Noah’s Pudding
Today a group of delegates from the Turkish American Multicultural Educational Foundation (TAMEF) in Queens brought Noah’s Pudding to share with us. The story in the Muslim tradition is that while Noah was on the ark, food became scarce and there was only a random assortment of ingredients left. Noah put them all together and made a delicious pudding from them. Muslims make this pudding and share it with their neighbors to commemorate the landing of Noah’s ark.
The pudding is made from truly what would seem a random assortment of things: wheat, white beans, chick peas, raisins, peanuts, dried apricots, sugar water, hazelnut, walnuts, cinnamon, and figs. Now, all of you that know me (Jen Ezell) know that I don’t like anything. Especially things that are new and especially things that look completely unidentifiable. When I first saw it I thought, “Uh-oh. I’m not going to be able to eat that.” But, I decided it was best to at least try it as the polite, hospitable thing to do. As it turns out, it is quite good. It is much sweeter than I expected it to be and had a strong cinnamon flavor - which I like. It is a bit startling to bite into a chick pea or a white bean in that flavor, but still very good. I would recommend it.
The members of the group that brought the pudding to share with us stayed and chatted with us. Ercan, the gentleman that joined us at our table, is probably in his late 20s or early 30s. He has been in the United States for a few years, but is originally from Turkey and was raised for some of his life in Germany. We swapped stories about ancient prophets. It was very interesting to hear the Muslim version of the story of Abraham and God’s command to sacrifice his son. In the Muslim tradition, it was Ishmael, not Isaac, that Abraham was asked to sacrifice. On the way to the sacrifice, both Abraham and Ishmael were tempted by the devil, but both surrendered to God’s command willingly. It was very cute when we asked him the name of Abraham’s son and he wasn’t sure - he had to check with one of his friends. It was clear that he is Muslim in the same sort of way that we are Christians. I mean, really, how many average Christians would be able to name Abraham’s son or even be able to tell the story of the sacrifice in detail? It was a good reminder that not all Muslims are the fundamentalists that we see on TV, just like not all Christians are the fundamentalists that we see on TV.
I thanked the professor that had helped to organize the event and told him what a fun conversation we’d had. His reply was, “Yes. It is hard to demonize someone with whom we’ve had a conversation.”
