Jewish tradition has a lot to say about food. You can eat that but not this. But you can only eat that as long as you don’t eat it at the same time as these things. There are specific words you must say before eating a piece of cake or fruit or a vegetable or bread, and another set of words to say after they’ve been eaten. At all times, you need to know what you’re eating and where it came from.
When I went to college and began shopping, cooking and eating on my own, I was presented with a new freedom — an opportunity to eat whatever and however I wanted. But just as the Jews of the Exodus story were troubled by their newfound freedom in the desert, I discovered that my dietary choices were not without consequences. I started reading about the American food industry and began to create a set of personal dietary guidelines.
The evolving collection of restrictions and permissions eventually became a slow progression toward vegetarianism. Initia-lly, I stopped eating red meat, consuming only poultry and fish. When I moved to Jerusalem for a semester, I decided I would no longer prepare any animal flesh, but in order to enjoy my friends’ cooking and appreciate the cuisines of the foreign countries that I visited, I made an exception and allowed myself to eat poultry and fish out of the home.
When I returned to the U.S., I continued those practices and tried as much as possible to adhere to a vegetarian diet, but my mom’s brisket was just too delicious. The smell fills the house for hours while it’s cooking, daring me to try to think of anything besides the sweet and salty meat that falls apart at the very mention of a knife. Stuck between the values of my heritage and my personal convictions, I was forced to add a fifth question to my haggadah: Should I eat my mother’s brisket?
Before Passover last year, I asked my mom a simple question about how the dish was prepared, but the answer I received was worthy of the wise son. She taught me how to order the meat from the butcher, how to marinate it overnight, how to chop the sweet potatoes correctly and how to cut the brisket the right way. All the while, she told me stories of her mother and her grandmother, who each altered the traditional dish in her own way. My mom shared her experience and the experience of the generations before her.
When I returned to school in Boston, I wanted to see if I could replicate the family recipe, but I wanted to infuse it with my own traditions to create the first “sustainable” brisket of my generation. I sought advice from chefs at two local Jewish delis and began to study the Boston beef market. Unlike kashrut, which clearly defines what is “good” to eat and what is “bad,” there are no clear-cut definitions of “sustainable,” so again I was left to make my own guidelines.
Eating locally helps to support small farmers and reduces the pollution that shipping and transportation produce. Eating organically results in fewer chemical pesticides seeping into our soil and atmosphere. Eating fair trade ensures that laborers are paid a living wage and that workers are treated well. And eating kosher implies that the animal was slaughtered humanely. No piece of beef in Boston satisfies all of these certifications.
After interviewing several farmers, butchers and chefs, I purchased my meat from Savenor’s Market in Cambridge, where the butcher helped me pick out a cut of brisket from a farm three hours away from my kitchen. The cow was raised in an open pasture and fed alfalfa sprouts and grass grown right on the farm. The vegetables in the recipe were grown organically and purchased from a farmers market. With the exception of a couple of frantic calls home to my mother to make sure I was following the recipe correctly, the cooking process went smoothly.
As I sat next to my friends to share my version of a sustainable brisket, I said a brachah. The meal was delicious, but not quite the same as my mom’s. There’s something to be said for the motherly love that goes into a dish like brisket. Hopefully, by the time I have kids of my own, I’ll have mastered the craft so that when they ask why this night is different from all other nights, they’ll find the answer somewhere between the matzah, the maror and the big plate of brisket — and I’ll have a story to tell about how their grandmother’s brisket recipe led to a new Jewish tradition.
Menlo Park native Eric Siegel is a senior at Tufts University. His documentary, “Brisket: From Generation to Generation,” has been submitted to the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival.