By Chris Orrey
A 10-Minute Read
During my thirty years as a police officer, my diet fluctuated wildly. During healthier times, I would prepare my own salads, drink fruit and vegetable smoothies, and pass on the endless array of donuts, cookies and chocolates at desks and in the break room. During unhealthy times, I would squeeze a McDonald’s drive-thru meal in between successive and unrelenting calls for service. Eating at work was representative of my overall eating, the teeter-totter between health and disease, losing weight and gaining weight, and trying various diets to see what I could sustain long-term. Beyond sharing meals with the few co-workers who would pray before eating, religion didn’t enter my mind when it came to food.
When I decided to pursue a career as a writer after my retirement from policing, I had already decided what I would write about: religion. More specifically, I would immerse myself in six of the major religions of the world, one year at a time, and write about it. I decided to begin with the three major Western religions, the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in historical order. I would then move to the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, before ending my journey with New Thought, the New Age religion practiced in Reverend Michael Bernard Beckwith’s Agape Spiritual Center in Los Angeles. Why end with such an obscure religion? That’s a topic for a future post.
I planned to begin my year of Judaism with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, in 2016. Beginning at the start of the Jewish calendar seemed to make sense. But when October 2, 2016 finally arrived, I wasn’t ready – mentally, emotionally, or logistically. I hadn’t found a primary synagogue; I didn’t have a Jewish mentor; and I didn’t know how to honor the holiday that would kick off my first year. Additionally, my time was precious and restricted. I had a seven-month-old grandson living in my home with his teenaged parents, a partner who lived fifty minutes away, a one-year-old Golden Retriever who needed daily exercise, a part-time teaching position at a local community college, and a three-times-per-year volunteer position for a ten-day women’s leadership and personal growth retreat on a ranch three hours north of me. Whew! Where would I find the time to experience and learn about Judaism, let alone learn to write creative non-fiction so I could share my experiences?
Even though I wasn’t ready, I was itching to begin so I stuck with my start date and began with baby steps. I decided to begin with my diet. I was under the naïve impression, based on cultural stereotypes, that observant Jews don’t eat pork and don’t eat shellfish. Allow me to apologize to my Jewish friends, cousins and readers now. I have dispelled much naiveté and ignorance over the past eleven months, and have learned a great deal about a faith that I have come to love. But when I began this journey, I had much inspiration, but little knowledge. Knowing that diet would be a part of each year’s journey, I chose to begin the Jewish New Year by not eating the “forbidden foods,” pork and shellfish, for a year. To me this was just a first step into Judaism. I still planned to find a synagogue, take classes, read Torah and other Jewish literature, travel to places significant to Jews, and expose myself to the religion and the culture in as many ways as I could.
I thought that giving up pork and shellfish would be easy; much easier than giving up alcohol, which will be a requirement of my year of Islam. And while I love bacon, shrimp and anything lobster, I was confident that I could give them up for a year. It would simply be a matter of paying attention to my food. I also guessed, accurately I would later learn, that this dietary restriction would be a constant reminder of my journey and would provide countless conversational opportunities.
When my fiancée Cynthia and I dined at Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen in San Francisco early on in my year of Judaism, I briefly spoke with the owner, Evan Bloom. Bloom, who is Jewish, grew up in a home that “kept kosher.” His dad still did. Bloom was gracious enough to clarify my naïve thought that a Jewish deli would automatically be kosher. He said the cost of maintaining a kosher restaurant is extremely high. His restaurant, he told me, is for people to experience the flavor of Jewish dishes, not to experience kosher food. (As a side note, I encourage my San Francisco Bay Area readers to put Wise Sons on your agenda.)
I was beginning to see that I had much to learn about kosher eating. I didn’t even know why Jews don’t eat pork or shellfish. Somewhere along my path, however, I had picked up the myth that it was because pigs and crustaceans are dirty. What a remarkable reminder of the things we “know” that are not so. I had even heard that pork and shellfish were “high tref” (pronounced trafe) foods, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant, or even where I first heard it.
In reading the Torah and studying Judaism, which was part of my commitment to my year of Judaism, I learned that tref foods are not forbidden because the animals are dirty, but simply because the Torah says so. Why does the Torah say so? Countless rabbis have weighed in on this and there is much disagreement. I was more confused than enlightened with many passages of the Torah. For example, in Genesis (the first book of the Hebrew Bible), God seems to promote a vegetarian diet: And God said: ‘Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed – to you it shall be for food; Genesis 1:29[1] In the same chapter I read: Every moving thing that liveth shall be for food for you; as the green herb have I given you all. Genesis 9:3
So it appeared to my beginner’s mind that the God of the Torah has allowed for ALL living things to be eaten. Yet, later in the Torah, I found verses like this: These are the living things which ye may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is wholly cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts that may ye eat. Nevertheless these shall ye not eat…Leviticus 11:2-4 So there are more forbidden foods, I asked myself?
