Beth-El Zedeck Sisterhood Opening Meeting

Last Sunday, the Sisterhood of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck held its annual opening meeting. As their semi-official milchik chef of exotic dishes, I was asked to plan out the menu and lead the catering for the dinner. With my army of Sisterhood and non-Sisterhood volunteers, we prepared a wonderful feast for the assembled throng: an Israeli dinner of falafel, hummus, pita, fruit salad, cucumber-tomato salad, borekas, and an orange/date/almond cake. Everything except for the pita bread was made from scratch. I wanted to bake pita bread, but my wife suggested that this would be a time-prohibitive process. In other words, “Are you meshugge?”

Shirah actually pulled me onto this project. I have catered for other Sisterhood events, but never the opening meeting. Shirah recently joined the Sisterhood board (to her tremendous surprise), and is part of the planning committee. So now whenever she comes home from a Sisterhood meeting, my first question is not, “how was the meeting?” but rather, “what did you volunteer me for now?”

Of course, I have to maintain a modest veneer of exasperation, just so no one takes me for granted. Truth be told, I love doing this. I get to plan out a menu, shop for food, cook in a giant kitchen, tell other people what to do, watch the kitchen staff do the dishes, and then pretend to look modest while all the Sisterhood women heap praises upon me.

One of the ladies saw me preparing the meal and teased, “You’re just doing this to be surrounded by ladies, aren’t you?”

Shirah offered this correction later. “No, you don’t do this to be surrounded by ladies. You do this to be surrounded by ladies singing your praises.”

Damn. She found me out.