Love Your Neighbor: A Shabbat Table Rooted in This Place
Friday, October 2 at Kol Ami
One of the things I love about being Jewish in the Pacific Northwest is that Judaism keeps asking me to pay attention to where I am.
I grew up in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, on the Indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Salmon, cedar trees, mountains, rivers and stories connected to this land were part of the world around me.
And alongside that was my Jewish world.
I belonged to an ancient people too, with our own stories, foods, calendar, language and ancestral homeland. But our ancestral land was far away, while the land beneath my feet carried the history, memory and traditions of other peoples.
That awareness has stayed with me.
This fall, I want to explore some of that through one of my very favorite Jewish practices:
feeding people.
On Friday night, October 2, I’ll be cooking our Kol Ami Shabbat dinner, inspired by the foods and foodways of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
I’m working from chef Sean Sherman’s beautiful new cookbook, Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America, and I’m going to cook from it to the best of my rabbi-home-cook ability.
So: expect love, curiosity and probably at least one thing that does not turn out exactly like the photograph.
I want to be clear that I am not an Indigenous chef, and I am not claiming these food traditions as my own. Indigenous nations have distinct histories, cultures, languages and cuisines.
For me, this dinner is about learning, gratitude and attention.
It is a chance to notice the foods that have nourished people in this region for generations: salmon, berries, squash, corn, beans, seeds, roots and so much more.
And it gives us a beautiful question to bring to the Shabbat table:
What does it mean to be a good neighbor in the place where we live?
The Torah teaches:
V’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
I keep coming back to that verse.
Loving our neighbors means knowing something about them.
It means being curious.
It means listening.
It means learning how to honor another people’s story without making it our own.
And it means paying attention to the land beneath our feet.
For Jews, I think there is something especially meaningful here. We know what it means to carry memory, food, language, longing and a relationship to land across generations.
That does not make Jewish and Indigenous histories the same. They are not.
But perhaps it can help us listen with a little more humility and a little more heart.
So on October 2, I’ll cook.
There will be salmon. There will be seasonal foods from this region. There will be recipes inspired by Sean Sherman’s work to celebrate and strengthen Indigenous foodways.
And I hope we’ll sit together, eat something delicious, and notice what is on our plates.
Where did this food come from?
Who has lived with this land for generations?
What can we learn by paying closer attention to the place we call home?
And, because this is Kol Ami, there will also be laughter, challah, wine, kids, conversation and Shabbat.
Next month, another table
In November, we’ll turn toward Israeli food, with food from Aviv Hummus Bar.
I love the idea of our community dinners becoming little journeys: through food, memory, peoplehood and place.
Sometimes Jewish learning happens in a classroom.
Sometimes it happens in prayer.
And sometimes it happens because someone passes you a plate and says:
Try this.
I hope you’ll come.
Join us October 2
Family Shabbat Service: 5:30 PM
Coast Salish–Inspired Harvest Dinner: 6:30 PM
Choir Kabbalat Shabbat: 7:30 PM
Dinner is $18 per person, with proceeds going to Mother Nation, which supports Native women and their families.
Come hungry.
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