In one of this week’s readings, the point is that God’s first command to Adam was what to eat and what not to eat. Eat from the garden. Don’t eat the forbidden fruit. Same thing happens later. Right after the Israelites built the Sanctuary, they receive the dietary law. Food marks the covenant. Kashrut is spiritual technology for practicing restraint. Your desires aren’t automatic rights. The world wasn’t made solely for your consumption. These limits are what make holiness possible.
Today is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. My family marks it by folding dumplings to celebrate Dongzhi Festival. We’ve done this during the holidays for as long as I can remember. Mom makes the filling and rolls the wrappers from scratch. Dad and I fold and watch the dumplings boil. There’s a right way to do it: not too much filling or it bursts, not too little or what’s the point, the crimp has to hold. Limits that make the form. But there’s something sanctuary-like about our kitchen. An ordinary space made sacred. We don’t just eat the dumplings. We make them. Together. That’s transformation, not consumption.
Going forward, I want to pay more attention to that. Not just what I eat, but how. Who I’m with. What I’m marking. Treating meals less like consumption and more like the small sanctuaries they can be. Anyway. Grateful to be home. Grateful my parents still want me to fold even though mine always look worse than theirs.