Jethro & Hummus

February 5, 2010
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

      A new, but hardly known, war has broken out between Israel and Lebanon. It started in October 2008 when Israel broke the Guinness record for the largest plate of hummus in the world. The Israelis piled 400 kilograms (about 882 pounds) of hummus on a single plate. About a year later, Lebanon responded by putting two tons of hummus on a single plate, capturing the Guinness record.

      But Israel refused to be bested. This January, fifty chefs in the Israeli-Arab village of Abu Ghosh mashed and spiced up four tons of hummus and placed them on a single "plate" -- in this case, a 20 foot satellite dish donated for the occasion.

      Hummus is, of course, a simple-to-prepare, very tasty dish made of chickpeas, sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic, but it seems that hummus stirs up passions and rivalries across much of the Middle East.

      For example, Lebanon recently requested that the European Union register hummus as a Lebanese specialty. Fadi Abboud, Tourism Minister of Lebanon and former president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, led the effort. He even considered suing Israel in order to stop it from marketing hummus around the world as an Israeli dish. But he was informed by the European Union that, in order to recognize hummus as an original Lebanese product, documents and evidence would have to be produced shoring up the Lebanese claim. Abboud admitted that this would be a long and exhausting enterprise. And, more recently, he was quoted as saying that he would be satisfied if other nations merely recognized Lebanon as the original home of hummus.

      Israelis regarded the efforts of the Lebanese to gain exclusive rights to promoting hummus with some amusement. They commented that this would be like allowing some nation to claim the intellectual ownership of bread. After all, hummus is one of the world's oldest known foods, common throughout the Middle East and along the eastern Mediterranean Coast. It has probably been around for centuries, and its origins are lost in time.

      For the moment, though, the chefs of Abu Ghosh, Israel, hold the world record for the largest spread of hummus on one plate. Guinness adjudicator Jack Brookbank, who has tasted hummus for several years on either side of the Israel-Lebanon border, commented that Lebanese hummus "is very good" but right now, at least, "Abu Ghosh is the hummus capital of the world."

      Lebanese Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud said his country was up for the challenge and plans to beat the new record with an even bigger hummus plate this spring. The event is scheduled to be held at the Fatima Gate, near the Israel-Lebanon border. The next round of the "hummus war" will just have to wait until after Passover.

      This week, though, we read the portion of Yitro, named for Jethro the father-in-law of Moses who was a Midianite chieftain. The portion includes the Ten Commandments, but it begins with Jethro watching Moses struggle to judge the Israelites. Every dispute, large and little, was brought before Moses, as he sat from dawn to dusk trying to settle the little wars that kept breaking out all over the camp. Jethro warned Moses, saying, you will work yourself to exhaustion this way and the people will soon be deprived of their leader. It would be better to set up a system of judges -- judges over ten, judges over fifty, judges over one hundred, and judges over one thousand people. Only if the lower judges could not settle a dispute, then and only then, the case should be brought to Moses to settle. Moses at once understood the wisdom of Jethro. He was not concerned that Jethro was not Hebrew or that Jethro was the leader of a different nation than his.

      This occurred at a time when Israel and the Midianites were living side-by-side as good neighbors. In later times, under David and Saul and Solomon, the Midianites became dreaded enemies of Israel. If only they could have decided their enmity by seeing how much hummus they could fit on a plate! If only we could decide all wars based on friendly contests. Seeing Israel and Lebanon competing for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records is a lot healthier both for the Israelis and for the Lebanese than seeing rockets crossing borders and soldiers avenging the death of their comrades.

      If there is a serious side to the "hummus war" that is now going on, and a serious side to Moses accepting the good advice of a Midianite chieftain, it is this: No one nation ever has all the truth or all the wisdom. No one nation is ever entirely right or entirely wrong. Both sides of every dispute have reason to be proud of themselves and what they can accomplish, but peace is still possible even when nations hold contesting points of view. And let us say: Amen.