I had an email from Shelley Tayar and an email from Shelley is always so welcome as, if it isn’t something positive, then it is something funny or full of common sense. She was inviting me to the traditional Jewish blessings for the Jewish New Year or Rosh Hashanah “to assure you a very happy and prosperous New Year and a healthy one. All sorts of guarantees. It’s going to be held at the Hilton on Thursday 13 September at 8pm and you had better be there… with love…”
Thank goodness I had nothing on, that evening which could not be postponed. So arrived, a little late for I had a deadline to meet.
It was dinner and not a reception and guests were already sitting down while Shelley was at the microphone. It was something that I had never seen before though throughout my life and everywhere in the world I have had a number of Jewish friends. Indeed I am often taken for one. I felt very honoured to have been invited to a very select and very traditional event. It is the Year 5768 for the Jews this year.
Shelley explained the significance of every dish which arrived at table. There were the pieces of apple dipped in honey to symbolize ‘a sweet New Year’. The use of apples and honey is a late medieval Ashkenazi addition, though it is now almost universally accepted. There was other symbolic food: delicious dates of which I had several helpings. Shelley had distributed a handout with the meaning behind everything we ate. There was a short prayer under each item of food which was read by one of the guests. Dates in Hebrew is Tamu – in Maltese it is Tamal, I reminded myself. The prayer underneath the dates is particularly appropriate: “May it be your will Lord our God and God of our fathers that the destructive mayhem and hatred of terrorists will be finished and end, like the symbol of the dates or tamarinds (tamu) we are eating.”
The prayer to go with the leeks also had to do with terror, hate and fanatics with a plea to God “to chop to ashes any terror, negative sentences and ill health that are due for us this coming year and remember kindly our good deeds and merits in deciding our fate.” I found that very touching. This pleading with God: ‘Look, don’t just send me pain, spare me if you can. Take a look at the good works and deeds I have done.’ Whether He will listen or not is another matter.
The prayer following the serving of black-eyed beans was to ask God “to multiply and increase our privileges and benefits in this coming year and let goodness multiply, like these black eyed beans.”
Bread, Shelley explained is very important and we were all asked to cut a piece of the loaf presented and eat it.
Pomegranate seeds are used in many traditions and as we helped ourselves to them someone recited the following prayer: “May it be your will Lord God and God of our fathers that our good deeds, charity and tolerance and therefore our merits will multiply like the seeds of the pomegranate fruit.” I loved that one too.
Lettuce too is significant: “that You will assign us all to leadership and not to failure or as written in Hebrew to be the head and not the tail of our affairs.”
A huge Salmon was then brought in and served. And the prayer? Not knew to Christians: “that we will increase and multiply like fish and no evil eye will touch us the way it doesn’t and cannot touch any fish (because they cannot blink). May love spread among humanity. Amen.”
It wasn’t just another celebration with a great deal of overeating and overdrinking. The occasion made you think. God was offering us another year. What are we going to do with it? Are we living for something that matters or are we merely concerned about our next lollipop? I must, say it did make me think when I returned home after a very pleasant evening in which the mixture of guests was wonderful, and a reflection of Shelley’s wide spectrum of loyalties. It was a very ecumenical occasion and a microcosm of the world as it should be and not as it is. She is an exceptional lady and I am not being soppy and sentimental when I say that I feel lucky that I know her and that I was invited to this special event.
The Jews are an exceptionally gifted people to be found everywhere in the world including Malta and wherever they are they do well. I remember reading in Nigel Dennis’ An Essay on Malta that Abela, Attard and Azzopardi, Bernard, Degiorgio and Micallef are Jewish surnames “supposedly descendants of Sephardic Jews.” Interesting. One professor of history, himself a Jew, assures me that most of us are of Jewish descent. I have been trying to persuade him to write an article about it for me for several years.
This brings me to Anita Roddick (see our tribute to this exceptional woman on page 39). This Italian Jew who died far too young campaigned for green issues for many years before it became fashionable to do so and inspired millions to the cause by bringing sustainable products to a mass market.
The suppliers of Community Trade cocoa butter in Ghana, Kuapa Kokoo, said: “We are grateful to God that he gave us such an inspirational figure; a mother whose love for the development of the vulnerable and the under-privileged will continue to linger on in our minds till eternity. Anita would be well remembered by the Kuapa Kokoo family and the chiefs and people, for a school block she, together with the Body Shop funded in the Bayerebon community. The seed she sowed is generating fruits of success and enlightment.” A life well lived. I hope there are Elysian Fields and that Anita is there.
My eldest and her lovely husband are in Malta and I told them there was a Festival of bread in Qormi, where they bought a house, and so last weekend we made our way to Qormi, which was the bakery of the Knights of Malta and where they still make the proper Maltese bread. There was a festival of wine too but that was over the day before. We parked near the massive church of San Sabastian which was beautifully lit and where the action was taking place. There were stands with bread and lovely food. Stuffat which looked absolutely delicious, beef and lovely, lovely roast pork with patata fil-forn. You exchanged the Maltese money for plastic euros and it was all very well organized although it took quite a while to get some food because it was so well attended. A small loaf of bread was topped off and filled with whatever you requested. The only disappointment for us was that the bread was not the properly made Maltese loaf which we all love…it was the ‘cotton wool’ variety – and this in Qormi. We had also hoped to buy a couple of loaves but there were none for sale to take home.
My other gripe is the noise. The loudspeakers were far too loud so that the Ghana did not allow us to exchange any words even if we shouted at the top of our voice. Why is everything and everywhere so noisy? It is unnecessary. But I hope it will be held again next year and refined further. We shall certainly be there.