Sheikh el Mehshi & vegetables as vessels

This week I made my grandmother’s Sheikh el Mehshi—Lebanese stuffed eggplant—for a group of girlfriends coming over for our

summer local Climate Corps meeting.

As I was cooking, I had one of those thoughts that probably says more about me than the food:

so many of my favourite Lebanese recipes are basically vegetables being used as vessels.

Stuffed grape leaves.

Stuffed zucchini.

Stuffed cabbage.

Stuffed eggplant.

My ancestors really looked at produce and thought:

yes, but what if it held something.

I laughed when I thought it.

But then I kept thinking.

Because in my Jewish culture, there is this recurring idea of the vessel.

In Hebrew, a kli simply means a vessel, container, or instrument.

It’s an ordinary word.

But in Jewish mystical tradition, it becomes something more.

One of the central teachings associated with Rabbi Isaac Luria’s Kabbalah is 

Shevirat HaKelim—the breaking of the vessels.

Very simply put (and scholars and mystics alike have unpacked this in infinitely deeper ways): creation begins as divine light pours into vessels, and the vessels shatter.

When I first learned this teaching years ago, I understood it as a sort of failure.

The vessels could not contain what they were given.

But lately I’ve been wondering if maybe that isn’t the point.

Maybe the point isn’t that the vessels were defective.

Maybe the point is that creation itself was never meant to begin complete.

Jewish thought often holds a beautiful tension: G-d is described as complete, whole, beyond change—and yet creation is dynamic, unfolding, participatory.

We are invited into a world that is unfinished.

Not because something went wrong.

But because relationship requires becoming.

Perfection already exists.

Creation is what happens after.

And somehow, we are entrusted with participating in it.

We are not separate from Hashem,

we are the aspect of Hashem that is becoming perfection.

Not by containing infinity.

But by holding what we can.

By gathering sparks.

By building.

By feeding.

Which brought me unexpectedly back to the kitchen.

Because after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem—the great centre of Jewish ritual life—the rabbis faced a terrifying question:

Now what?

If holiness had lived there… where does holiness live now?

One rabbinic teaching points to an unusual verse in Ezekiel and develops the idea that now that the altar no longer stands, a person’s table carries something of that sacred function.

Not because dinner replaces sacrifice.

But because hospitality, gratitude, study, blessing, and feeding others become places where holiness appears.

The sacred moved.

Or maybe more accurately:

we learned to find it again.

At tables.

Around bread.

In ordinary homes.

And suddenly I thought—

my grandmother probably never thought she was teaching me Jewish mysticism while making stuffed eggplant.

She was just cooking.

Feeding people.

Stretching ingredients.

Passing things down.

Making room.

But maybe that’s always been part of the work.

Take something humble.

Hollow it out.

Fill it with care.

Cook it slowly.

Offer it to people you love.

Trust that it becomes more than what it started as.

This week, I served my grandmother’s Sheikh al Mehshi to women gathered around a table

talking about climate, community, and the world we want to build.

And I thought:

Maybe our tables were never meant to be separate from our altars.

Maybe this is where repair happens.

Maybe this is us bringing down sparks of that infinite light right here

into our imperfect finite world.

Grandma’s Sheikh El Mehshi

Roasted eggplant boats filled with Lebanese-spiced beef, lamb, and pine nuts, baked in tomato and mint.

This is my grandmother’s sheikh el mehshi — a comforting Lebanese dish that brings together smoky eggplant, savoury hashweh (meat filling), pine nuts, tomato, and dried mint.

Ingredients

For the eggplant

• 4–6 medium eggplants

• Olive oil, for cooking

• Salt

For the hashweh

• 1 onion, finely chopped

• ½ lb ground beef

• ½ lb ground lamb

• 1–2 tbsp Lebanese spice blend

• Salt, to taste

• ¼–½ cup pine nuts

• Olive oil, as needed

For the sauce

• 1 jar crushed or strained tomatoes

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

• 1–2 tsp dried mint, crushed between your fingers

Method

1. Char the eggplant.

Heat a generous drizzle of olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high to high heat. Cook the whole eggplants, turning them as they brown, until the skins are deeply browned and blackened in spots and the eggplants have softened.

2. Make the boats.

Let the eggplants cool just enough to handle. Slice each eggplant in half lengthwise. Using a knife, make a few shallow cuts into the flesh of each half, creating little pockets for the hashweh to nestle into. Be careful not to cut through the skin.

3. Make the hashweh.

In a large skillet, sauté the onion in a little olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the ground beef and lamb and cook until browned, breaking the meat apart as it cooks. Season generously with the Lebanese spice blend and salt. Stir in the pine nuts and cook for another minute or two, until fragrant.

4. Fill the eggplant.

Arrange the eggplant halves, cut side up, in a large oven-safe baking dish. Spoon the hashweh generously over each eggplant, pressing some of the mixture gently into the little cuts.

5. Add the tomato.

Pour the crushed or strained tomatoes over and around the eggplant boats. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle the top with crushed dried mint.

6. Bake.

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the eggplant is completely tender and the tomato sauce is bubbling, about 30–40 minutes.

Serve warm, with plenty of the tomato sauce spooned over the eggplant.

A note from my grandmother’s kitchen

The beauty of sheikh el mehshi is in the contrast: the smoky, almost charred eggplant, the warmly spiced meat and lamb, sweet onion, crunchy pine nuts, and bright tomato sauce with a little dried mint. It’s the kind of dish that doesn’t need to be fussy — just generous, fragrant, and made with care.

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Sources & Further Reading

• Menachot 97a — “Now that there is no altar, a person’s table atones for him.”

• Ezekiel 41:22 — the verse connecting “table” and “altar” in rabbinic interpretation.

• Lurianic Kabbalah — Shevirat HaKelim (Breaking of the Vessels), associated with Rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari).

• Pirkei Avot 3:3 — “If three have eaten at one table and spoken words of Torah…”

• Customs around salting bread before HaMotzi as symbolic remembrance of Temple offerings.