated Choices: Jewish Ritual Law
10. An Overview of Ritual Kashrut, MARY L. ZAMORE
11. Passover Kashrut: A Reform Approach, MARY L. ZAMORE
12. Real Life / Real Food: Kashrut—A Family History, ELLEN WEINBERG DREYFUS

PART THREE • Environmental Ethics: Bal Tashchit
13. Curb Your Consumerism: Developing a Bal Tashchit Food Ethic for Today, KEVIN M. KLEINMAN
14. Connecting Locally: Jumping Off the Production Line, BATSHEVA APPEL
15. On High-Tech Science and Our Food: Three Questions, MARK WASHOFSKY
16. Fish: A Complex Issue, JOEL MOSBACHER
17. Getting Back to the Garden, BARBARA LERMAN-GOLOMB
18. Real Life / Real Food: Let Your Table Be to You a Temple, JOSEPH AARON SKLOOT

PART FOUR • Kindness to Animals: Tzaar Baalei Chayim
19. Kindness to Animals: Tzaar Baalei Chayim, RAYNA ELLEN GEVURTZ
20. “I’ll Have What She’s Having”: Jewish Ethical Vegetarianism, MARK SAMETH
21. Continuity and Change in Reform Views of Kashrut 1883–2002: From the T’reifah Banquet to Eco-Kashrut, AARON SAUL GROSS 235
22. Meat Minimalism: Were We Meant to Be Ethical Omnivores? KAREN R. PEROLMAN
23. Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Making of a Reform Shochet, JOSH WHINSTON AND GERSH LAZAROW
24. Real Life / Real Food: A Letter to My Vegetarian Husband, ZOË KLEIN

PART FIVE • Concern for Oppressed Food Workers: Oshek
25. Oshek: The Meeting Point of Ritual Piety and Moral Purity in a Contemporary Reform Kashrut, RICHARD LITVAK
26. Our Dark Addictions: Chocolate, Coffee, and Tea, DEBORAH PRINZ
27. A Look Back at the Reform Movement’s Response to the United Farm Workers Grape Boycott, PETER E. KASDAN
28. Real Life / Real Food: Post-Postville and Onward, ROBERT J. MARX

PART SIX • Hechsher: Who Decides What Is Kosher?
29. Considering Hechsher, MARY L. ZAMORE
30. We Answer to an Even Higher Authority, ARIANA SILVERMAN
31. But Is the Mashgichah Kosher? MARY L. ZAMORE
32. Wine: Our Symbol of Joy, TERJE Z. LANDE AND OREN POSTREL
33. Real Life / Real Food: Kiddush and Mad Dog 20-20— A Kosher Combination? DEBORAH BODIN COHEN

PART SEVEN • Guarding Our Health: Sh’mirat HaGuf
34. Palates, Pilates, Politics: A Prophetic Vision for Eating, WILLIAM CUTTER
35. Of Pharisees and Allergies: Shulchan Shalom, DOUG SAGAL
36. Returning Food to Its Rightful Place: Eating Disorders in the Jewish Community, RUTH A. ZLOTNICK
37. Real Life / Real Food: Redefi ning Healthy Eating, For Life, JULIE PELC ADLER

PART EIGHT • Justice: Tzedek
38. Let All Who Are Hungry Come and Eat: Food Ethics, Tzedakah, and How We Celebrate, NEAL GOLD
39. Pricing Ourselves Out of the Market: Is Eating Kosher (Ritually and Ethically) a Privilege of the Rich? IRWIN ZEPLOWITZ
40. Raising Our Voices for Food Justice, MICHAEL NAMATH AND RACHEL COHEN
41. Real Life / Real Food: Bread, Torah, and Tikkun, LINDA MOTZKIN AND JONATHAN RUBENSTEIN

PART NINE • Spirituality
42. Food Preparation as a Holy Act: Hafrashat Challah, RUTH ABUSCH-MAGDER
43. The Joy and Privilege of Blessings Before and After a Meal, BENNETT F. MILLER
44. We Eat First: A Congregational Snapshot, ELLEN LIPPMANN AND TRISHA ARLIN
45. What I Eat Is Who I Am: Kashrut and Identity, PETER KNOBEL
46. Tzom: Fasting as a Religious/Spiritual Practice, SUE LEVI ELWELL
47. Real Life / Real Food: An Introduction to Hunger, DONALD A. WEBER

