16
Friday, April 27, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
GULAG RECORD
The weeks go by slowly for a Soviet Jew
sentenced to a long prison term for teaching
Hebrew and wanting to make aliyah.
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BILL
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MUSIC
355-2721
was arrested for the third time
in November, 1982. Almost a year
later, he was sentenced to 7 years
in prison and 5 years in exile.
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Continued from preceding page
kosher sandWich. This may
not disturb many people,
but it suggests that the
watchfulness of kosher eat-
ers does not stop with the
main course.
My major complaints are
against those who violate
salads. At a buffet I ap-
proach a green salad as con-
fident as Robert Redford at
a singles bar. I grab the big
tongs and start to load up. I
see tomato, two kinds of let-
tuce, cucumber, radish, and
then, peeking out from a big
romaine leaf, a little cube of
ham. Some clever chef has
just wanted to make sure
that I get my daily portion of
- protein.
I just don't eat the ham,
you're probably thinking,
but here's the rub: the whole
thing is now ruined for me.
That tiny piece of ham
might as well have been a
quorum of roaches. I know
that there will be other
pieces, and anything in con-
tact with that ham is not
kosher. The entire salad
bowl, even my plate, half-
loaded with what I thought
would be my main course, is
now a total loss.
I dump the salad into the
bowl, go back to the top of
the line for a new place, and
this time I watch out for the
pieces of meat in the cold
creamed peas I am about to
try. Full of hope, I see what
looks like tuna salad. I get
close, sniffing like a cat, but
I can't tell. People in the line
are starting to wonder
about me. I ask the person
behind me to smell it; he
usually refuses. Then I seek
out a busboy to ask if it's
tuna or chicken salad.
"I'd like to know," I say,
"it's important to me." I try
to stay calm, patient.
"Would you please find
out?"
He'll go to the kitchen and
come back ten minutes la-
ter. By then the people I'm
with have already forgotten
my name. I'm like someone
who has died at sea and
been thrown overboard.
"Chicken," he says, smiling,
thinking he's done me a big
favor.
Now I've lost all confi-
dence. I know that the fluffy
white in the mandarin
orange dessert will be mar-
shmallow, its consistency
maintained by gelatin,
that's confectioner's glue
made of boiled animal
hooves. I settle for a
hard-boiled egg and a Coke
wishing that there was
something else identifiable
— an apple, a carrot, a
banana, something I could
eat without asking stran-
gers to smell or interpret.
Kosher, you see, is not a
style. It is an ancient, pow-
erful, unyielding code. It is a
way of ordering the world,
an unconscious but sys-
tematic recognition of the
price we pay to eat flesh. It
begins in the Biblical pro-
hibition against seething a
kid in its mother's milk and
is reinforced by the taboo
against eating the living
being or drinking blood.
Presumably the hearty
Chaldeans and the populace
of Nineveh and Babylon
didn't always bother with
niceties like the actual
death of the animal they
were eating. To them fast
food was genuinely that.
The step back from this raw
pleasure is surely the origin
of the kosher prohibitions.
In dim antiquity they sig-
naled a kind of revolution-
ary turn from cannibalism
and human sacrifice to the
more subdued atmosphere
of animal sacrifice and food
taboos.
But nobody is kosher for
such anthropological rea-
sons, and only a zealot
comes to it late in life. For
most of us, kosher is a trans-
lation of childhood love into
food. One of the duties of my
childhood was helping out
in this altogether careful
business of watching what
you eat.
It wasn't only a matter of
kosher, sometimes it was
just for safety. I watched my
grandfather as he ate a fish
head every Friday night.
My job was to feed him
bread when he choked on
the small bones and to call
for help if tears came to his
eyes. I looked at the fish's
dead eyes and at my grand-
father's false teeth resting
in the china closet. When
necessary, I pounded his
back and pulled on his ear-
lobes. I did my job.
For my grandmother I
checked to make sure the
pilot was lighted in the gas
stove. For everyone in the
household I interpreted the
chemical additives of food.
By the age of eight I was a
little Ralph Nader on
preservatives.
I know that I could eat a
cold pork sandwich in a
synagogue on Yom Kippur
and live happily ever after. I
know that pork and
shellfish are probably no
less clean and no less well
prepared than beef or chic-
ken. I know that the rules
make no sense in our "mod-
ern age" and, as you can see,
I recognize that it's often a
pain in the neck finding
something to eat and even
more of a problem trying to
constantly explain to others
what I won't eat and why.
I do it in spite of all the
difficulties, simply because
it seems right. I don't feel
.superior to Jews who have
given it up, nor do I envy
them or the Gentiles who
eat what they choose.I'm
fascinated by the liberty to
taste at will, but it seems no
more available to me than
the wealth of Saudi Arabia.
One of the sublime Bibli-
cal lines is God's definition
of himself: "I am that I am."
So are we all.
Whatever its origins, I am
the offspring of generations