#pesadik food

[hints-and-hacks]

Looking for a good Pesadik main dish for whatever point in the holiday? I've got you covered. We use tapioca starch for this, and though in the past we've found Pesadik mock regular mustard, the only one available this year was honey mustard, so we substituted horseradish sauce (chrein). If you go that route, use the white one, not the purple one with beets! You do actually need to roughly measure the zucchini cuz with the suggested 3-4 large zucchinis, you'll end up with way too many zoodles compared to the tuna. We don't usually use the green chilies; that much heat would exacerbate a chronic illness or 2 for me and possibly also not be great for some relatives.

Anyway, this comes out delicious - my brother even remarked that it "has a sort of cheesy mouthfeel" - and is great for feeding people who can't have dairy at a dairy/pareve meal. (*cough* me *cough*) Enjoy!

[jewishconvertthings]

Hi! So, I’m a fictive in a plural system. The body is halachally Jewish by reform standards (patrilinear) but in exomemories, my family was WASP-y as hell. I’m reasonably sure I need to go through the process to convert and I consider myself a Jew in progress, however, I’ve got absolutely no idea how to explain the situation to a rabbi. I actually tried reaching out over email to one at the shul we half heartedly attend, but I didn’t get an answer. I’m not sure if it ended up in spam somehow or if he did see it and thought I was fucking with him or crazy. Or both. I don’t have any guarantees I’ll be in the system forever, though I’ve been here for like three years now. Is it worth trying again? The shul is Reform and super chill with LGBT stuff, but I don’t know what that means for the scarier neurodivergences.

Hi there!

So you are definitely not the first (and I doubt you'll be the last) person to ask about plurality and conversion to Judaism here. Because of that, I am giving a much more extensive answer that may exceed the scope of your question, because I want to be able to hopefully assist others with similar questions. Thank you in advance for your patience!

Here's the thing about being plural and conversion - you convert as a unit. Once the body is halachicly Jewish, that's it, you all are. Judaism is interesting in that we already canonically believe in (at least Jews) having multiple souls. Additionally, there is the mystical idea that the soul of every convert was at Sinai and therefore that when someone is driven to convert it's because they already had a Jewish soul. However, they still need to convert.

Why? Because Judaism is an embodied religion. It is very much about taking things that exist in the animal world and elevating them to sanctity through mitzvot. Every human and animal pees, but Jews say a bracha afterwards because we are grateful that our body's innards are working correctly enough to make that possible. Every human and animal eats, but Jews keep kosher and say brachot to sanctify what goes into our bodies. Judaism even has mitzvot related to married couples' conduct with their spouse, especially in relationship to menstruation. For as much as Judaism believes in souls, it equally believes in grounding those souls in the earthly realm and therefore liberating the divine sparks of creation in the process.

Which is all to say: Judaism is also a group project. We are judged collectively as a nation on Rosh Hashana and repent as a nation on Yom Kippur. Even if you were a singlet, you would still need to consider carefully whether you were prepared to join in the collective project of mitzvot. People who have existing familial ties to others may find it more challenging to convert. What if your spouse or teenage children do not wish to convert with you? It is often still possible to convert (I did, and my spouse did not convert with me) but it requires at least some amount of buy-in support from those you live with and are permanently tied to, even if they are not directly joining you. My spouse, who again is not Jewish and did not convert with me, still knows at least as much about kashrut as I do because he does the vast majority of the cooking, he helps me clean and prep for Pesach every year, and he actually eats pesadik food with me every year so as not to bring chametz into the house. He helps me prepare the house for Shabbat and does not interfere with the setup, and works around my observance. It's a huge commitment from a gentile who does not believe in G-d and appreciates but does not wish to join the Jewish people.

Your system has to be on board. They just do. Because if/when you decide not to front or determine that it's time to move on or what-not, the body will still be halachicly Jewish and it will be up to those running it to determine how to act in light of that reality.

For what it's worth, I am very familiar with a system who converted, and I have learned about what their internal conversation was like beforehand. It was extensive! They operate like a family, and there are six of them. Two it was clear right away were dyed-in-the-wool Jewish and were they singlets, nothing could have stopped them from becoming observant Jews. (One probably would have tried to become a rebbetzin and the other would've become a gay yeshiva bochur. Alas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.) Two of them were people who would make excellent Jews, but probably also could've stayed excellent pagans. The fifth is very much a skeptic and the sixth was very much a Witch. The middle two were easy to sway after being exposed to queer-friendly Judaism. The fifth only agreed after understanding enough about Yiddish socialism and the history of Jewish leftism and secular culture that he realized he could very much appreciate yiddishkeit even if he didn't really believe in G-d (or if G-d is real, didn't really trust or like G-d given the state of the world.) He basically agreed that as long as he never had to do the davening or ritual mitzvot, he was cool with it.

