Gleaming Flaxen Waxen

 lot of my readers asked about the wicks I described in Apple of Sodom. What happened? Did they work?

The short answer is they were fabulous! Never did we have such a clean-burning Menorah and the wicks seemed to stay lit forever. We lit at around 5 PM and at 1 AM, those wicks were still going strong.

We told Yitzchak to go ahead and make some more wicks for the second night. Which he did. Same results. Worked a treat!

But today he balked. *sigh* He said the stuff made his nose itch. I think it was more about it no longer being a novelty. I let him go ahead and make the wicks from regular cotton wool, as we have done every other year.

However, it bothered me. I liked that the wicks from the Tapuach Sdom had so much meaning and because they burned so well, too. It added something. Since I had ample material left in that seedpod Yitzchak brought home, I really didn't want it to go to waste.

So I asked Asher to give it a go. Not a good idea. He began to kvetch almost immediately.

I was super busy with baking and other tasks today but it occurred to me that maybe I should take a look and see if there was some way to make the process of rolling the wicks more pleasant. I sat down next to Asher, pulled some of the fluff from the seedpod and began to roll it between my palms. It hit me right away: it was just like spinning flax!

I have done a lot of odd things through the years to bring in money here and there for our large family. One of the things I did was spin linen thread to be used for weaving priestly garments for a museum exhibit. These garments were identical to those worn by the High Priest during the performance of his priestly duties at the Temple.

As a novice spinner, I started with wool.This was easy stuff to work with, due to the natural lanolin contained in the wool. It just slipped through your hands. But flax was a whole different ballgame.


Flax was dry. The only way to keep the spinning wheel going instead of catching and stuttering was to wet the fibers from a bowl of water kept nearby. I'd dip my fingers into the bowl whenever the works started to run dry.

After awhile, I developed a nice rhythm. My thread was very fine and I was proud to give some to my mother, who is a weaver. I was very proud, too, that my thread was used to make this important exhibit that is still on view today.


That was over 2 decades ago. But when I sat down to see what was up with making the wicks from the Tapuach Sdom, it hit me that the stuff was dry like flax, which is also of plant origin. I brought a little bowl of water, dipped my fingers in and got to work. Viva la difference!

I showed Asher and he saw I was right. The job went very fast after that, and we used up the rest of the fibers in the seedpod. We got a generous yield of wicks out of that one seedpod.

We may not ever have another Tapuach Sdom for Chanuka menorah wicks, but I'm glad we had this special material for at least this one year. It really added a lot of meaning to our holiday.

Shaken not Stirred

he kids have school off for Chanuka which turned out to be useful for me. I am under doctor's orders not to pick anything up above a certain weight and I wanted to buy a sack of potatoes. Chanuka means potato latkes (pancakes).

I brought Asher along to the store to pick up the sack of potatoes, put it in my shopping cart, lift it onto the cashier's conveyer belt, put it back in the cart, and then transfer it to the little cart I use to shlep the groceries home. Kids are useful that way...Besides, I knew he was dying to spend some alone time with me. He is of an age where we need to find excuses to spend time together.

It was nice having him along. He asked me to buy him stuff at the store, but that's par for the course. I had allowed for that in my budget.

The only catch was that the store was out of microwave popcorn. I'd wanted to stock up because the kids are home for the week and they enjoy making popcorn and watching movies. Asher and I looked up and down all the aisles twice and didn't find any. I said, "Well, maybe I'll just have to make popcorn from scratch."

Asher turned a quizzical face to me and said, "How do you MAKE popcorn?"

"OMG," thought I. "What had I wrought? Did I actually have a child who didn't know how popcorn was made??"

That settled the matter right there and then: I was going to buy and make popcorn. This was quite clearly a necessary aspect of my son's education.

You see, in the days before microwaves, I was actually the popcorn queen. I used to make a kilo of the stuff every single Friday. This was the family treat for Shabbes. It was filling, crunchy, satisfying, and most of all: inexpensive.

We had a lot of kids and deemed Shabbes treats an important part of their Jewish education. We wanted our kids to love Shabbes. Popcorn served us very well as a way to make our kids feel the joy of the day without us having to spend a fortune.

Making popcorn had been a part of my week for so many years that I was shocked to discover that Asher didn't have any recollection of homemade popcorn in his memory bank. But you see, it's like I raised more than one generation of children. My eldest turns 31 tonight. Asher is 11. My daughter's memories of childhood are by nature, going to be vastly different than those of Asher.

Still, I was appalled that he really didn't know how real popcorn was made. It was like growing up in the city and thinking that milk came from the supermarket rather than from cows. It was akin to forgetting how to play with Lego because of spending too much time on the computer. It seemed my duty as a parent to show Asher that popcorn can be made with love by a mom.

So even though it was the last thing I needed to add to my to-do list for today, I bought a bag of popcorn. We brought it home and I showed Asher how to check the kernels for signs of infestation as per Jewish law. Then I got out my big heavy pot and showed him how I do the popcorn thing. It involves a lot of heavy-duty shaking. The heavy pot and the shaking: those are the two big secrets to popcorn making.

I made so much popcorn that it filled a large plastic dish basin. The kids were amazed at how much better it tasted than the microwave stuff they're used to eating. And I cooked it up in no time flat.

On Chanuka, the custom is to eat foods fried in oil, to commemorate the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting 8 days; the length of time it took to get more pure olive oil to light the Temple Menorah. It seemed fitting that in addition to potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts, the Epsteins also had low-tech popcorn, cooked in a pot with canola oil. Much more fitting than a cellophane wrapped bag you zap with microwaves.

