|
|
||
HOME
|
|
Old Flour and New CommitmentsJanuary 2006From the Desk of Rabbi CohonOne night after
dinner recently our family’s dessert was a package of kosher rogelach,
the delicious layered cookies that came, in this case, in a plastic bag
imported from Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
I was reopening the bag to take out an extra rogelah—the
singular form of rogelach—when I spotted a Hebrew inscription on
the bag: na’aseh mikemach yashan,
“made with old flour.” While I am familiar with most of the ways that
kosher certification is conveyed on products this was a new one to me. Just what could
“old flour” be, and why was it desirable to use it in baked goods? As I do when
confronted with a Halachic (Jewish legal) question in an area in which I
lack real expertise, I called my rebbe—in
this case, my father, Rabbi Baruch Cohon.
He had not heard of the “kemach
yashon, old flour” standard either, but researched it immediately. The answer was
quite interesting, and elaborate, as kashrut issues tend to be. In
one section of Deuteronomy the Torah speaks about making an offering from a
new crop of wheat, called the omer,
before we are permitted to use it to make bread for personal use.
We are commanded to give a portion of the new wheat (called chadash)
to others before we can derive benefit from it ourselves. That’s where
the concept of “old flour” as a good thing comes from.
That is, before we can enjoy the fruits of our own efforts we need to
provide for charity. “New” produce, therefore, hasn’t contributed to the
greater good of the community, and cannot be used until it has. In a society
like ours that is obsessed with the novel, it is useful to discover an area
in which “old” is, by definition, preferable to “new”; as I age,
this concept becomes increasingly agreeable
But there is more here, and it is helpful for us as we enter this new
secular year. In financial
terms, the IRS decrees that the New Year begins January 1st.
That means that all charitable deductions for the 2005 year are
complete, and we tend to think that means we don’t need to consider giving
again until December 2006. That,
is starting January 1st we are in the period of our earnings that
constitute the new, chadash, and
our tendency is to use them for ourselves first, and worry about charity
later. But the notion
of kemach yashan, of giving tzedakah
before deriving benefit from our earnings, is both more Jewish, and a
more meaningful way to live. I encourage you
to find new meaning in this old idea from the Torah, and to begin the
secular New Year with an act of goodness, holiness, and generosity.
There are two causes of some urgency now that merit your attention,
and your support. The first is
the needs of the Reform congregations in New Orleans, who are fulfilling the
many needs of their congregants in exile, and doing so with very few
resources and a great deal of trepidation about what the future will bring.
Go to the URJ
website’s fund for assisting them, codenamed SOS New Orleans, at www.urj.org/relief/sos.
Make a donation that will help them continued to fulfill the vital
work to which they are committed. Make
this a much better 2006 year for this endangered community that is just like
our own… with worse luck. And secondly, we
were privileged to have Middie Giesberg speak from our bimah
in December on the condition and needs of Ethiopian Jewry.
You can help the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, NACOEJ,
which works to save, redeem, aid, and preserve this ancient and remarkable
Jewish culture and people. You
can help them by going to their website, www.nacoej.org/mission.htm,
and making a donation from your own chadash.
For when you
contribute to these causes early this new secular year, you will sweeten the
produce you retain, and making your own lives better and holier. L’shalom
v’rei’ut, in peace and friendship, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon
|