The sixth acquiesced to the majority. She was very uneasy about making an eternal vow of any kind to any being, but especially one as powerful as the Almighty, and especially with something as complicated to follow as the mitzvot. She was reassured by the process of Yom Kippur to annul vows (Kol Nidrei) and to reset the slate through teshuva and collective forgiveness. She was also very nervous about the concept of tying one's fate to the collective fate of the Jewish people in terms of said agreement to keep the mitzvot. Her position was basically: You Don't Make Deals With Things You Can't See, and YES That Absolutely Includes Hashem. But! If the rest were going to insist on doing that anyway, well. They'd better be willing to hold by that Forever, even after death. How frum were they willing to be? After some further discussion (fifth alter's reluctance notwithstanding) they collectively agreed that they would agree to the mitzvot on the terms of the Conservative movement. The fifth alter agreed that he would not do anything to disrupt the others' observance even if he personally might have done differently as a secular/atheist Jew, e.g. watched TV on Shabbat or driven somewhere besides shul.

It's worth noting that I got this story because we are friends and that once they had full system buy-in, they decided for safety reasons *not* to discuss this particular wrinkle of psychology with their rabbis. Now, part of that decision was that that are a healthy system that works well together, has had extensive post-trauma therapy that *did* work with each alter individually as well as the system collectively, and were totally functional (after therapy) without any sort of psychiatric intervention. They were unwilling to jeopardize the relative safety from mental health institutions and their professional career by "coming out" about their plurality to anyone of authority in person or online. (I have obtained their collective permission to share this story as anonymized through myself as a third party to help other systems who are considering giyur.)

So to be clear, this is the advice I would offer as a layperson and as an informed friend.

**Major important reminder that I am not a rabbi or a mental health professional.**

Now, your situation is somewhat different from theirs, in that any conversion you make is going to be to solidify your halachic status as someone who is already Jewish in a major way and probably considered Jewish by the Reform movement already. They did not have previously existing ties to Judaism, whereas even if you do nothing, you will still be Jewish (even if not halachicly so by the traditional movements.)

I would recommend having a full system discussion. You want to figure out what your system, as a collective unit, needs, wants, and is willing to go along with. You will want, as part of this discussion, to do a major mental health and system balance analysis as well. How stable is your system? How functional are you as a group in the broader world? How healthy are your relationships to one another? Do you have trauma to unpack first? Need some type of therapeutic intervention? Do it now; do it first.

Then, if everyone is on board (enough) and working well together as a system, I would approach a rabbi to convert as a unit. It's up to you to determine how much, if anything, to disclose about your plurality to the Rabbi, so long as you can honestly tell him that you are [all] mentally well and stable. It is very possible to be a healthy system and/or to have long-term chronic mental illnesses while still being relatively stable and mentally well. Lots of people with well-managed mood disorders, personality disorders, developmental disorders, and even reality and dissociation disorders can and have converted. Judaism can truly be a place of peace and a shelter for the troubled. However, you must know yourself(/ves) well and you must be willing to seek professional help first or along the way if needed.

All of the plural stuff aside, I would recommend reaching out again after the high holidays and/or considering reaching out to a Conservative rabbi. The Reform movement may already consider you Jewish and therefore may not want to do a giyur l'chumra. The Conservative movement (much as I might personally disagree with it on this point) would not consider you halachicly Jewish and would be delighted to help you solidify your Jewish identity. If you ultimately decide not to convert but rather to reclaim and learn through the Reform movement, please know that you still have a place here. It's labeled as a gerische space, but the same types of resources and communities tend to help both gerim and reclaimants. We would be delighted to help you connect to your heritage and people and to support you doing so in a way that feels the most correct and appropriate to you.

Wishing you all the best in your exploration, a shana tova, and a meaningful Yom Kippur if you are observing it!

[chochmah-binah-daas]

behold all the pesadik food i currently have: two boxes of matzo and a tin of matzo meal all from last year, and about 3 lbs of chocolate

[hints-and-hacks]

And what would Pesach be without quinoa side salads? We use spinach instead of kale for this easy, delicious family favorite. You could use it as a main, but you'd definitely want something else nutrient-dense to go with it; it's just too light to be the lone entree of a major meal.

[chochmah-binah-daas]

i’m starting to clean up my kitchen for pesach and i have a ton of food to either eat or sell before next week so i’m getting very creative with how to use like 10 cans of soup, a bunch of crackers, and some non-pesadik matzo