Shavu-what?

Why do we eat cheese on the Jewish Holiday Shavuot?

By: Rebecca Kazhdan

Confession: I don’t know much about Shavuot. I do, however, know that I can get behind anything that celebrates cheese. Cheese is one of those guilty pleasures that I could eat all day long. Therefore, when a golden opportunity arises to have a non-stop dairy celebration, we all need to partake and honor the delicious goodness of cheese.

So what is Shavuot really about? To maintain some Delicious Israel blogging integrity, I sat down with my know-it-all friend (Google) to figure it out. Turns out it is a very important occasion and worthy of celebration. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments were given to the Jewish people and they became a nation committed to serving God. The reasons for eating dairy include:

• Dairy is associated with the nurturing and love of a mother nursing her baby, representing the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai
• When the Jewish people received the Torah on Shavuot, they were commanded to only eat meat that was ritually slaughtered. The Torah was given on Shabbat when it was forbidden to slaughter animals, forcing them to eat dairy for the rest of the holiday.
• The Gematria (numerical value) of the Hebrew word for milk (chalav) is 40, which corresponds to the 40 days and 40 nights that Moses spent on Mt. Sinai before bringing down the Torah.

There is no better time than Shavuot to introduce a recent obsession of the Delicious Israel staff, burrata! Burrata is a fresh Italian cheese made up of mozzarella and cream. It has been around for some time, but only recently has been gaining popularity here in Israel. An article dedicated to the cheese was recently featured in Time Out Tel Aviv and is one of the most popular pizzas at De Peppe Pizzeria, a Delicious Israel favorite. Burrata can be found at specialty cheese shops - including in the Carmel and Machane Yehuda Markets - and is easily identifiable by a blue string tied around it. We recommend incorporating it in your Shavuot dishes this year!

Tel Aviv Thanksgiving and Some Sweet Support

By Rebecca Kazhdan 

Thanksgiving came at a very fitting time this year. Generally, I am cynical about most American holidays. In past years I viewed Thanksgiving as an excuse to overeat and represent the official kick-off to the Christmas season, with Black Friday becoming a more anticipated day than Thanksgiving itself. But after a week of rockets bombarding the country, tens and thousands of soldiers being called to reserve duty and a bus being bombed right here in Tel Aviv, nothing seemed better than to come together with friends and express our gratitude. As the ceasefire was announced on the night before Thanksgiving, a collective sigh of relief was let out. Despite political differences, we were thankful to return to some sort of normalcy and a Thanksgiving dinner (celebrated here on Friday because we need all day to cook a turkey!) with delicious food and good company was the perfect way to ease back into that normalcy.

My friend Stephanie and several of her college friends who made Aliyah have a six year tradition of celebrating the holiday together. As the years have gone by, the number of attendees has grown and it was my first time joining the hosts and their forty guests at Stephanie’s apartment. The potluck style dinner gave me the chance to enjoy all of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes and then some. My personal favorite was the turkey, a collective effort of the organizers. Other tasty dishes included mashed potatoes, corn bread, sautéed green beans, quiches and a wild rice salad. My personal contribution was a cranberry-pomegranate sauce and upside pear and cranberry cake. The atmosphere was warm and friendly as we sat, ate and talked.

The unsettling events of the previous week made me appreciate this more than I could have imagined. I was thankful to be safe with good friends, living peacefully in my favorite city.

The same cannot be said of those in the south of Israel. If you’re interested in helping out, you can donate to our Sweet Support Initiative which provides delivers chocolates to the soldiers risking their lives on a daily basis to protect Israel and our democracy.

Best Thanksgiving in Tel Aviv