Lekach
Got home a little while ago from Mincha.
I davened at a Chabad minyan, and afterward the rabbi was giving out lekach for Erev Yom
While walking to my car, a guy from a yeshivish background turned to me.
“What was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cake thing.”
“Lekach?”
Blank stare.
He had never seen it before.
For anyone else having the same blank stare: lekach is honey cake. There’s an old custom, especially associated with Chassidim and very much part of Chabad, to ask someone — a rebbe, the rabbi, your father, whoever — for a piece before Yom Kippur. They give it to you and wish you a good, sweet year.
Part of the symbolism is deliberately putting yourself in the position of asking another person for something and receiving it, while remembering that what we receive ultimately comes from God. There’s also an idea that if there were ever meant to be a moment this year when you’d have to ask another person for sustenance, let this small, sweet, dignified moment be it.
And it reminded me of something I know but forget all the time:
Never assume you know what somebody else knows.
Not all Judaism is your Judaism.
The person who looks much frummer than you may have never heard of something you grew up doing every day or every year.
The person who looks like he barely knows what’s going on may have an entire Jewish world inside him: family traditions, practices, memories, sensitivities, questions, struggles, and a relationship with God that you know absolutely nothing about.
And maybe the harder one to remember is the person who looks pretty much exactly like you.
You notice he does something differently. Maybe it’s a minhag his family has been doing for generations. Maybe it’s a hiddur you never thought about. Maybe it’s just something personal that helps him connect.
You won’t know unless you ask.
We’re all just people, carrying whatever we inherited, whatever we learned, whatever we picked up along the way, and whatever we’re still wrestling with.
For some people, God feels close. For others, complicated. For some, especially around the high holidays, even the whole conversation can be difficult.
None of that tells you how much Judaism someone has inside them.
We can always learn something from each other, and sometimes we get to teach something too.
But only if we’re curious.
So if you’re curious, ask.
“What’s that thing everyone just did?”
“Why do you do that?”
“What does that mean?”
Hopefully somebody answers graciously. If not, ask someone else. Or Google it later.
There’s no shame in not knowing.
And there’s probably some humility in remembering that the person you’re explaining it to might know ten things you don’t.
Wishing you all a Gmar Chasima Tova!
I davened at a Chabad minyan, and afterward the rabbi was giving out lekach for Erev Yom
While walking to my car, a guy from a yeshivish background turned to me.
“What was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cake thing.”
“Lekach?”
Blank stare.
He had never seen it before.
For anyone else having the same blank stare: lekach is honey cake. There’s an old custom, especially associated with Chassidim and very much part of Chabad, to ask someone — a rebbe, the rabbi, your father, whoever — for a piece before Yom Kippur. They give it to you and wish you a good, sweet year.
Part of the symbolism is deliberately putting yourself in the position of asking another person for something and receiving it, while remembering that what we receive ultimately comes from God. There’s also an idea that if there were ever meant to be a moment this year when you’d have to ask another person for sustenance, let this small, sweet, dignified moment be it.
And it reminded me of something I know but forget all the time:
Never assume you know what somebody else knows.
Not all Judaism is your Judaism.
The person who looks much frummer than you may have never heard of something you grew up doing every day or every year.
The person who looks like he barely knows what’s going on may have an entire Jewish world inside him: family traditions, practices, memories, sensitivities, questions, struggles, and a relationship with God that you know absolutely nothing about.
And maybe the harder one to remember is the person who looks pretty much exactly like you.
You notice he does something differently. Maybe it’s a minhag his family has been doing for generations. Maybe it’s a hiddur you never thought about. Maybe it’s just something personal that helps him connect.
You won’t know unless you ask.
We’re all just people, carrying whatever we inherited, whatever we learned, whatever we picked up along the way, and whatever we’re still wrestling with.
For some people, God feels close. For others, complicated. For some, especially around the high holidays, even the whole conversation can be difficult.
None of that tells you how much Judaism someone has inside them.
We can always learn something from each other, and sometimes we get to teach something too.
But only if we’re curious.
So if you’re curious, ask.
“What’s that thing everyone just did?”
“Why do you do that?”
“What does that mean?”
Hopefully somebody answers graciously. If not, ask someone else. Or Google it later.
There’s no shame in not knowing.
And there’s probably some humility in remembering that the person you’re explaining it to might know ten things you don’t.
Wishing you all a Gmar Chasima Tova!