Jonah and rounding up the cycle of Teshuvah!

A song of Ascents.

Out of the depths I cry to You, ADONAI!

Lord, hear my voice!

Let Your ears be attentive to the sound of my supplications.   Psalm 130:1~2

 

On the day before Yom Kippur, I saw this little girl feeding pigeons out of her hand.   I stopped on  my bicycle, and asked her mom if I could take a picture, and she said it was ok. 

Just earlier in that morning I had been reading the book of Jonah, because the book of Jonah is read in the synagogue on Yom Kippur services,  so I wanted to read it in advance.   When I was reading it this time, I saw more than ever how amazing it is as a story of `Teshuvah`.  That of course is why it is read at this time of year.  I  love hearing it, and reading it , partly because I relate to Jonah in my own story of `teshuvah`, or `return.  I relate especially to how he thought he could run away from God, and of course, was found! This year after having been thinking a lot about Teshuvah, I noticed in the text of Jonah`s prayer how it is such an amazing `model` of teshuvah with the way the `turn` back to God is so clearly depicted in that prayer.  

When I saw the girl with the pigeons I knew God was making a connection that He wanted me to see see in that moment!

He knew that I knew that I would see the connection of Jonah and the pigeons!!

Jonah and the pigeons, you ask?

well, yes! Because in Hebrew, the word Jonah

(actually its Yonah in Hebrew), means dove, or pigeon!!

dove, pigeon = יוֹנָה

 Its something I learned this year, and I even call pigeons now `Yonahי

So I saw something in the little girl that was this peace she had and joy in feeding the pigeons, in being so at one with God`s creation!  

Part of our `Teshuvah` is a sense of coming home to who we are in Him, or returning to God as who He meant for us to be, and it can be a little like connecting to the childlike parts of ourselves.   I think that in showing me that little girl, He wanted to show me something of the joy that He has been wanting to return in me.

 I made an on-the-spot upload to express something about that, and just to share a little `pre-Yom Kippur` message, here is the upload and the scenes of little girl!! 

 G`mar Chatima Tovah!

May you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year!

Hope you have/had a good and smooth fast and meaningful Yom Kippur!! Blessings and Love, Shayndel

Round Challah Part 2 and Rosh Hashanah・Shabbat Shuvah diary

 

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.  James 1:17

Would you believe it, this challah  was a gift, sent to me from Tokyo!!  A good and perfect gift from our Father in Heaven, who sent it through the synagogue ,  surprise and touched my heart in ways that only He knows how!! (the perfect round challah in a perfect square box, the box had my name on it hand written all around the box!!!)

L`Shana Tova! A card for you!

This one I made! A three strand braid shaped in a circle like a crown

. 

Praise is awaiting You in Zion, O God,

and to You the vow will be fulfilled.

Psalm 65:2

A few friends asked about how to make the round challah and to see `part 2` of shaping the challah, so I am popping in to share the upload for Part 2,  and share a few reflections on the Feast days and the Ten days of Awe that we are in, as well as about the challah!!

So without further ado, here is Part 2.  Sorry it doesn`t include the receiving of the challah gift described and pictured in top photos above!! I had already filmed the video!! But if you can, just imagine another doorbell ring, like in Part 1 when the sukkah was delivered from Abram the tent maker.  This time it was a Japan postman at the door delivering a Round challah from the King!!!  

 

 Joanne`s Challah-Cast channel!

As I have shared before, the round challah is my recommendation for all the fall `chag` (chag-im) feasts!!   I am thankful for master challah teacher Tamar, who I got a lot of tips from for making the challah this year.   I learned a few new things, including sifting the flour first, using oil instead of flour on the board for rolling and kneading if needed.  I made three of the shapes she taught about (see upload!).  I gave the ones I made to others, including of course one for my daughter, and to neighbors or friends to share about the holiday and God`s goodness.  So I was extra grateful for receiving the challah (from) above! 

The next feast is Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement, and the holiest day on the Kingdom calendar, with the Shabbat of Return (Shabbat Shuvah, or Shabbat Teshuvah!) before that.  It is very wonderful to see this year here in Asia, and many people now in the body of Messiah everywhere around the world,  are  beginning to more and more understand and enter into God`s appointed feasts.   And to  pray for Israel during these days.   Many Jewish people still do not know their (our) Messiah Yeshua.  Over hundreds, thousands, of years of history,  He has become unrecognizable to the Jewish people,  so removed even from His own feasts (*actually another word is `moedim` which means God`s appointed times and seasons).   The Feasts of the LORD are the appointed days that Yeshua  made as part of His plan of creation and redemption and for heaven and earth to meet in Him.  From the beginning it was all in place.  At the Restoration of the Kingdom of God on earth they will be continue to be celebrated and they will be fulfilled by Yeshua Himself, the coming King.   On this Shabbat of Return, and in this year 5781, May He reveal Himself to the Jewish people and to the world that He is the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the World!!  This is a time of restoration of all things and its exciting that we each have a part to play!!! 

