Showing audiences throughout suburban Chicago how to make a sweet "cheese pie" in honor of the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, Goldie Tiechtel, co-director of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Student Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was the featured guest last Friday on a local television station's morning news program.
Appearing during the "Three Minute Grill" segment on WCIA Channel 3's "The Morning Show," Tiechtel made a sugar-infused cheesecake from cottage cheese, sour cream and eggs.
She also explained the tradition behind eating dairy foods on Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah, as rooted in the Jewish People's desire to follow G‑d's directives.
"Dairy represents the Jews' eagerness in following the Torah," she stated. "They didn't yet know how to slaughter meat, so they decided to eat only dairy."
On the program, Tiechtel also invited viewers to attend the dairy-rich Shavuot celebration and reading of the Ten Commandments that will take place Friday afternoon. ...
only cheesecake? Kudos to the Teichtels for running a campus Chabad house, and getting the Shavous "dairy" message across to the masses via televised cheesecake.......but
I often jokingly envision Klal Yisroel gathered at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, the kinderlach licking ice cream cones and the adults with a plate of marbeliized mocha, strawberry festooned cheesecake, (or substitute your favorite flavor...) Perhaps this generation of slightly to extremely overweight American Jews would be better off with a bit of low fat clheese spread on a whole wheat cracker--throw on a slice of tomato or cucumber, call it a canape or hors d'oevre, and be done with it. We gotta be in shape to march behind Moshiach to Yerushelayim, right? (hope it's soon!) (No offense meant to Rebbitzen Goldie--keep up the great work!)