A Rabbi walks into a diner…

Category: The Countertop

Published on Thursday, 24 November 2011 05:15

Written by Rabbi Brian I. Michelson

Just as I began the process of redesigning and upgrading this website, I received the following essay from Rabbi Brian Michelson of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. In it, he presents our Recipe for an American Renaissance in a rather unique context — specifically, before his own congregation on Yom Kippur morning last October. Rabbi Michelson said that he came across our “Recipe” on a trip to New Hampshire where he visited the wonderful Littleton Diner, which cites it on their own menu. He sent his sermon to us with his full permission to print here. I am both humbled and grateful for the recognition and for seeing that our recipe has an impact in some unexpected places. —R.G.

I love diners. There is something special about them that has always interested me. When we lived away from the East Coast, I always looked forward to the opportunity for a good diner meal.

When we travel, we often stop at diners along the way. I am not sure the food is any better or better for me than the fast food joints that line the modern highways, but there is something special about going someplace local. We have even been known to go out of our way to visit a regionally well known diner. We watch food and travel shows that often highlight unique little places and we have found that most of the time, these places are worth the trip. This was definitely true of the Littleton Diner.

The Littleton Diner, Littleton, New Hamphshire. Photo by Don Salvatore.The Littleton Diner is in Littleton, New Hampshire. Littleton is about half way between Boston and Montréal, just over the Connecticut River from Vermont. It is a quaint, small town that is the birthplace of Eleanor Porter — the author of the Pollyanna series of children’s books. It is one of those New Hampshire towns that every candidate running for president visits and they usually stop in at the Littleton Diner.

The Diner, itself, is a good solid diner. The front half is the old railway car style diner with an extra dining room built off the back. They have pancakes to die for, my favorite is the buckwheat variety, and it is nearly impossible to finish an entire order. The flour they use is from the Littleton grist mill, a working grist mill and museum just a few blocks away.

The first time we visited the diner in 2005, I fell in love with the pancakes and a statement that they had displayed on their walls, their menu, and tee shirts the staff wear. I wrote it down and I have been carrying it with me ever since. It wasn’t until a visit this summer that I figured out how I could share this statement with you. It says:

Recipe for an American Renaissance:

Eat in Diners

Ride Trains

Put a porch on your house

Shop on Main Street

Live in a walkable community.

What I love about this statement is that it can be understood on so many different levels: a literal meaning, an allegorical meaning, and on even deeper levels.

Judaism has always taught that our sacred texts are meant to be understood on many different levels. There is a rabbinic teaching that says that every verse of the Torah can be understood on four different levels: the literal, the figurative, the explanatory, and the esoteric. In Hebrew, the acronym for this idea is Pardes, the Hebrew word for orchard, because each verse may bear a good deal of fruit if we spend a little time working on it.

Let us explore this idea with one verse from Torah. There is the frequently repeated verse that commands us to leave the corners of our fields un-​harvested for the orphan and the widow. On a literal level, this is a verse that only speaks to the farmers in the congregation, reminding them that they must leave certain sections of their fields, vineyards, or orchards unpicked or un-​harvested for these two unfortunate groups who would have no other way to support themselves.

If we were to understand this verse on a more allegorical level, it reminds us to share the bounty with which we are blessed with others. Since most of us are not farmers, we expand the understanding to say those of us fortunate to have enough to eat must share with those who do not have enough. The collection of food we, as a congregation, do each year around the High Holy days is an example of this. Here we have not delved too deep into the possible meanings of the verse, but we have gone deeper than the literal understanding that was addressed to farmers.

On a deeper level, this verse calls upon us to take care of the most vulnerable members of our society: not just the widow and orphan who are mentioned in the verse, but anyone whose life may be at risk. In this verse, food is the literal; the social safety net is a potential deeper understanding of this verse. We can understand that along with the obligation to provide food, we must, also, work to provide shelter, schooling, healthcare, and other needs to those who cannot afford to provide it for themselves.

The deepest reading of the verse to leave the corners of our fields un-​harvested might actual be not about providing direct support for those who are in need; rather, it is about changing the nature of reality in order to do away with the need. In the case of our verse, feeding a person for a day is important, but better still is allowing that person to get to a point where they no longer need our assistance and can stand on their own. The deepest meaning of this verse might call on us to work with organizations like Kiva which provide micro-​loans to small business all over the world. Over the past five years, I have loaned out a few hundred dollars to people from this country to the Pacific island of Togo. Having made nearly twenty loans, no one has ever defaulted on a loan and twenty-​five dollars at a time helped to change the life of someone else. This is the meaning that is not clearly visible from the text, but comes from creative thought about the text.

As Reform Jews, we should be comfortable with this type of understanding of Torah. We are not literalists and thank God for that. We no longer offer sacrifices on the altar to please God nor do we take children who have talked back to their parents out to the city gates to stone them; although there are times, as a parent that I am sure we have all been tempted. Liberal Judaism calls us to read and wrestle with our texts, both the sections we like and the sections that we do not like. My Monday lunchtime Torah study group has often heard me say that some of the most important work we do is when we read and struggle with the texts that we do not like. It is easy to understand and support the text that tells us not to insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind; for most of us this is obvious. However, figuring out what the lists of sacrifices or detailed descriptions of leprosy and sexual dysfunction have to do with us is more difficult. It is precisely this struggle that, I believe, is most rewarding. When we take a text and twist it and turn it and examine it in ways that the original author never intended, we are keeping the text alive. We are allowing it to speak to us in modern terms. Some of the greatest Bar and Bat Mitzvah speeches I have ever heard have come from the most unlikely portions. To hear a teen discuss the ins and outs of leprosy and the way they understand that this applies to AIDS or some other modern day plague is thrilling. It is exciting not because the material is fun to read, but because the meaning that has been invested into the text by a creative understanding of how this applies in the twenty-​first century.

