Usually, my go-to Pickles inspiration is from Tanya chapter 27, about two types of delicacies: sweet & pleasant vs. spicy or pickled. But this year at our Pickle Table on campus, I came across a new life-message and Chassidic inspiration to be derived from pickles – this time from the two ways pickles are made.

So, as you may have surmised from the title of this page, there are two general methods of pickle-making:

VINEGAR PICKLES

This is the faster, more certain way to make a pickle. Usually, the recipe calls for water and vinegar to be heated with salt (sometimes sugar, too) and spices and poured (either hot or cold) over cucumbers, you can add garlic and dill to that, which then sit in that mixture for some length of time until the desired sourness is properly absorbed. Most pickles you see on supermarket shelves have vinegar as an ingredient. Usually this type of pickle sits in a green or yellow-ish pickle juice, for the vinegar brings out that color in the water.

LACTO-FERMENTED SALT-BRINE PICKLES

Don’t be misled by Lacto in the title, there’s no dairy involved. But you are onto something, for this process works similarly to how yogurt is made. These pickles have no vinegar – just water, salt and spices (plus garlic and dill for that flavor pickle). So what makes them sour? When cucumbers are submerged (another life lesson: immersion matters!) in the salt brine and left out at room temperature for several days, the salt inhibits certain forms of bacteria, but allows a certain salt-loving (good!) bacterial culture to grow. Once that chemical change takes place, the soon-to-be-pickle is stored in cool temps for a longer period of time to allow that transformation to mature and then you have a delicious pickle. These pickles are usually more expensive (and I think more flavorful) and their pickle juice usually runs clear or cloudy, it isn’t green or yellow-ish the way vinegar pickles are. You’ll find these pickles in a supermarket refrigerator, some of the better known Kosher brands are Ba-Tampte or Williamsburg Pickle etc.

THE DIFFERENCE

There’s a big difference here between the two pickle methods, as to where that desired sourness is coming from. Does it come externally, poured from above, derived from the added vinegar or is it developed internally, from within? The salt water brine doesn’t create bitterness, it only facilitates it, it creates circumstances which allow it to grow in and of itself.

In terms of education (= absorption), Jewishly or otherwise, some things get shoved down our throats, or generally get thrown on from above by external forces. And another way is the way we grow into it ourselves, because we take advantage of what’s available, the conditions are ripe, the desired sourness (in pickles, or whatever is desired in life) comes from within, not from above.

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TWO PICKLE TYPES IN SHALOH’S TEACHING

A while back we shared a teaching of the Shaloh, that Rabbi Yossel Weinberg used as an introduction to the Tanya tapes of Reb Yoel Kahn that I heard as a young teenager. See here for that post and why I think R’ Yosef Weinberg chose that specific teaching as a Tanya intro.

But now think of it in the above pickle context, as the Shaloh interprets this verse from the Song at the Sea:

If “this is MY G-d” if it comes from within, if I internalized it and made it my own – then “Anvayhu” which Shaloh interprets as two words: “Ani v’Hu” (as Buber would put it) I and Thou, we have a close personal relationship

but if it is only “the G-d of my forefathers” i.e. it’s not my own connection, but I only have this connection because my parents have it this way, or it was poured on me from above or the outside, then “Aromimenu” then it is exalted – removed, distant, high up and out of reach.

In pickle speak: This is MY G-d is a lacto-fermented pickle. It’s not sourness that comes externally from vinegar. The G-d of my forefathers is a vinegar pickle. It’s the sourness that comes from others and is not my own.