By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
At first I thought it was hummus, although the container was a different shape. When I was growing up, hummus was an exotic food. More common at brunches (like the one I was attending) were lox and whitefish. Although I enjoy lox, whitefish has always been my preferred smoked fish. You can imagine my joy and surprise when what I thought was hummus turned out to be whitefish salad. Whitefish is so expensive that it is now usually made into a salad, rather than being offered as full pieces of fish. Those were so good! Pre-pandemic, I would periodically buy a small piece of whitefish (no one local sells a whole fish anymore) and eat it plain. That is how good it is and how much I like it.
However, another very Jewish food was served as a dessert and I am going to risk my Jewish credentials by saying that I really don’t get babka. It strikes me as neither a bread nor a cake. I’ve enjoyed it toasted with cream cheese, but a plain piece is just not a thrill. I used to be a big fan of raisin bread and my favorite challah is raisin, but babka is too sweet to be bread. I also enjoy banana bread and other breads of that kind, but babka is not sweet enough to be one of them. Even though I love things with cinnamon (I prefer an oatmeal raisin cookie to a chocolate chip one for that reason), even the cinnamon in babka is not enough to make me enjoy eating it.
While we are speaking of preferred foods, there are bagels and there are bagels, meaning there are bagels that are chewy and delightful, and there are bagels whose lack of texture and taste remind me of bland white bread (which I don’t like after years of eating whole wheat and seven-grain bread). Those blah bagels don’t strike me as a particularly Jewish food, which leads me to make a controversial declaration: there are Jewish bagels and there are secular/non-Jewish bagels. My preference is the traditional Jewish bagel and, if you really want to make me happy, it should be an onion one.
Of course, I recognize that everyone has different food preferences. That explains the babka at the brunch. The fact that whitefish doesn’t usually appear probably has more to do with cost than taste. I realize I can’t impose my ideas on others, but if someone wants me to create the menu for the next brunch, I’d be happy to help. Of course, you might have to up the budget, so perhaps we’re better off with those currently making the decisions.