we belong to each other

When I was in my sopho­more year of col­lege I spent a semes­ter on a expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing term in LA — tak­ing classes, intern­ing, and liv­ing with a fam­ily from a dif­fer­ent cul­tural back­ground. It’s where I met most of my favorite peo­ple. For our urban reli­gious move­ments class, I chose to do my research project on Judaism mostly because of this book: Tra­di­tions in a Root­less World: Women Turn to Ortho­dox Judaism.

In her book, Lynn David­man explores the resur­gence of Ortho­dox Judaism among mod­ern Amer­i­can women through the expe­ri­ences of two dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent groups of sin­gle Jew­ish Amer­i­can women as they return to their sec­u­lar roots at a con­tem­po­rary Ortho­dox syn­a­gogue (Lin­coln Square) in New York City and a Lubovitch Hasidic com­mu­nity (Bais Chana) in St. Paul, Min­nesota. The book is com­par­a­tive through­out and seeks to com­mu­ni­cate to a lay audi­ence why tra­di­tional reli­gious forms are attrac­tive to con­tem­po­rary women who have come of age since feminism.

You could, and I will, say that the slow food move­ment is a par­al­lel battle/journey. From the com­post of cus­toms a new plant will rise. Again and again, from struc­ture to unstruc­tured, unstruc­tured into new form. Each phoenix, with it’s own virtues, meets it’s end and is reborn. The post-feminism ortho­doxy is new and unable to exist out­side of it’s own con­text; the slow food move­ment is sim­i­larly marked and born from history.

With each ancient prac­tice relearned, we inevitably encounter. The inter­sec­tion of time and move­ment is a strange place.

If not for the health ben­e­fits, the envi­ron­ment, the farm­ers, or the pure ecstasy of taste… make things to encounter. You will be bet­ter for it.

There is magic in wel­com­ing out­siders and inte­grat­ing our­selves into the com­mu­nity of The Other, no? Per­haps this is the heart of my attrac­tion to cul­tur­ing foods. And so, with each oppor­tu­nity, we wel­come microor­gan­isms and are thus trans­formed by/through our col­lab­o­ra­tion. Food becomes eas­ier to digest and con­vert to energy, we become stronger and more resilient — our palates are rewarded by the won­der of tang and earth. We are bet­ter for being open.

Look­ing for water, we sink out roots deeper. We remem­ber that feel­ings of root­less­ness are a vehi­cle and not a place.

I think it was back in Sep­tem­ber when we made out first batch and we have never looked back. Store bought but­ter tastes like noth­ing and earth bal­ance, while deli­ciously nutty, just does not com­pare – where even are all of those ingre­di­ents sourced from? when were they har­vested? how much energy has gone into pro­duc­ing it? Anyways…

So here’s the drill:

1. Get your­self the best qual­ity cream you can. We usu­ally get 2 bottles/cartons of these lit­tle dudes.

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