PART TEN • Making Your Choices: Shalom
48. Your Personal Kashrut: Sh’leimut and Sh’lom Bayit, MARY L. ZAMORE
49. Creating a Reform Communal Dietary Policy, JEFFREY BROWN
50. Real Life / Real Food: Kosher Christmas Dinner, MARY L. ZAMORE

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Rabbi Mary L. Zamore is the editor of and a contributing author to two acclaimed CCAR Press Challenge and Change anthologies, The Sacred Exchange: Creating A Jewish Money Ethic (2019) and The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic (2011). The Sacred Table was designated a finalist by the National Jewish Book Awards. Rabbi Zamore served as consulting editor for Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family (CCAR Press, 2012) and contributed toLights in the Forest: Rabbis Respond to Twelve Essential Jewish Questions (CCAR Press, 2014), and The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate (CCAR Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies. Rabbi Zamore was ordained by Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1997 and serves as the Executive Director of the Women's Rabbinic Network, an affiliate of the CCAR. She is the co-leader of the Reform Pay Equity Initiative. Having visited numerous communities, Rabbi Zamore is available for lectures and scholar-in-residence programs. She will work with your community to customize any program. Her presentations explore topics like, but are not limited to: Tithing, Tzedaka and Other Ways of Creating a Just World, Judaism's View of Wealth: Good or Bad?, The Moral and Spiritual Challenge of Wealth, We should and Can Talk about Money Three Money Texts Every Jew Should Know, Your Sacred Table: Jewish Food Ethics Coveting vs. Contentment, Learn to Build a Mishkan, not a Golden Calf, The Power of the Fork: Eating with Ethics, Liberal Jews & Kashrut: Really!?, Creating Communal Food Policies, The Bitter Side of Chocolate and Other Fair Trade Issues, What Chameitz, Matzah, & Manna Can Teach Us for Today, Kosher Wine and Its Challenges – The Spirituality of Fasting, Queen Esther and Her Quest for Empowerment through Food. Rabbi Zamore's presentations can include sermons, in-depth text study, wine or food tastings, as well as adult, religious school, or family programs. She can also help communities design yearlong study programs, multi-session classes, or multifaceted single events, modeled around the themes of The Sacred Table or The Sacred Exchange.

This volume is exactly what the Jewish community needs. The Sacred Table takes on the big questions about what it means to eat in a way consistent with our values in the age of the factory farm and industrial food. Especially impressive is the way it brings Jewish insights to bear on animal protection, ecological issues, and dietary choices like going vegetarian or being a selective omnivore. There is no better resource on Judaism and food available today.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals and Everything is Illuminated

This important and beautifully written book of essays encouraging liberal Jews to develop a values-based dietary practice is in the best Reform tradition of mining Jewish rituals for their spiritual potential. It reminds us that what we put in our mouths has a lot to say about who we are and what we value--a conversation on everyone's lips today.
-- Sue Fishkoff, author of Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority

Reform Jews have been evolving their own, unique American form of kashrut for generations. Zamore's The Sacred Table is, effectively, its proto-Talmud. These essays do not justify what we've left out, they focus, instead, on what Reform Jews are respectfully adding to Jewish legal tradition. They testify to both Reform Judaism's growing maturity and tradition's continued vitality. This is the right book, by all the right people, at the right time.
-- Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, The Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-Fl of San Francisco and the author of several books on Jewish spirituality and mysticism, including, I'm God; You're Not Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego

There is something for everyone to read and reflect on in the essays compiled in The Sacred Table. We are such an interesting, diverse people, running the gamut from vegetarian to kashrut-observing Jews. Now Reform rabbis and thinkers share their own thoughts on how to better set our own sacred tables so that we will be more conscious of ethical eating as we dip our forks into our food.
-- Joan Nathan, author of 10 cookbooks, including Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France

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