sour cherry meatballs and grilled mango honey cake: racing for forgiveness, or at least, a good meal

I had the perfect “aha” moment the other day. It happened after my jittery high of Sudafed wore off, my headache cleared, and I was wired with the sudden need to cook. It was at that moment that I realized I was done being sick. Two days of feeling no connection with cooking is disastrous for me. I become very, very grumpy. Immediately, I had to make up for lost time, and, being in the midsts of the Jewish High Holidays, I couldn’t have picked a better time.This is heavy-duty Jewish time. If you are going to pay a visit to a synagogue at any time of the year, this is when you’d do it. Yom Kippur, which begins sundown Friday night and runs until sundown Saturday night is the godfather of all Jewish celebrations, the time where we pray for forgiveness and clean the slate anew. And, even though we are supposed to ask for forgiveness on an empty stomach (a challenge I’ve rarely been successful at), once we reach forgiveness, we start off again with lots and lots of food.I have vivid memories of my family’s cameo synagogue appearance during Yom Kippur service when I was a child. Even growing up in South America, where it is assumed you would come to any event late, we would be extra late. After fighting three daughters on the injustices of having to wear a dress, my mother and father would quickly shuffle us out the front door and we’d make the quiet drive to the synagogue. Once there, we’d march up the front steps led by my Israeli-born father, who, with the zest and zeal of an army officer, always walked much faster than any of us.Our religious experience was all in haste: mumbled hellos to important-looking men waiting by the door, a hand would slip a heavy and worn prayer book into our hands, half in Hebrew, half in Spanish, and up the stairs we’d go to the main part of the sanctuary, which looked more like a reception hall than anything else. And for as slowly as my father would try to open the big wooden door to enter, it always creaked and my face inevitably turned beet red with embarrassment at our simple failure of coming unnoticed to service.The rest was a daze of boredom for my sisters and I. I recall the cantor’s vivid red hair and beard, singing in a world unbeknownst to me, people bowing and chanting in unison in a spiritual whirlwind I had somehow not entered. I almost resented my father for alienating us from this world, save for something in his rebellion to religion spoke to me and, in an effort to draw myself closer to him, I let it go and forgave him our tardiness. All my thoughts where ended by the grateful blowing of the Shofar, the ram’s horn that represented the official ending of the service. With this Biblical sound resonating in the cold hall I knew we had done our good deed for the year and God, who was somewhere up there taking attendance, could mark a check on our names. And just as quickly as his pen made the mark, where we out of there, trying to keep up with my dad who was racing down the stairs, quickly returning the prayer books, mumbling goodbyes with an occasional handshake, and back into the car to the drive home where something much more familiar and comforting awaited us: a fragrant dinner prepared earlier that day.I never knew why the fuss for, what would in the end be, a big hurry to go and come back. I knew it was inevitable we’d go to synagogue, no matter how many times my sisters and I whined about it. Eventually, I let my fighting go, considering it a duty to appease my dad, to race after him as we dipped ourselves in one night of strange song and prayer that he somehow felt connect to and I knew nothing about. The only thing I could understand was the Shofar, and year after year I anticipated its long, loud blowing, wondering what meal would be waiting at home.