I’m always looking for recipes that give me a lot of mileage. They can’t be too time consuming and also have to be exciting for my kids.
My reaction: I smiled, I thought it was very sweet, but I didn’t think it earned me any parenting points; it was just programming. Baruch Hashem, my son is a super kid and I’m very proud of him, but I don’t think this is testimony of that!
Then I thought it over and realized that my initial reaction was wrong. A thank-you or something similarly small may be
tokenistic, but a symbol, by definition, means that it’s linked to something larger. There’s a lot more significance being hinted at with a symbol that’s universally agreed upon. A thank-you isn’t necessarily much, but it can be. It indicates that someone had the presence of mind to not be consumed with themselves and warmly extend appreciation.
Many of the things we do here in Family Table are tokenistic in that we’re creating recipes and other food content for the sake of something much larger. The food is almost irrelevant; it’s just the agreed-upon term used to convey a message. Most of the time, we’re trying to give something importance — like family, for example, or a Yom Tov.
Shavuos is a symbol of the relationship we have with Hashem and the Torah. It’s a celebration of our connection. We know it’s there, we know it’s everlasting; it’s there before and after Shavuos. Shavuos, and all the beautiful things we do to make it special in our homes, locks it in for us.
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