Little Sparks
Eating an amazing meal is a sacred experience. Without any textual proof, I can confidently argue that. The sensory pleasure and playfulness that comes with the melding of smells, tastes, and textures is one of the great gifts of being alive. Food is our essential fuel, but what is the purpose of taste? Tastes that evoke memories, joy, and satiation. Taste that does something so profound it sometimes can’t be described other than doing a little dance or accidentally letting out a moan.
One of the Hasidic Masters Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl (1730-1787) writes, “It is known that the taste in all food and drinks is derived from the sparks of holy souls which lie within them. The food and drink are but vessels to contain those souls. He who performs an act of eating or drinking that is directed to heaven, making his table the table which is before Y-H-W-H [G-d] (Ezek. 41:22) is truly bringing an offering, drawing those souls again near to their source. If his eating is not of this quality, God Forbid, he destroys those souls…” (Rabbi Arthur Green’s Translation of Me’or Einayim by Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl.
This description is so striking to me. I imagine little sparks of holy souls skirting and swirling around my dining table as I sit down with friends to eat a beautiful meal. Maybe these souls are ancestors of ours and of others, whose recipes draw us near to generations of stories and memories.
Last week Jesse and I spent about eight hours cooking for a Shabbat lunch. It was a lot more time than we intended, but we were on a mission. We used a cookbook that my parents got me for Hanukkah called My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef: A Cookbook by the extremely talented chef Kwame Onwuachi. Each recipe in the book is crafted with a compilation of about a dozen base sauces that he teaches you how to make at the beginning of the book. Each dish has its own personality, but are all united in a shared flavor profile. We mostly made Jamaican dishes, many of which we recognize from smelling and tasting around our neighborhood. In cooking these dishes little sparks flew. When we ate our meal on Saturday afternoon it was an offering: of connection with neighbors, with friends, and with holy souls. And hopefully, we sent some aromas up to Shamayim.
