By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

What exactly is a ritual? Wendy A. Horwitz contemplates that question in the introduction to her book of essays, “Milkweed and Honey Cake: A Memoir in Ritual Moments” (Red Lightening Books). The difficulty for Horwitz is that most definitions see ritual as a religious act. Although Horwitz celebrates some Jewish holidays, she doesn’t believe in God – well, except for those moments when she has a spiritual experience, although she often can’t define what makes the experience spiritual. Her main concern, though, are actions she believes qualify as rituals, even when they are distinctly secular in nature. The author explains the purpose of her book is to “discern and create meaning through ritual,” but she notes that she does so “through the lens of my memories and observations. The essays take a deliberately personal, subjective, and idiosyncratic viewpoint.” She does hope, though, that her reflections will resonate with her readers and help them engage in their own rituals – whether religious or secular in nature.
For Jewish readers, the essays on Jewish ritual may be of most interest. For example, in “It Won’t Be This Simple Next Time,” Horwitz discusses teaching her children the concept of tzedakah from the time they first began receiving an allowance. Her children were required to divide their allowance in three parts: money for spending, money for saving and money for tzedakah. When the High Holidays arrived, the children emptied their tzedakah boxes and decided where the funds should go, with the adults rounding up the amount and writing the check. The author also writes of the tzedakah project that one child did as a mitzvah project: it raised awareness about the importance of marriage equality just before the Supreme Court declared same-gender marriage bans illegal. 
When writing about “Polishing the Silver” as a ritual moment, Horwitz ties her actions to the Jewish principle of hiddur mitzvah, the concept of “making a ritual more beautiful than needed... for example, decorating a challah cover or Kiddush cup.” However, the author sees this ritual as doing more than just creating a beautiful object for herself or her family: “Laying out the china and polishing the silver expresses some of what is good in the world, maybe providing a spark of defiance against inhumanity and cruelty. Gilding mundane acts with intention and beauty may not rectify the world’s problems, but it does help us make sense of life and imbue it with meaning.”
Horwitz also finds meaning in looking through the “Sacred Pages” of the folder where she keeps her recipes, the ones given to her by relatives and friends. While she acknowledges the way that foods connected to holidays offer meaning, her real interest is in the way these writings bring memories to life. For example, handwritten recipes need to be deciphered in a different way than ones found in a cookbook: What did the person mean by the size of a potato, or how much oil or butter is enough to complete the dish? Whether making the recipes or just reading them, Horwitz is reminded of the original event where she tasted the food and her connection to the person who made the dish. She doesn’t believe the same thing can be achieved with recipes printed from the Internet. It is the personal connection that matters.
The most moving essays focus on the rituals Horwitz created during the pandemic. In “Under the Tent,” she writes of gathering under an open tent for an outdoor Shabbat service that offered more meaning and connection than the Zoom services she had attended. The author connects the feeling to the holiday of Sukkot and of how sitting in a sukkah reminds us of the fragility of life, something relevant to the pandemic. She writes of creating personal and meaningful graduation events when people were unable to gather in crowds in “Graduation in a Year of Wonders,” and the beauty of weddings with fewer people, but a greater focus on family and connection, in “Love in the Time of COVID.” She concludes with essays focusing on death and the rituals that accompany it in “Visiting the Graves,” “Writing to the Dead” and “The Last Country,” which focuses on those rituals that were of help after the loss of her father.
Readers may quibble with the book’s subtitle. Although Horwitz writes about her personal experiences, the collection of essays doesn’t feel like a memoir. That’s because huge sections of her life story are missing: for example, readers learn she’s been married and divorced twice, and changed employment, but the details of what occurred are never revealed. However, those interested in ritual, rather than the author’s personal life, may find ways to incorporate or consider new rituals, in addition to noting the ones they regularly practice that they never before considered sacred moments.