Page 12
August 7, 2019
F OOD
Best Veggie Burger (Vegan & Grillable)
•
•
• 1/4 cup ground flax
•
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 cups cooked black beans (2 •
•
15-oz cans, drained and rinsed)
Ingredients
1 cup cashews•
1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice
1/2 cup chopped parsely
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1/3 cup chopped green onions
•
•
•
•
1 cup bread crumbs•
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
1 tablespoon chili powder
1-2 teaspoons salt, to taste
Directions
1. First, cook your rice if you don’t already have
some leftover in the fridge. Gather all the ingre-
dients.
2. Mash the drained/rinsed black beans in a
large bowl, leaving a few beans whole.
3. Pulse 1 cup of cashews (or other nut/seed) in
a food processor until breadcrumb size. Don’t
leave these out unless you have to, they add so
much texture and you’ll miss them!
4. Add all the ingredients to the bean bowl and
mix well with a large wooden spoon. Shape into
patties about 3-4 inch thick.
5. To pan-fry or grill, refrigerate the shaped pat-
ties for at least 30 minutes. Then grill for a few
minutes on each side. Use 2-3 tblsp oil if pan-
fried.
6. To bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
and line a baking sheet or two with parchment
paper. Place the patties on the pan(s) and bake
for 20 minutes. Flip, bake for 15 more minutes.
Remove from oven.
7. Serve on hamburger buns and any burger fix-
ings you love! Go with the classic: vegan mayo,
ketchup, mustard, pickle slices, lettuce, tomato
and onion. Or get creative: barbecue sauce, Sri-
racha vegan mayo, avocado and arugula, etc.
Diverse Play Explores
Jewish Identity
C ontinueD froM p age 2
insight and humanity, holding
them open rather than answer-
ing them. A cast of seven Jew-
ish actors, diverse in terms of
age and racial identity, appear
in a variety of roles, including
as actors in various productions
of “The God of Vengeance,” a
touchstone of Yiddish theater.
The story of that particular play
becomes the vehicle to inform
us about the play’s vibrant lost
history, and to help us grapple
with the questions of identity
that continue to plague the Jew-
ish community.
It is hard to capture just how
compelling and relevant this
deep dive into Yiddish the-
ater actually is. It was news to
me--as, I expect, to most peo-
ple--that in 1906, a young Pol-
ish-Jewish writer, Sholem Asch,
wrote a play that was perhaps
ahead of its time and perhaps
outside of time itself. In “The
God of Vengeance,” an inno-
cent Jewish girl, Rifkele, who is
the daughter of a brothel owner
and a former whore who aspire
to respectability, falls in love
with Manke, one of the prosti-
tutes who works for her father.
In their quest for respectabili-
ty, Rifkele’s parents have com-
missioned a Torah (the sacred
handwritten scroll of the first
five books of the Jewish scrip-
tures) for their home, not be-
cause they are so pious but in
order to attract a good husband
for their daughter. When they
discover Rifkele’s relationship
with Manke, the brothel owner,
in a scene that shocked even the
least observant Jews, angrily
discards the Torah, and casts out
his wife and daughter.
At its first reading in Warsaw
in 1906, the play shocked and
offended people with its depic-
tion of two women in love, its
sacrilegious treatment of the To-
rah, and its centering of charac-
ters who were not at all the sort
that a marginalized community
would want to highlight. The
play was written in Yiddish, the
mother tongue that tied togeth-
er the community of Ashkenazi
Jews in Central and Eastern Eu-
rope at the time, a beleaguered
community that had endured
centuries of pogroms and segre-
gation. At the time the play was
written, Jews disagreed about
whether interaction with the sec-
ular, non-Jewish world would
help or hinder their survival as a
community, and what such inter-
action should look like. The first
professional Yiddish theaters in
the 1870s were part of a move-
ment toward making Yiddish a
language of the arts, philosophy,
and science--but Asch’s play was
viewed by many in that world
as shaming the Jews in front of
Gentiles.
Nevertheless, “The God of
Vengeance” found surprising-
ly enthusiastic audiences for
many years, with successful
productions all over Europe in
several different languages. Its
reception in the U.S. was more
mixed; a Yiddish production in
New York in 1907 sparked dis-
agreements in the Yiddish press
over whether the play was inde-
cent or an artistic triumph, and
an English-language production
in 1923 (which revised the play
to darken the relationship be-
tween the two women) was shut
down for obscenity, supported
by the testimony of a promi-
nent rabbi. The play simply did
not portray who American Jews
wanted to be in the world, and
eventually Asch, after the Ho-
locaust, banned further produc-
tions of it.
“Indecent” becomes a com-
pelling rumination on this histo-
ry. We follow the playwright and
his wife; a tailor who becomes
so inspired by the first reading of
the play that he spends much of
his life managing productions of
it; actors who embody the story
on stage while experiencing the
intersections between their own
lives and the play’s handling of
hypocrisy and forbidden love.
As I watched the shifts in the
play and the artists, I felt in my
body the many times I have ex-
perienced pressure to show up in
certain ways to benefit my com-
munity or to avoid hindering its
ambitions.
The design of this production,
beautifully directed by Shana
Cooper, lifts the play to a plane
that feels both deeply embodied
and also spiritual. A uniformly
wonderful cast that, importantly,
includes Jews of color, inspires
reverence for the role of art to
help us look where we had nev-
er thought to look for inspiration
and hope. And three on-stage
musicians carry the soul of the
play in the sounds of the accor-
dion, clarinet, and violin. I left
inspired, understood, and grate-
ful to so many artists--including
the playwrights Sholem Asch
and Paula Vogel--who have lift-
ed these questions and struggles
for identity to places that are so
hard to reach.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on
the Oregon Court of Appeals and
the first woman of color to serve
in that capacity. Her movie re-
view column Opinionated Judge
appears regularly in The Port-
land Observer.