 

And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

" The Deliverer shall come out of Zion.

He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.

And this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins."

Romans 11:26~27 (referencing Isaiah 59:20~21, 27:9, and Jeremiah 31:31~34)

 

Oh, so of course no challah on Yom Kippur as it is a complete fast, for 25 hours, but you can have a challah prepared in advance for the break-fast, or for the continuing days of the feasts through Succot!! 

By the way I started putting up my Succah today!! Its my first real succah, and I can recall how it harkens back to the Tabernacle and forward to the wonderful day when God will dwell with us here on earth!!!

Blessings and Chag Sameach!

G`mar Chatimah Tovah!!

May you be sealed and inscribed for a good year!!

Love,♡

Shayndel

O the depth of the riches, 

both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are His judgments

and how incomprehensible His ways! 

Romans 11:33

Homemade Bagels and Breaking the Fast

It is to be a statute to you forever, that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you are to afflict your souls, and do no kind of work---both the native-born and the outsider dwelling among you.  For on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you.  From all your sins you will be clean before ADONAI.  It is a Shabbat of solemn rest to you, and you are to afflict your souls.  It is a statute forever.   

---Leviticus 16:29~31

The Holy Day of Yom Kippur is a day of fasting that is a `statute forever` given in the Scriptures.
 (see scripture above)  It is for  all who choose to follow His commandments, both "the native born and the outsider dwelling among you."!    Isn`t that so amazing and wonderful!!  As I write this, I think of another scripture that also refers to the `native born` and `the outsider`, speaking of those `who are far` and those `who are near`, which says,

Shalom, shalom to him who is far and to him who is near,
says ADONAI, `and I will heal him.`   --from Isaiah 57:19

Then repeated in Ephesians,

And He came and proclaimed shalom to you who were far away and shalom to those who were near---for through Him we both have access to the Father by the same Ruach.  So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with God`s people and members of God`s household.      ---Ephesians 2:17~19

Even here in Japan there will be a day before long when those who were once far, will be brought near, and many will know ADONAI and Salvation in Yeshua! And observe the feast days and Shabbatot together!   I look forward to it even this year at Sukkot!  May it be so!

All nations you have made will come

and bow down before You, my Lord,

and they will glorify Your Name.

---Psalm 86:9

Enjoy the days leading up to Sukkot and the continuation of the Fall Feasts!

Meanwhile, please try a homemade bagel from our break-fast.  Where I grew up in New York it was always a tradition to break the fast with bagels and lox and cream cheese!  So I try to re-enact that  with homemade bagels here in Japan!

Blessings and Shalom, to you who are far and to you who are near!

Love,

Shayndel



♡

homemade NY bagels, made in Japan

Bagels Recipe, HERE
also pictured: Sweet Noodle Kugel, recipe HERE

Kreplach in Dashi

The first time I ever made Kreplach was last year  for the meal before the fast for Yom Kippur.  Since then I have made them several times for other holidays and feasts.   I think this was the third time.

Kreplach are like dumplings that you can make boiled and served in soup or fried.
They are a traditional Jewish food to make on some of the holidays and Feasts, including Purim and before the fast of Yom Kippur.

When I started observing the holidays in Japan, I longed for the traditional foods from the holidays that I grew up with, and as there is nowhere to get any of the foods here in Southern Japan,   I started making them myself.  Foods like kugel, kreplach, bagels, and ...as you well know...challah!!

The foods started taking on a mixture of Jewish / Japanese just naturally.  As  I would go to make them using ingredients and seasonal items that we can find locally, the combinations just started to happen...  For example , a  Cherry Blossms Challah in springtime,  other Challah such as a Red Bean Challah, and Cherry Blossoms Hamentashen for Purim.

The Kreplach in Dashi became another such mix!

Dashi means soup stock. In Japan there are many kinds of soup stock.   I use a dashi in a `tea bag` form that is made from bonito fish base. Its light and natural and makes a good soup for miso soup or clear soup and it goes well with Kreplach too!!

 I read that Kreplach is a good food to eat before the fast.  It is filling, filled with protein, so you keep full for a while.   Melon is a good too,  as the melon gives the body water to store during the fast.







As I was making the Kreplach, I looked at the renkon (lotus root) and the writing on the package of dashi and Japanese ingredients,   I wanted to share some of the taste of God`s goodness and provision that we experience in Japan!  So I  jotted down some notes as a recipe, and am  finally sitting down to share it now as the fast is finished and we are `full` of  peace  after the High Holy Days!

I hope you enjoy it and might try making Kreplach in Dashi, using variations with what is grown where you are!   What are some of the tastes of the season where you are ?

Notes on how to make  Kreplach in Dashi! 

1. Filling


For the filling.  I used minced chicken, renkon (lotus root), and spinach. Renkon is readily available in Japan, and is a root vegetable with holes---a holey root vegetable you might say! Its become one of my favorite vegetables.  Its also good to eat at this time of year, as root vegetables are warming and good for change of seasons and all winter for immunity.  If you don`t have renkon where you are, use root vegetables native to your locale.

250 g. minced chicken

1 small renkon (about 60 grams)

a bunch of spinach

sliced ginger

Sautee all ingredients together.

2.
Dough:

Use your favorite recipe for Kreplach dough.  With thanks to those who provide so many recipes that we are able to use! I used this Basic Kreplach Recipe HERE for the dough. 

3.
Soup:

Place one Dashi `Tea Bag` in a pot of water, bring to a boil, and after boiling two minutes, turn off heat and remove Dashi `Tea Bag`.

Bring to a boil again,  Add about a few tablespoons, or up to a quarter cup of Japanese Sake to soup.
Cut up root vegetables of your choice, and add them to soup, let them cook and make a nice broth while you assemble Kreplach. I also add sliced ginger to the soup at this point.

Remove Dashi `tea bag` after boiling about 2 minutes, or make dashi to your liking from other stock

Add Japanese Sake to the soup to taste

4.  Assemble the Kreplach

Cut rounds or squares, I used rounds to keep with the `round` theme of the cycle of the year in the Fall Feasts.

Add one teaspoon of filling, and fold.  You can see the way to fold on the Basic Kreplach Recipe Here, or find on your favorite recipe.

Note:  In my photo I hadn`t yet sealed all the seams.  You must seal the seams or the ingredients will not stay when you boil them!!

Note:  Be careful! I took this photo before realizing we have to seal the edges!  I had a moment of mixing up Kreplach with Hamentashen!  Shayndel`s caution:  Seal the edges when you are making Kreplach!! (see finished photo of the Kreplach in Dashi, whew! Sealed just in time!!)

5.
Add them to soup, and boil about 15 minutes

6.

 Have some melon to follow, and seal it will a few glasses of water. 

Have a good fast!



 notes:Thank you Duta for the advice about sealing it with water! And for encouraging me to post about meals before and after fast, see the `after` to follow!


Link:
to try this Japanese dashi, the site to order is here: Kayano Dashi

Related posts on this blog:  Kreplach with Chopsticks

Bagels for Breaking the fast

A break-the-fast after sundown on Yom Kippur ends the Ten Days of Awe (see previous posts below!).   Ending this High Holy Days period is like coming out of a long Shabbat, so there is a sadness to the ending.  But after the fast and the period of coming clean in our hearts through reflection and repentance there is also a readiness to eat ...

The bagels and everything are prepared beforehand, so at the end of a Yom Kippur service we set the table and are ready to eat!  When I was growing up in New York, our break-the-fast meal was always bagels and lox and the things that go with that.  Did I say I'm from New York?  Yes, its a special place to be on the Jewish Holidays and the bagels are famous for being the best.

So here I am in a small city on the southernmost island of Japan, determined to have a "New York bagel".  How to do that?  With God, nothing is impossible!  I made them!  I wanted to make it like the break-fasts I remember as a child. 

Although I was sad to exit from this long Shabbat rest, after the days of repentance I feel lighter.  And at the same time very full from these feast days, not only feasting on food, but most of all on the word of God!

May ADONAI bless you and keep you!
ADONAI make His face to shine on you
and be gracious to you!
May ADONAI turn His face toward you 
and grant you shalom!

---Aaronic Blessing, Numbers 6:24~26 

Bagels recipe can be found here

Kreplach with chopsticks

This High Holy Day week (actually 10 days) has been like a great homecoming, and I just wanted all the foods that go with it.  Returning to my Jewish heritage--through Yeshua!--after forty years in the wilderness---was something that I truly celebrated in this week.

We live in a small city in the South of Japan.  There is no way to find Jewish holiday foods anywhere around here,  so I searched a recipe and decided to make kreplach myself, after finding out that it is a traditional food to eat before the fast on Yom Kippur (recipe here). A food my grandmother might have made and generations even before that.

As I was rolling out the little squares of dough and putting in the meat filling, I thought about the holiday, which is about repentance and atonement.  We---"both the native-born and the outsider dwelling among you"--- are to observe this most Holy day on the Kingdom calendar year after year throughout the generations, as commanded in the Torah. 

