Kosher Laws for Dummies… Warren’s tribute to the rules he can’t seem to grasp

It is Saturday evening. Lee and I just got back from walking around Tel Aviv. We walked endlessly around long streets with famous names through little cafes and interesting crowds of young people looking for action. We stopped and had a Beer and salad at Mike’s. We sat outside in the balmy night with the Mediterranean breeze taking the edge off the temperature. The beech restaurants underlight the closed umbrellas so that they glowed in the night like a myriad of huge road crew cones on the dark beech. The lapping waves punctuated the lulls between the various singer’s sets at the little bars that dot the boardwalk.

Saturday night is party night for the locals and everything seems to open at around 10:00 pm. We went out at about 9:00 and it was after 10:00 when people started really turning out on the streets. Friday night is Shabbat. Most places are closed for the Sabbath celebration.

Jewish people have various types of observance. As a kid, I understood it as levels of observance. I thought that the orthodox followed the rules very closely. I thought that
Conservative Jews were sort of in the middle and the Reform Jews just didn’t follow the rules at all. Actually, each group has their own rules that have developed from deep thinking about the Torah and other Jewish texts that have developed over the centuries like the Haftorah, Talmud, Rabbinic writings and other great works.

As I grew up, we belonged to a Conservative temple. My brothers and I went through the tradition of becoming Bar Mitzvah at age 13. Each of us has gone on to experience religion in our own ways. As a kid, I understood the laws of being Kosher to go something like this. 1. We couldn’t eat pork. There were exceptions. If we were in a Chinese restaurant and they gave us Won Ton soup and there was reddish colored meat in it, and we asked the waiter several times if he was really sure that it was not pork and he smiled and he said, “no poke,” then we could eat it. Hey, he said it wasn’t pork! Also, we could eat pork occasionally with friends at a certain Barbeque in downtown Detroit, because the ribs were so great! 2. We couldn’t eat shrimp, lobster, or other shell fish. However, let us not forget the exceptions to this rule. We could eat lobster or shrimp if it was on a buffet or otherwise free. 3. Eating milk together with meat in the same meal was discouraged. Generally, it wasn’t because of the rules about being Kosher. We just didn’t think is sounded particularly good. In retrospect, we considered the Kosher laws to be more of health laws. Pork was bad. There was the problem of Tricinosis, and even if we cooked it well, it was fatty and the lard was considered bad for us even back then. We thought Oysters were just plain gross. Also, have you ever really looked at shrimp and lobster up close….they look like big bugs….bugs of the bottom of the sea….

As you know, we had dinner for Shabbat at the Gelpe’s. They are Orthodox. They follow a long list of rules that were generated by Rabbis to make sure that the Orthodox followers don’t even come close to breaking the rules. There are many things you can’t do on Shabbat. You can’t do any work and there are 39 categories of activities that are restricted. For example, you can’t make fire after the Shabbat candles are ignited. They, as many Orthodox do, interpret this to mean that you cannot turn on a light. The bathroom light is left illuminated. If a guest turns it off…..well…..hard to go after that. Also, there is no writing. So for example, if a guest asks for a pen to write down another guests e-mail, that guest is politely told that it will have to wait until Saturday night. One cannot mix milk and meat at the same meal. Like most Kosher families, they have a set of milk plates and silverware and meat plates and silverware. There are items that are neither milk nor meat which are called Parve. The plates and serving spoons that are in the Parve dishes cannot touch the meat food items or meat plates as they are being used to place the items on the plate for fear that they may then be used later during a milk meal and touch thereby mixing the two. We observed these traditions as we were at their house and wanted to be respectful.

I must say that I am not judgmental of either choices. I understand why people are Orthodox. I also understand why people are Reform. I have chosen to be reform because I believe that it more closely follows my belief system, but I admire the people who choose the harder path for what they are willing to do for their faith. I am also motivated by such interactions to reassess my thoughts on the matter and to refine them. I think that I will try harder to not work on Shabbat. I have never cared much for shrimp or lobster, but I do occasionally like pork….I think I will kick that as well….it will be better for me too.

Talk with you more soon.
W