flour power

The kitchen is covered with a faint cloud of flour which serves as a trophy for the goal achieved: I've made enough challah dough to braid 8 baby challahs. And that's convenient because 8 babies will be joining me with their mum's (my friends) to braid their bread and roll in flour in my garden on Thursday.

Challah seems to hold a coveted place as one of the few things we generally assume are un-makable by normal people, an art only perfected by Glicks or Hendon Bagel Bakery or whoever. Now, though my challah is not as sweet and perfect as theirs, its pretty cool to see you little one and best mates munching on your own home made bread. I love messily compiling my ingredients, kneading the dough, listening to the radio on a weekday evening. There is a feeling of both primitiveness as accomplishment. Highly recommended and fun to do with a friend over red wine!

Shavuot

So we had a Tikkun Leil Shavuot, I made the chocolate cheesecake, it was unbelievably rich and we did some learning about activists. 'Which activist are you?' I asked, 'Korach the revolutionary? the Midwives with their civil disobedience? or the daughters of Zelophechad who changed the law with petitions from within?' And I had to ask myself the same question. Not so easy, really. Would I start a revolution? I'm not so sure. I certainly think there should be one - for a 3-4 day week. For paternity leave. For equal pay for women. Butu would I stand up and start it? Not so sure. What about the Midwives - would I just break the law if I thought it was wrong? Possibly. Yes, I can imagine being Shifra and Puah the Midwives in Egypt during the Israelites period of Slavery. Well, a cross between them and Zelophechad's lot who told Moshe that women should have inheritance rights too. So, I asked myself, tiredly as we chatted til almost midnight, enough talking, where to begin?