Hatboxes glossary: keeping kosher 2

A kosher kitchen requires separate utensils, tableware, and cookware for dairy and meat products, and some folks even use separate appliances and linens.

Rendering a kitchen kosher, called kashering, can seem intimidating:  everything must be deep-cleaned, pots and pans have to get submerged in boiling water (or hot coals get dropped into them as they boil water so the water surges over the lip), and silverware has to get boiled, too.  Things with porous surfaces may have to be disposed of altogether.

Miriam and Nadine kasher Nadine's kitchen in Hatboxes

Keeping kosher is a way of paying attention to what goes into your mouth in addition to what comes out of it and serves as a constant reminder of of a Jew's place on the spectrum of Jewish life and observance.

What food customs root you to your culture?

Hatboxes glossary: "get"

Deuteronomy 24:1 forms the legal precedent for Jewish divorce, and a rabbinic debate in the first century CE established an expansive basis for divorce:  only mutual consent is required.

© Jen Taylor Friedman, http://www.hasoferet.com/ritual/myget.shtml

While Jewish law was unique in the ancient world for enacting the option of divorce and creating the ketuba, a prenuptial contract protecting a woman's economic interests in case of divorce, women are not empowered to initiate the process of a religious divorce.  "The bill of divorcement"—the document effecting divorced, called a get—may only be issued by the husband or his representative, not the wife.  Thus, a married Orthodox Jewish woman is at the mercy of her estranged husband to issue the get; "agunah"—a "chained woman"—is the term for a woman whose husband has her confined in legal limbo.

How have you experienced institutionalized sexism in your life?

Hatboxes glossary: Shabbos

The second chapter of Genesis establishes the basis of the Sabbath (Hebrew:  שַׁבָּת, "Shabbat;" Yiddish:   שאבּעס,"Shabbos"):  after creating everything in six days, the Almighty not only rested on the seventh day but blessed it and established it as a day of rest for the whole world.

According to Jewish law, all creative, productive, or transformative action is to cease from sunset on Friday through sunset on Saturday. The Talmud defines 39 types of activities that people must not do while observing the Sabbath, including lighting fires, sewing, writing, building or demolishing anything, and driving a car has come to be prohibited.

Families gather for a special meal accompanied by singing and prayer.  Just before Friday's sunset, sabbath candles get lit, and a time different from the rest of the week in its rhythms and activity lasts for just over a full day.

Miriam, Nadine, Hannah, Sarah, and Ezer at Shabbos dinner in Hatboxes

What do you do on your day of rest?