I learned that Leviticus is not just the part of the bible that Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians and Ultra-Orthodox Jews use to tell the world that gays are sinners, but it is also the book of the bible that spells out the dietary restrictions upon which kashrut (Jewish religious dietary laws) is based, along with numerous other commandments. Which made me wonder why fundamentalist Christians care so much about the portion of Leviticus that allegedly makes being gay a sin, but those same Christians don’t’ follow the eating guidelines in Leviticus, nor do they sacrifice animals and splatter the blood in a particular way, as commanded in Leviticus. Again, more on that in future writings.
As I learned more and more about eating kosher, I found that it was pure luck that I hadn’t violated the simple mitzvah (Judaic commandment, or law) of not eating fish that doesn’t have fins or scales. I learned that the forbidden foods went beyond pork and shellfish. Oyster, clams, eel and squid are also forbidden foods. And I had no idea that the Jewish ban on pork wasn’t exclusive to pigs, but was about any animal that chewed its own cud but doesn’t have cloven hooves or animals that have cloven hooves but doesn’t chew its own cud. What?? Simply speaking, I had to add hare, rock badger and camel to the list of forbidden foods. I was grateful I didn’t have to worry about Cynthia serving broiled camel any time soon!
As my knowledge of kashrut expanded, I learned that the forbidden foods are not the only rules of keeping kosher. Orthodox Judaism, typically represented by Hasidic Jews who are known for their black hats and coats and long beards and side-locks, are steadfast in their interpretation of kashrut, have separate dishes or even separate kitchens for preparing meat meals separately from dairy meals. This derives from the Torah verses in Exodus (23:19, 34:26) and Deuteronomy (14:21): You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.[2]
Later rabbis and sages in the Talmud interpreted this section increasingly more strictly over time: from no animal may be cooked in any milk, to not cooking meat in the same cookware as non-meat dishes or serving them on the same dishes, to not eating meat and dairy at the same time. Thus the need to have two sets of dishes, as well as an outright ban on cheeseburgers, chicken parmesan, or any other dish that combines meat and dairy. According to The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, milk represents birth and life sustenance, while meat represents flesh and death. “Mixing them shows an insensitivity to life.”[3] The time period one must wait between meat and dairy meals could take hours of study to understand. Was it a dairy meal or a meat meal? Did the dairy meal include hard, aged cheese? Dutch Jews require a one-hour waiting period after a meat meal, German Jews three hours, and Hasidic Jews six hours. Kosher eating, like Judaism, seemed to me to be a spectrum.
The more I learned about kashrut – the system of laws that govern what and how Jews eat[4] – the more I realized the extreme efforts Orthodox and Conservative Jews put forth, especially in the United States and even more specifically in my own state of California, to maintain their commitment to what they believe to be a religious mandate.
Kashrut does not lend itself to stopping by the local Subway for a sandwich. People who keep strictly kosher must eat in private homes or prepare their food themselves, as there are very few kosher restaurants available. According to the online magazine Kosher Delights, there are only nineteen kosher restaurants in California.[5] With 4.2 million Americans identifying as Jewish by religion[6], and 22% of those 4.2 million keeping kosher[7] that’s a dearth of restaurants for strictly kosher customers. While New York certainly has vastly more restaurants that are certified kosher, hundreds from what I can tell from various websites, the fact remains that most kosher meals are consumed in the home, made up primarily of foods purchased with labels that make them certified kosher. And strictly kosher homes are not simply a matter of what one can or cannot eat. The mitzvoth (Judaic laws, plural) of eating kosher include a long list of rules about how the food must be prepared.
To be kosher, animals must be slaughtered in a particular, and highly humane, manner. The basic tenet of shechitah (laws of ritual slaughter) is that the killing of the animals must be swift and as painless as possible, and as humane as possible.[8] Observant Jews may not consume blood, “reflecting a sensitivity to blood as a life-force,”[9] so the blood of the animal is removed through a process of salting and soaking. The animal is also inspected for any signs of illness or injury, both of which would deem the meat non-kosher. All of this and many other laws of kosher meat preparation must be handled by a certified kosher butcher and “supervised by a duly ordained and highly trained rabbi.”[10] The meat must also be cooked well done to eliminate any remaining blood.
