THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
mankind turns necessity into high
civility.
It seems so easy, now that we don't
have to hunt and kill or even cook if we
don't want to, so easy to walk into a
restaurant and order. But try it this
way: "Excuse me, waiter, do you have
a kosher table? I mean, do you sepa-
rate your milk and meat products? Do
you stay away from pork and shellfish?
Are your animals ritually
slaughtered? Is the meat then salted
and soaked, the entrails inspected for
irregularities? Do you keep extra sets
of crockery for Passover? Is challah
taken, and is there a constant watch-
man familiar with all the rules to draw
his circled U? If not,- I guess I'll pass
and go to Israel for ltinch."
But if there is fish on the menu, it
can save a lot of air fare. Good old pro-
letarian fish, nothing fancy, just gills
and scales — tuna, salamon, flounder,
even a sardine in a pinch. The fish and
the egg are the two animal proteins
that are classifiedpareve, neither milk
Friday, April 27, 1984
15
Their lips are sealed, and chances are
you've hardly ever encountered such a
person.
Far more prevalent is the at-home
kosher. This is an attempt by some
Jews to hang on to the old culture
without letting it get in the way of
contemporary life. These people keep
their homes kosher but drop all pro-
hibitions once they cross their
threshold. It is as if they had dis-
covered a special footnote, a Talmudic
homeowners' policy. Kosher to them
becomes a cultural symbol rather than
a taboo, a choice rather than an obliga-
tion.
Then there is the "everything but"
way of kosher. This hearty appetite
has gone almost all the way: a ham-
burger washed down with milk, squid,
octopus, steak tartar — nothing stops
him until he meets the pork chop. That
innocuous piece of sinew recalls to him
the ancient taboo. It's as if Moses him-
self arose from the plate to wave the
finger of shame.
............
Photo by He nry
Far more prevalent is the at-home kosher .. .
These people keep their homes kosher but
drop all prohibitions once they cross their
threshold.
nor meat. Forever in limbo, the fish
and the egg sustain public dining for
the kosher few.
It's only flesh that demands vigi-
lance; the vegetable kingdom is
entirely kosher. We can eat the
bruised fruit, the thistly artichoke,
the indeterminate tomato. We freely
mix rice and beans, peas and carrots,
bananas and peaches. Dandelions are
kosher, figs, mushrooms, literally ev-
erything that grows — from the shy
potato to the symbolic apple. If we
wanted to, we could even floss our
teeth with blades of grass.
The Yiddish language created
during the 800 years the Jews spent in
the claustrophobia city centers of
Europe has few words for the grandeur
of nature, but we're prefectly free to
eat it all. I hope you are relieved to
know that I'm not starving. I can eat
the rain forest or the tundra or be
satisfied by a fruit salad.
Yet the world doesn't know much
about what kosher means, and it's
partly the fault of those of us who are
kosher and keep quiet about it. I've
done it, too, pretended lack of hunger,
feigned a toothache, vegetarianism,
change of life, anything to avoid ex-
plaining one more time to a well-
intentioned gentile why I can't share a
chicken-fried steak. We smile tight
smiles, drink a lot of water, and are
embarrassed by this little habit that
we haven't managed to break in 2,000
years.
The law is the law but the in-
terpretations are many. The abso-
lutely Orthodox will not eat anything
in a nonkosher home or a public place.
Pork is the tough one, the hard
core, the one domestic animal abso-
lutely prohibited when the Bible
named names. The Jew who stares this
one down 'may be beyond the hope of
chicken soup. Most of the Jews I know
will eat ham or bacon readily. These
foods are so common that their origin
in the flesh is overshadowed by famil-
iarity.
But mention a pork cutlet, a chop,
a pork sandwich, pickled pigs' feet, or
fried pork skins, and sometimes the
most liberated appetites will shudder
like their great-grandparents huddled
in the ghetto.
Most of you who think you've
eaten in a kosher restaurant have
been in a "kosher-style" delicatessen.
These places may satisfy the non-
kosher, but they are a tease and an
annoyance to the observant. They
sometimes have kosher corned beef or
salami, but they cut the meat
alongside cheese, cook it with bacon,
and consider kosher merely a descrip-
tive word, like French or home-style.
This watered-down version of
kosher is what most non-Jews and a
considerable percentage of Jews prob-
ably mean by kosher — that is, it's a
kind of sandwich, a type of pickle,
something highly spiced, exotic, in a
general way "foreign."
But there is such a phenomenon
as a kosher cheese, a kosher cookie,
kosher bread; all these everyday
non-meat foods are just as subject to
the rules as the meat. If the corned beef
is kosher but the bread is baked with
animal shortening, you don't have a
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