Shavuot is on the way. For a people hooked on a holiday diet of meat and poultry, the holiday is unique in our gastronomic calendar: a festival that celebrates dairy food.
Shavuot is best known for the giving of the Torah. So why the association with dairy? The Shavuot Customs and Traditions site lists six reasons. Two of the most famous: On Shavuot, the Jewish People received a new code of law, including the dietary restrictions that became part of their daily life. Since the new laws of separating meat and milk were still unclear, only dairy products were eaten on Shavuot to avoid transgressing the unfamiliar laws.
And the other for those into Gematriah, Jewish numerology, “The Hebrew word for milk, chalav, has the numerical value of 40, symbolizing the number of days Moses was on Mt. Sinai. Chalav is spelled chet (numerical value, 8), lamed (30), and vet (2).”
Others look for allusions in the Torah that suggest we eat dairy to symbolize the “land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). Or that the Torah is compared to milk, as is written: “Sweetness drops/ From your lips, O bride; Honey and milk/ Are under your tongue.” (Song of Songs, 4:11)
We may have Moses to thank for the Torah. But who gets the credit for cheesecake? None other than William Lawrence of Chester, N.Y. In her wonderful piece, Deconstructing Cheesecake, Leah Koenig traces cheese fluden, filled pastries eaten by Franco-German Jews from the 11th century until they arrived on this side of the Atlantic in the 19th century.
“In 1872,” she writes, “a dairyman named William Lawrence, from Chester, N.Y., accidentally invented cream cheese while attempting to make a batch of French Neufchâtel. Legend has it that he erroneously doubled the amount of cream in the recipe and was delighted by the results of his mistake.
“By the 1930s, New York City’s Jews started substituting the readily available cream cheese for the traditional curd cheese, creating the ultra-rich New York-style cheesecake.” And thus, this food joined the pantheon of Jewish deli cuisine, along with egg creams, dill pickles and pastrami sandwiches.
As for the recipes themselves, the Jewish-Food Cheesecake Archives (yes, there really is a Cheesecake Archives!) has over 100 variations, including Almond Praline, Key Lime, Pumpkin Frangelico and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. And if you are tired of the same old chocolate cheesecake, the Jewishfood List has a gut-busting supply of 83 recipes including Pumpkin Swirl, Triple Threat and Etrog Zest.
The recipes sound mouth-watering but what do about all the calories, saturated fat and cholesterol? Marcy Goldman notes that “Shavuot is not congruent with some of the caveats of the American Heart Institute, but you can always substitute low fat cream cheese, sour cream, or any other dairy item so easily available these days. Shavuot is, however, a fine occasion to boost your calcium, so enjoy!”
While some people will be more than satisfied to pile on the cheesecake, for others a Jewish holiday isn’t a holiday without a nice piece of chicken. So they dine on both – dairy and meat – only not at the same time. In “Cheese Blintzes and Beef Wellington,” Rabbi Moshe Donnebaum explains the Shavuot tradition of having a dairy meal shortly followed by a meat one – and the sometimes intricate rules governing all this dining.
The recipes mentioned above are undeniably delicious. But I believe that the tastiest part of any holiday is its memories. I’m sure that Cyndi and her beloved Auntie Rivka would agree. It seems that Cyndi’s family had mouse problems in their home and decided to set out some mousetraps. When Auntie Rivka dropped by to make some Shavuot blintzes, her niece quickly scooped the traps up and hid them in the freezer. When her aunt reached into the freezer to put away the cream cheese – well, let’s just say “Auntie Rivka never went into Mother’s freezer again.”