While all vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts are considered kosher, this is only if they are free from all insects. Every winged swarming thing that goes on all fours is an abomination for you. – Leviticus 11:20
Cynthia and I saw a movie during the summer of my year of Judaism called Menashe. It was a touching indie film about a Hasidic man in New York struggling to raise his son after the death of his wife. In the opening scene, he’s at the cash register of a small neighborhood grocery store checking out groceries for a Hasidic woman who is trying to corral her seven or eight children. Menashe holds up the head of iceberg lettuce she’s buying, and apologizes to her that it isn’t very fresh. She tells him it looks fine, but he insists upon getting her another one. He goes to the back room and berates his own boss for stocking unwashed lettuce in the area marked pre-washed. The lettuce was fresh enough, the filmmaker is showing the audience, but had not been washed and inspected for insects, deeming it potentially non-kosher. The small bit of insider’s knowledge I had about this Torah passage gave me a moment of satisfaction. I knew that vegetables had to be pre-washed and inspected for insects to be deemed kosher. Cynthia may have been the only person in the theater who didn’t know that. When we were in the lobby with the other five moviegoers in attendance, I could hear that they all had thick accents of Yiddish, the language spoken in the film.
I have cousins who I adore who are Jewish, as my gentile cousin married a wonderful Jewish man. She didn’t convert, but their daughters were raised Jewish and had their bat mitzvahs (a ceremony of rite a passage for Jewish twelve or thirteen year olds who go through much preparation and study, to include chanting the Torah in Hebrew.) While I do recall that we would have turkey and roast beef for Christmas Eve dinners together, I do not recall any specific steps they took in an effort to keep kosher. As a child I didn’t give it any thought. As an adult studying Judaism, I have come to realize that their temple falls within the Reform tradition (also called movement, or denomination, by some) of Judaism.
A prominent Canadian Reform rabbi, W. Gunther Plaut, wrote the following about his movement’s take on kashrut, “The almost total silence of Reform literature on this subject is witness to the fact that it no longer was of real concern to the liberal leadership.”[11] The Reform movement has since grappled with the issue of kashrut, allowing for local cultures and traditions within their various synagogues to have varying guidelines for their congregations. I have been to a Reform synagogue that identified their potluck as a “dairy meal,” and I have been to Reform synagogues that identity their potluck as vegetarian. When I was in Hawaii this summer, I looked for a synagogue to attend Friday night Shabbat services. I found the website for Kona Beth Shalom, although they were not having services on the Friday I was on the island. Their website indicates that they do not have weekly Shabbat services, but when they do, the rules of their potluck oneg (informal gathering on Shabbat) clearly state “No pork or shellfish, please.”[12] It appeared that I was on the right track, at least per Kona Beth Shalom standards.
About five years ago, I dated a Jewish woman named Margaret who was a member of Congregation B’nai Israel, a Reform synagogue in Sacramento. While our dating relationship didn’t last, our families bonded and her sons, Jacob and Justin, are best friends with my son to this day. Jacob, now 19 years old, especially reveled in the smell, flavor and dining experience of pork. And not just any pork…Jacob love, love, loved bacon! Margaret even bought Jacob bacon socks for Hanukkah. Raised by an atheist Jewish mother, Margaret grew up with what her mom called “kosher-style.” For them, that meant no pork or shellfish in the home and no milk and meat in the same meal. While both Jacob and Justin, whose father is Christian, chose to go to Hebrew School and have their bar mitzvahs, they did not choose any dietary restrictions. When they were on the bimah chanting their Torah portions in Hebrew, they were no less Jewish because of their diet.
When I began my year of Judaism, I didn’t know within which movement I would practice. Orthodox? Reform? Conservative? Reconstructionist? Renewal? I barely had a sense of what each of those meant, and my list was far from complete. I have come to learn that there are as many movements and viewpoints in modern Judaism now as there have been for hundreds of years. There are vast liberal perspectives (Reform, Renewal and Reconstructionist), and vast conservative perspectives (Orthodox and Conservative). There are movements that interpret Jewish law by the strict letter of the law, and those that are more lenient with their interpretations. The range of options within Judaism allowed for the range of “full observance of the biblical and rabbinic regulations to total nonobservance”[13] not just in regards to dietary guidelines, but also with keeping Shabbat, attire, prayer and a myriad of other issues. Having no confidence in my ability to keep strictly kosher for a year, per Orthodox standards, I decided to continue with what seemed to me to be Kosher-ish. (I got the “ish” from Jacob, who once described himself as Jew-ish.) I would continue with my efforts to eliminate the high tref foods from my diet.
