Today is Tisha B'Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, which is when we commemorate the destruction of both Temples, in Jerusalem. Along with every other tragedy that occurred to the Jews; the exiles, the pogroms, the crusades. For context, there are 44 Kinnot (lamenting verses), and years, centuries later, three about the Holocaust were added. It's the saddest day of the year. We fast, we go completely in mourning, we sit on lowered seats, we cry.
There's not really a good way to end this. I hate this day, but hope that soon, it will turn into a day of celebrating. Take care. Easy fast for all those observing.
Now, I actually very famously hate baking, and oh my gosh, it's a lot of effort, but these hamantaschen are worth it. Legit my favorite ones, better than any bakery I've had from. Not overly hard, but still crunchy, yet still soft.
Recipe:
1 Cup sugar
3 eggs (plus more for eggwash)
1 stick margarine/pareve butter replacement
Half a lemon (both juice and zest) OR 2-3 teaspoons of lemon juice
Around 3 cups flour (plus more for rolling)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch baking soda
Jam/jelly/filling of choice
Optional:
1/4 Cup corn meal
6 teaspoons chocolate powder (for HALF the dough)
If you add cornmeal to the chocolate, add 1/4 Cup sugar to dough
350°F about twenty minutes (but check them after fifteen), and the chocolate about twenty five.
Sorry, I don't know metric measurements.
Pictures, and how to fold them under cut!
Doughs!
Flour the heck out of your rolling station and rolling pin every time you roll out a bit of dough. Every. Time.
Rolled dough, I have no idea how thick it is, I go by feel. I don't have cookie cutters, but I do have a glass that I always use! The important thing is consistency. In both pictures, really.
Egg wash around the outside of the circle, then put filling (apricot in this one) in the center. Really not a lot of filling. You'll notice that I do one row at a time; this is so that the egg around the rim doesn't dry out. It's store bought and delicious. If you like the chunky kind, that's absolutely fine, it works very well in hamantaschen.
I did this one-handed lmao help.
Three-step fold! Little bit of flap from one third of the edge folded towards the center, then the next third, then the last. I tried to get a video but couldn’t set it up anywhere. Then eggwash over the top before you put them in the oven.
The finished products! The chocolate dough has cherry in it.
You will notice that there's a few on the non-chocolate that are misshapen where one of the flaps fell down. You know what you do with these? These are the taste test ones. And if there's a few more than what you rant to nosh on right now? Who cares, they're fine. Just looks un-factory made. I had some from the chocolate batch that came out worse, but I ran out of picture space on the post. (Now in a reblog) And they're still extremely edible and just as delicious!
We're supposed to eat seven species of fruits that grow in Israel. We gave the first of these fruits to the Temple during Temple times.
These foods are:
Wheat, barley, olives, grapes, pomegranate, figs, and dates.
Here's what I made!
Barley with figs, olives (black and green), grapes, (later added almonds) and the liquid is pomegranate juice, Olive oil, date syrup. Also pickled jalapeño juice, a bit of Dijon mustard, and some white wine vinegar.
what exactly does a mashgiach do? Is it like being a chef?
So; yes and no.
A mashgiach is what I like to describe as a "kosher supervisor." (Technically I'm a mashicha because female, but that's stupid and I'm electing to ignore it.) Some of the basics include just making sure that nobody brings in anything not kosher, including something without a hashgacha (kosher symbol) or bringing something dairy into a meat kitchen (see previous ask about this lmao.)
More things include; turning on pilot lights, and ovens, because there's a rule about non-Jews not "cooking" food for Jews, so we have to take care of that.
We also are involved in a lot of checking! For example, we can't consume blood or any insects. Any eggs have to be cracked open into a clear container to look for blood spots. We also have to check any produce that might contain bugs in it (the most common being aphids, thrips, black spider mites, and sometimes flies.) This can range from lettuce which can be relatively straightforward to tricky things like herbs. Or berries and broccoli, oh my gosh, I'm not even trained in those, those are difficult, there's so many bugs.
But I am involved in cooking, because I went to (kosher!) culinary school and am trained in it, and was hired first as a cook/clerk for our department in the supermarket, and later was okayed as a mashgiach.
Amusing story time! There was a mashgiach that came in to train the other mashgiachs (mashgichim) on bug checking (I'd already completed my training. I had to go into Brooklyn, though, but that's another story.) He brought in asparagus as an example of why we don't use it in the agency we're with, because it's loaded with bugs.
One of the store managers was watching, and when I came in, she said "I'm disgusted. I'm never eating asparagus again. I'm never eating vegetables again. There were so many bugs." And then like two weeks later, she pulls me aside and says "Listen, I just want you to know I had asparagus last night. I just. I've just accepted I'm eating bugs. I can't." And I laughed so hard at her.
dvar torah about vashti, i thought it was interesting in the context of your post https://www.myjewishlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Recharge-Friday-31425.pdf
Pasting it here, so other people can see it easier. It is interesting, and it gives another interpretation to it. I liked the parallels between Vashti and Yosef, and use of the same word. The author, however, failed to provide a picture of cat Vashti, so massive points off.
Also, find it funny that both of us were like "I disagree with you completely! We're mutuals now!" 😂
Vashti being afflicted because she was a Jew hater is complete midrash found in BT Megillah 12b.
It's not incorrect to reframe her refusal within a feminist context, given that her husband was drunk with his friends and demanding that she appear before them in the nude. It's just another midrash, albeit more modern.
Thank you for the further information! Posting this in connection to my previous ask.
Okay, so. Janus at the end. Sitting in a tree, eating an apple. I had a literal fridge brilliance moment at work when I was in the fridge. That's. That's a biblical thing.
More under the cut; very Jewish perspective on it.
Okay, so first of all, I didn't even realize what it was supposed to represent, because apple. And I'm going to make another post at some point or another comparing the Catholicism in DWIT to the same topics in Judaism, so I'll talk more about the apple thing there. But for now I'll just leave it at "we don't know what grew on the tree in Eden, it's highly debated, but everyone agrees it's not an apple."
Anyway. Onto the point. Janus, snake side, is in a tree eating an apple. And then I was like. Okay. Apple, snake. Makes sense because the snake tempted Adam and Chava (Eve's name in Hebrew) with the fruit of the tree- he was in a tree.
So, the tree in the Garden of Eden. The tree of knowledge. The tree when, upon eating from its fruit, you cannot unlearn what you've realized. In Judaism, it's referred to the Tree of Knowledge Between Good and Evil, which might be me looking too much into it, but hasn't that been a huge plot point between the "dark" and "light" sides?
And Janus has been the one holding the knowledge of the other sides back. Including himself, that's his job. So to see him sitting there, eating an apple. Tempting us, taunting us with the knowledge that we know is there, that he knows.
i am near positive those details are not in the megillah itself. traditional midrash is still midrash and it's not accurate or charitable to say anyone is "incorrect" for ignoring what is basically a popular headcanon
Correct on the first sentence! They're not. I've read The Whole Megillah. (pause for laughter)
Okay, so, I edited my first response to...I guess you? But I think it was as you were writing this one, so don't mind me being repetitive. I'm a ba'al teshuvah, I was raised in a conservative shul.
I hadn't ever heard of midrash in general, and I still don't Know it, I just pretty much know what I learn in classes. I'm generally Chabad learning, but I did learn some of this in non-Chabad classes. I legitimately didn't know that midrash was contended. (Which I'll admit is on me.)
So I went to my friend @i-can-kazoo (permission to tag received) and we talked, and I learned some more. It is apparently generally accepted that she was cruel, but I will absolutely accept that I came from a place of misinformation.