Chappy Chanuka!

Apple of Sodom

itzchak went on a school trip with his classmates to Wadi Kelt not long ago and came home with what looked like an apple. But looks are deceptive. Yitzchak popped it open and the fruit was empty saved for an exotic-looking seedpod about the size and approximate shape of a rabbit's foot. Covered with little brown seeds, the pod looked a bit like a puny pine cone. The thing just begged to be touched.

So I touched it. And promptly snatched my hand back. The thing felt ALIVE. Ew. Creepy.

Yitzchak told us that the "fruit" is called "Tapuach Sodom" which translates to Apple of Sodom. The moniker comes from its deceptive looks. The fruit appears to be an apple, but is empty except for the seedpod and a toxic fluid: nothing good can come from the fruit. All this hints at the deceptive nature of those who lived in the evil city of Sodom as depicted in the bible.

Yitzchak, told us that after the pod dried, the fibers attached to the seeds could be used as wicks for lighting the Chanukia, the Chanuka Menorah (candelabra). We thought the idea kind of dubious, but we were willing to see how things played out.

I couldn't help but ask Yitzchak about a seeming contradiction here: the plant is called Apple of Sodom because it is deceptive and nothing good can come of it, yet the fluffy fibers contained within the seedpod can be used for a holy purpose, for the lighting of the menora!

Yitzchak had a good answer at the ready: the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt to the ground. The use of the plant mimics the sad end of those biblical cities.

I Googled the subject and discovered that Josephus mentions the plant in his writings and that it was found near Sodom. Its Latin name is Calotropis Procera. Marilyn Manson wrote a seriously creepy song called Apple of Sodom with the fade out line being: "I've got something you can never eat."





Yitzchak left the seedpod on a shelf in my kitchen next to our collection of cereal boxes. Every time someone took down a box of cereal, the darned seedpod fell and someone would have to PICK IT UP. It felt like touching a dead hand. Seriously creepy.

After a few days, it at last occurred to me that there was no law preventing me from moving the seedpod to a different home. I put it on the tray that holds my Shabbes candlesticks, atop my piano in the living room. By this time, it was clear that the seedpod had undergone a metamorphosis. The seeds were starting to loosen and the fibers were light and silky.

Tonight is the first night of Chanuka and so I told Yitzchak to have at the seedpod and see if he could make some wicks. He just finished up. They look just as good as the wicks I make from cotton every year. I can't wait to see how they burn.

Happy Chanuka!

Nu Testament

Until I was around 4 years old, I thought that everyone was Jewish. Judaism, to me, seemed monolithic, the whole point, the only thing there was. So, it must have been December circa 1965 that I approached my childhood friend and neighbor, Susie McElvaney and asked her, "What did you get for Chanuka?"

Susie responded, "We don't have Chanuka, we have Christmas."

"What's that?" asked I, clueless.

"Well, Jews have Chanuka, and Christians have Christmas."

"What is 'Christian?'"

"It's a religion. Like being Jewish is a religion. You're Jewish, I'm Christian."

"Wait. You mean you're not Jewish??"

I was crestfallen. To me this indicated some kind of blemish in my favorite playmate and seemed to be something that was irrevocable. I remember feeling very sad and disturbed that there was a sudden gap between me and Susie, between her family and my own. I found it difficult to grapple with this concept and felt depressed.

Within days, I had come to terms with the idea that not everyone is the same or has the same beliefs, but I found myself very curious about Christianity. I picked up bits and pieces about the religion from my reading, and from my friends, but I think what brought home the whole issue to me in its entirety was the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Once I figured out the gist of Christianity, I was stymied—how on earth could anyone believe such a wild story, I wondered? I mean, did people really believe a guy could be God, subsequently die, but they think he's going to come back and rule over the world as a reincarnation? How could God die? I mean, if he's God, he can't die—isn't that the point?

So, my little ten year old mind had passed judgment, nay dismissed concepts that great minds had wrestled with for 19 plus centuries. Of course, big mouth that I was, I couldn't keep this discovery to myself. I had to share the joke. At home among family members, I was thought of as quite the comedian. I could always bring down the house with my antics. Why not try out my act on the schoolyard, thought I?

The next day, I heard the kids singing the title song from the musical. I was ready. I lifted my arms out at my sides and called out in an authoritative, hopefully Godly voice, "I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ Superstar, come to rule over the earth!"

I waited for the guffaws to roll in. Curiously, they did not. Or rather, the kids laughed all right, but not because they thought I was funny—they thought I was wacked up in the head.

From then on, whenever kids would see me, they'd call out, "Hey, look! It's the reincarnation of Jesus Christ Superstar," and they'd expect me to go into my Varda on the Cross imitation. It was horrible. They were ridiculing me. But I couldn't think how to gracefully change my situation.

For years, this went on even after I switched schools. My former classmates and others from that school would see me on the street and call out, "There she is, "Jesus' reincarnation," and they'd laugh and point to me and I'd dutifully hold my arms out at my sides and wink divinely.

It boggles my mind today, as a mother of children, just how permanent that whole episode became; how that one little bit of playacting colored my entire childhood and made me miserable and unpopular for years. In fact, I kind of suppressed this memory until a short time ago when I met up with old friends from that school on Facebook.

I told my husband what had happened and he just couldn't believe I had started such a dumb routine going. He was embarrassed for me. I'm still not sure I should have told him about this whole business. But in the interest of full disclosure, as they say, I guess it was important for him to know about this (gulp) formative experience. Just hope my kids never find out…