"It is to be a statute to you forever, that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you are to afflict your souls, and do no kind of work--both the native-born and the outsider dwelling among you.  For on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you.   From all your sins you will be clean before ADONAI.  It is a Shabbat of solemn rest to you, and you are to afflict your souls.  It is a statute forever."      　　---Leviticus 16:  29 〜 30 

On this "tenth day of the seventh month" as it was now, I reflected on the miracle that my eyes were opened through Yeshua here in Japan just a few years ago.  Through His Salvation I was brought back to God and the Torah and to the Jewish roots of our faith.

Recently I watched the movie musical of Fiddler on the Roof.   Seeing it now I realized how it was the story of my ancestors.  Like Tevye and his family in the story, they had to leave their small towns in Russia and Eastern Europe because of their Jewish faith.  The scene was touching where they are packing to go.  The Rabbi takes the Torah and carries it on his shoulder.  The mother packs her Sabbath candlesticks in with their few belongings.  They were going to America!! Something about seeing that story touched my heart as I realized my family too started that way.  My grandfather's parents had to flee their towns, which were actually closer to this side of the world where I am now.  They came all the way to America, like Tevye the milkman in the musical and his family.  For the first time I could imagine my family that way, probably with their few belongings too, bringing what was  most dear to them and especially the faith in their hearts.

How could I have wanted to run away from my heritage, what was it I wanted to hide and turn away from?  I had no sense of the preciousness of what they were carrying.  I thought I could just decide to turn away from it and I did.  I didn't observe Yom Kippur all my years in Japan.  I had a lot to repent for on this day.   I looked at the flour covered board and the plump little dumplings, the dough covering and concealing the inside filling....just meditating on this first Yom Kippur in Japan,
preparing for the fast....making .... kreplach...

It is also said that it's good to eat melon before a fast.  I had watermelon.  The fast was very easy this year. I don't know if it was because of the watermelon, or because being in God's presence is so nourishing that I didn't hunger at all but rather felt very filled the whole day through from His word!

My children,

I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin.  But if anyone does sin, we have an Intercessor with the Father--the righteous Messiah Yeshua.  He is the atonement for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the whole world.     
                           
                                                                          

1 John 2: 1 〜 2  TLV

My First Shabbat Shuvah

Shabbat Shuvah ("Sabbath [of] Return" שבת שובה) or Shabbat Teshuvah ("Sabbath [of] Repentance" שבת תשובה) refers to the Shabbat that occurs during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  --from Wikipedia

Today's Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah.  I made another round challah.  I don't know if it is said to make round challah on this day, but as it is still this period of the Ten Days of Awe and repentance, it seemed fitting.  Plus I love the way the round challah braids are made, and how the two crossing over two become a circle as all the strands are woven together in a particular way.   It felt like the Crown, a reminder from our King that He is listening.  

Since I started observing the Shabbat this year,  the weeks have taken on a new rhythm.  One  Shabbat begins Friday evening and ends the next day's sunset and then the week begins and then again we prepare to enter into the Shabbat on the next Friday sunset.   God created the world in six days and rested on the 7th.  The circle seems to come alive in His Love.  

This year I began to enter into Shabbat through the making of challah.  Today is I suppose also the first Shabbat of the New Year, 5777.  But more than that it is seen as the special Shabbat, the sabbath of Return,  in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as if to say the cycle of Shabbatot doesn't really begin and end but continues in a beautiful eternal cycle, culminating every year in the Fall Feasts in the seventh month of Tishrei in this time of repentance and return.  

Isn't that so beautiful and even exquisite.  Each Shabbat has a special Torah portion to study, called the Parshiot, regardless of where we are on the round earth!.  Again I see the round challah and how unified we are in our King when we study His Torah and live on His eternal cycle of time, as he measures everything just perfect.

 Just like on each Shabbat we ask to draw closer to God, in this time of repentance we draw closer to Him and to seek forgiveness.  Forgiveness and repentance are life-giving.  Without seeking forgiveness we pile up sin in our heart, and that becomes a sure way into darkness, but with constant and true seeking of forgiveness, we are given life as we return to our Creator and to Yeshua. 

He is Light of the World.  When we smell the challah, and see it and taste it, may we understand the words in the Psalms 34

"Taste and see how good ADONAI is.
Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him".    ---Psalm 34:9  TLV

Shabbat Shalom! 

I will heal their backsliding,
I will love them freely,
for My anger will turn away from him.
I will be like dew for Israel.
He will blossom like a lily,
and thrust out his roots like Lebanon.
His tender shoots will spread out.
His beauty will be like an olive tree
and his fragrance will be like Lebanon.
Those dwelling in his shadow will return.
They will grow grain and bud like a vine.
His renown will be like 
                 the wine of Lebanon.


               ---Hosea 14:  5〜8