If we accept this idea that the text can mean something far beyond its literal meaning, because we can imbue it with deeper meaning to make it relevant to us then what might we do with the text from the Littleton Diner? How might we take a somewhat simple statement that may not speak too many of us and turn it into something profound and meaningful? The answer is simple.

The recipe that is suggested is in five unique parts that can teach us about community even if we do not live in Littleton or even agree with all the ideas put forth.

Eat in Diners — one of the reasons I like diners is that they are local and often family owned. To eat in diners is to remind us the importance of eating local. The best food is always the freshest. They buy their supplies usually in their community getting what is ripe and available at that moment. They are not part of gigantic chains that order their food from centralized locations and offer the exact same menu and quality anywhere in the world regardless of the season. The local food movement is one that is growing in this country, challenging us to eat what we can get around us. We live in a world where you can get anything you want at any time of the year, but the question I always ask is, “Is it worth it?” How many times have you bitten into a tomato that is grown thousands of miles from here only to realize that it looks like a tomato, but tastes like a mouthful of cotton. Have you ever realized that the winter strawberries you are eating may have travelled even farther than you ever have?

Eat local – this past summer and fall, the Temple hosted a CSA delivery program. The CSA, or Community Supported Agricultural project, provided participants with twenty-​five weeks of fresh produce delivered to the Temple each Tuesday morning. The program is not perfect and I will admit to having trouble using everything every week, and I have had enough kale to last me a few years, but the quality of the fruits and vegetables were superior to what we could buy in the supermarket and they were all organically grown. In addition, the CSA supports a coop of eighty small farmers in our area and the pre-​payment scheme allows them to budget, plan, and stay on family farms that have often been in the family for generations. I encourage you to think about joining us in the spring when registration for the CSA opens for next year. Eat in diners, eat local, and help people in our community.

Ride Trains. This part of the recipe has two different meanings. First, one way to create community is to have shared experiences, public transportation is one of those ways to share and build community. Secondly, there is an environmental and economic reason. The more public transport we use the lower our reliance on foreign oil, the more money we are able to keep in this country and the better care we take of the places we live. This not only improve our economy, but our quality of life and the broader health of our communities.

Shop on Main St. – Like many of you, I am a real big fan of finding a bargain. To some extent, it becomes a challenge, a game, to find the lowest price. In these challenging economic times, none of us want to spend any more than we have too, but do we ever stop to think about where our money is going?

A recent study by the Department of the Interior tracked the money we spend and how much of it stays in our community when we spend it. They found when we buy at locally owned stores sixty cents out of every dollar spent stays in our community. When we shop at one of the national chains, only twenty cents of every dollar stays locally. Shop at one of the big box retailers and that number is cut down to just six cents of every dollar. The growth of internet retailing means that we can get almost anything, but it also means that none of the money we spend remains local. I will not deny that shopping on Main Street has the potential to cost more, but it also helps to keep our local economy strong and provide jobs to our neighbors. I am not suggesting that we change the way we buy everything, but maybe being aware of the impact of our spending habits can have will inspire us to make some decisions differently — helping our broader community and, in the long run, helping ourselves, as well.

The final two parts of the Littleton Diner’s recipe for an American Renaissance — live in a walkable community and put a porch on your house — can be understood together. Walking and porches keep people in touch with their community. When we sit in front and people are walking by we invite the opportunity for relationships to be formed and community to be built. I know that in my neighborhood after thirteen years, there are still people on my block that I do not know. Sometimes it is because we drive our cars into the garage and retreat into the safety of our homes, never using the front door except for guests or to get the mail. We live near each other, but we are not a neighborhood or a community. Yet, others we know well enough to say hello, ask how the kids are doing, or stop and say hello to their pet. We know each other, because we have been out walking the dog or doing work in the front yard, or watching the annual Memorial Day parade together.

For thousands or years, Judaism reminded us that to truly be a Jew one cannot live cut off from the community. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Hillel says, “Do not separate yourself from the community,” (PA 2:5) To try and live without the community is like only going half way. Yes, you may be able to celebrate and pray, but you are missing the important aspect of community and our relationships to others.

As a Jewish community, we may not live in a walkable community, but we can still take this suggestion to heart. It should guide us when we walk through the synagogue doors. We are not just here for ourselves; we are here for the community. We are commanded to mourn together and to rejoice together. As I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, these are important days for us to build community. Meet someone new or talk to the person who has been sitting at the end of your aisle for ten years. Help us make this congregation into a community.

Yom Kippur is a time when we are asked to fully consider the past, yet the past is only important when it helps us change the future. This is no more evident than in the concluding service of Né’ilah. For Né’ilah, many of the somber and severe melodies of Yom Kippur are changed to melodies that express hope and optimism for the future. We come to the end of the day feeling like we have done our part and that if we truly meant it we have been granted forgiveness by God. We begin to celebrate this during Né’ilah knowing that we have been blessed with a new start and another chance to be in the world and in community.

We pray that 5772 may be a year of health, blessing, and community. May the renaissance spoken of by the Littleton Diner become our reality and may the year to come be a year that was better than the one that had been.