While planning the menu for an upcoming get-together, I
decided that stuffed cabbage would be a nice thing to serve.
I would make cabbage twice, one head at a time, and freeze
it. Off I went to the fruit and vegetable store to purchase
the cabbage.
When I got there, I was surprised to find one extremely large
head of bug-free cabbage. It was easily the biggest cabbage I
had ever seen. Since I was hoping to serve somewhere between
20 and 25 portions, I decided to buy the huge cabbage and see
if I could make do with only one batch.
There are two schools of thought on the best way to soften up
cabbage leaves. Some people pop the cabbage into the freezer
and others place it into boiling water. I am a boiling-water
type. Therefore, I heated up a couple of liters of water in
my largest soup pot, unwrapped "super- cabbage" and let go.
With a splash it hit the water and bobbed to the surface.
After the cabbage had been in the pot long enough for me to
assume the outer leaves would be soft and pliable, I took it
out and tried to separate the leaves. The outermost layers
were thin and flat and those first four or five leaves came
right off.
"So far, so good," I thought. The next few leaves were a bit
folded and took a little effort to separate. After that, the
battle began. The inner leaves of the cabbage were so
intricately folded, and so intertwined with each other, that
it took all of my ingenuity, dexterity and effort to maneuver
them away from each other.
Yes, I got a total of 28 usable leaves but it wasn't easy. I
had to put the cabbage back into the hot water bath several
times. Only then could I hope to pry a leaf or two away.
I decided this was a very Jewish cabbage.
If you have ever played "Jewish Geography" at a
simchah, I don't have to tell you how much our lives
overlap and how everyone is intertwined with each other.
When we moved to Israel, we were surprised to find that of
the five original families in our building, two — in
addition to ours — had come here from California. I
even knew one of the women from the "old country."
A few weeks after moving here, I met a nice American woman,
who offered to bring me to an English language shiur
for ladies in the neighborhood. I didn't even ask the topic.
I agreed to go along the next time.
I was delighted to find that the shiur was on Shmiros
HaLoshon, a topic that is very dear to my heart.
Someone asked me where I lived and pointed out that one of
the "regulars" lived a few doors down from me. She introduced
us and we walked home together. We got to talking and I
mentioned that I had attended a wonderful weekly Shmiros
HaLoshon shiur in Los Angeles. She told me she was
from L.A.
I told her that I had become involved in Shmiros HaLoshon
several years before, when Rabbi Mendel Kessin had given a
powerful talk on the subject in the San Fernando Valley. It
turned out this neighbor had also been in the audience that
night. Each of us lived in a different part of the Los
Angeles area, but we had heard about Rabbi Kessin's talk from
a flier our children had brought home. It turned out our
children had attended the same school.
Before we moved to Israel, we visited our son and his family,
who had just made aliyah. We were on a crowded bus coming
back from the Kosel with some of our boys, and I noticed a
young couple getting off the bus. The young man quickly
carried a carriage off the bus, turned around to help his
wife with her packages and then helped her open the carriage
and settle the baby into it.
I commented that it was so nice to see that Israeli men help
their wives so much. One of my sons agreed that Israelis are
good husbands but told me that particular young man was an
American. "How do you know?" I asked. "He was in my class in
yeshiva," was the reply.
My favorite example of our interlocked Jewish lives is a
story that took place in the States. One of my sons bought a
"new" used car and was driving it from Lakewood to New York,
to spend a yeshiva "out Shabbos" there. On the New Jersey
Turnpike, one of the lights on the dashboard lit up and
stayed lit, so my son decided to pull over into the service
lane and see what was wrong. He got out of the car, pulled up
the hood and was bending over to look inside.
Meanwhile, another of my sons was driving to New York from
Baltimore. He had offered to take along other bochurim
and two boys he hardly knew had joined him for the ride. As
they were driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, my son saw up
ahead a car on the shoulder of the road with its hood up, and
a person in black slacks and a white shirt bent over, peering
at the engine.
He immediately pulled over. One of the boys asked why he was
stopping. "The way that guy is dressed, he must be a Jew.
Let's see if we can help him." You can imagine the stranded
motorist's surprise when he saw that the person who —
in a spirit of brotherhood — had stopped to help a
fellow Jew, was in fact one of his actual brothers.
Wherever we go, we meet people whose lives have crossed paths
with ours in the past. When that happens, we say, "It's a
small world." What we really mean is that we Jews are all
part of one small family and it is easy to spot relatives
whenever and wherever we meet.
One of my daughters-in-law related the following interesting
experience. She had just come to Israel for the first time
and she was staying with relatives. She offered to take their
children to the park. While there, another young American, a
seminary student, came up to her with a couple of children in
tow and asked her where she could find a bathroom.
My daughter-in-law said she wasn't familiar with the
neighborhood but she herself was staying with relatives on
that block and she was sure they would be happy to let her
and the children use their bathroom. As they walked along, my
daughter-in-law asked the seminary student what her
connection was to a certain woman.
"She's my grandmother," was the reply. "How did you know?" My
daughter-in-law pointed to the necklace her new friend was
wearing and then pulled out an identical one from under her
collar. "She is my grandmother also, so we are cousins."
It turned out that their mutual grandmother knew of too many
cases where relatives had survived the war, but did not know
a way to contact each other. She designed a small pendant and
had one made up for each of her granddaughters. In that way,
they would be able to identify each other even if they had
never met. The encounter in the park proved the wisdom of
their grandmother's efforts.
There is no place where we can better see the small
world/small family concept than the arena of matchmaking. If
you are successful in suggesting a shidduch, you will
get 10 phone calls saying things like, "I could have made
that shidduch; I have known Chanie since third grade
and Chaim's family lives next door to my cousin!" or "I just
told my sister/mother/friend last week that I wanted to
suggest that shidduch and here they are engaged."
I could go on and on with other examples, but it is time to
take my Jewish cabbage, now successfully stuffed and cooked,
out of the freezer and get it ready to serve to — you
guessed it — members of our extended family.