Following my self-prescribed kosher-ish diet was supported by the efforts of my life partner, Cynthia. After plates and plates of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce during Thanksgiving week, our endless extended family Christmas gatherings all featured spiral ham as the main course for dinner. Cynthia, being my greatest fan and biggest supporter, grilled a steak for me while her mom served spiral ham for the eve of Christmas Eve, and grilled chicken for me while I served spiral ham (Cynthia’s favorite) for our own Christmas dinner in my home. Having to choose out of the primary protein of a meal while dining with others, when pork is the only option, has been a challenge for me. My body maintains, and even more specifically, loses weight best on a low-carb eating plan. Meat protein has been such a key part of my diet for so long that the thought of becoming vegetarian was overwhelming, even though I admire vegans and vegetarians immensely. What could be more spiritual, I have pondered, than not participating in the killing of animals? I have yet to take that leap.
Why eat kosher?
As I learned the rules of eating kosher, the whys of eating this way consumed more and more of my thoughts. My Hebrew teacher, Bracha, attends a Reform synagogue. Early in my year, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, she told me that Orthodox Jews follow all mitzvoth (the plural of mitzvah) “because the Torah says so” and then find meaning in it, while Renewal Jews find meaning in something so they do it. I contemplated this in regard to my own choice to abstain from the forbidden foods during my year of Judaism. I wanted it to have meaning, but it took time for me to find such value. The writing of this article, many months in the making, was the impetus for me to find my owner purpose for restricting myself from the Torah’s forbidden foods.
To dial in to my own meaning, I did some research to find out what motivates others, beyond the simple fact that the Torah, in countless various passages, commands it. Miri Rotkovitz is a kosher chef and writer who pondered the same question in her 2017 article in The Spruce. In reading Rotkovitz’s “Why Do People Really Keep Kosher, Anyway?”[14] I realized that I am an outlier. Most of the list she provided just didn’t apply to me. I didn’t grow up keeping Kosher, I don’t have any Kosher-observing friends who I want to routinely host in my home, I am not lactose intolerant, and I know that Kosher foods are not necessarily healthier than non-Kosher foods (even Oreo cookies have been deemed kosher). And, mostly, I am not Jewish. That is one of the primary reasons Rotkovitz listed for why people keep kosher.
Yet one of the reasons Rotkovitz listed did resonate with me: embracing Jewish identity. Rotkovitz shared this assertion by French foodie Brillat-Savarin: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”[15] This was exactly why I was restricting my diet. The simple act of eliminating these forbidden foods from my diet for this year was a statement of my commitment to experiencing Judaism. I didn’t begin with that thought at the forefront of my mind, but it explained it best.
Kehilla Synagogue Senior Rabbi Dev Noily met with me halfway through my year to discuss my journey through Judaism. We touched on kashrut and she explained to me her take on it. Dietary restrictions have a purpose: they bind communities together. Kehilla food-involved gatherings are always vegetarian, honoring those who keep kosher as well as those who keep vegetarian for health and ethical reasons. Dietary restrictions, Rabbi Dev said, are a marker of identity, just as Rotkovitz wrote.
Yes. Not eating the forbidden foods is a marker of my journey through Judaism. Each time I inquire as to the ingredients of a dish, or share my dietary restrictions, I initiate an opportunity to talk about Judaism, religions, or writing. It is a marker, as Rabbi Dev described it, of my sacred journey.
My sacred journey included very little yearning for the forbidden foods I had forsaken for a year. I still dream about the hot pastrami sandwich and matzo ball soup Cynthia and I shared at Kat’z Deli in New York City. It was cold outside on that cold March day, but it was warm in our bellies, and warm in our hearts. Judaism has had that effect on me: a warming of my heart.
Note: For a thorough explanation of Jewish dietary laws, as well as any other questions about Judaism, Tracey Rich’s website Judaism 101, written from the Orthodox viewpoint, has been an excellent resource to me. Check it out at www.jewfaq.org
[1] Torah – The Five Books of Moses, edited by Simon Abram
[2] The Five Books of Moses – A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
[3] http://www.uscj.org/JewishLivingandLearning/Kashrut/default.aspx
[4] Living a Jewish Life – Jewish Traditions, Customs and Values for Today’s Families by Anita Diamant © 2007 Page 273
[5] http://www.kosherdelight.com/USA/California/CaliforniaKosherEstablishments.shtml#A
[6] Pew Research Center http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/02/how-many-jews-are-there-in-the-united-states/
[7] http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/
[8] Living Judaism – The Complete Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition and Practice by Rabbi Wayne D. Dosick, PhD © 1995 Page 257
[9] http://www.uscj.org/JewishLivingandLearning/Kashrut/default.aspx
[10] Living Judaism – The Complete Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition and Practice by Rabbi Wayne D. Dosick, PhD © 1995 Page 258
[11] http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/kashrut-reform-judaism/
[12] Kona Beth Shalom website: http://konabethshalom.org/
[13] http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/kashrut-reform-judaism/
[14] https://www.thespruce.com/why-keep-kosher-2121847
[15] https://www.thespruce.com/why-keep-kosher-2121847
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