Introducing Torah (often beginning with the book of Vayikra/Leviticus) to small children by smearing a book or page (hopefully laminated) with honey and letting them lick it off, thus showing how Jewish learning is sweet, is a well known practice. It’s also one that induces in me an involuntary eye-roll because those kids have got a rude awakening coming when they actually find out what they’re going to be reading.

It’s no secret that Vayikra/Leviticus is not my favorite book in Torah. The least favorite, in fact.

(In my opinion) It lacks the rich storytelling depth of Bereshit/Genesis, the compelling narrative of Shemot/Exodus, the epic adolescent rebelliousness of Bamidbar/Numbers, or the… well, let’s just say that Devarim/Deuteronomy isn’t high on my list either.

But I’m a sucker for baklava. So this this story from  the Chabad website might help me to re-frame my feelings about the book that focuses on the Priestly Laws. Because they transform the old smear-the-honey tradition into a “dessert holiday” worthy of the sages.

Most often, this comes up when responding to the question “we’re running out to lunch. You want to come with us?”.

But sometimes I find myself digging into the details more than I would have predicted when I first started this journey. Like when I was invited to my manager’s house for the annual Christmas party.

He knew I kept kosher, and actually went to great lengths to make sure there was SOMETHING I could eat (he asked me to print out pictures of the kosher symbols, and texted me from the store as he was buying things. It was actually one of the kindest things a manager has done.)

So there we were, sitting around the fireplace playing the obligatory office-party-game complete with prizes for the winners. Which happened to be chocolate candies.

I won a round and was handed my candy, which I began checking for a heksher. As I did the comments from the other people served as a reminder that, if Kashrut is difficult to grasp for Jews, it can be downright incomprehensible to others.

THEM: Is it the nuts? My candy bar doesn’t have nuts so you can have mine if you want.
ME: No, I’m looking for the special symbol that would tell me if it’s kosher. Which would be ironic, since it’s a Santa Claus candy bar
THEM: Oh! Well, mine’s in the shape of a snowman. So it’s probably kosher.
ME: (slight pause) Uh, that might not be true.

In retrospect, I probably should have just told them I was on a diet, and I was going to save the candy for my kids.

photo credit: disparkys

I wanted to take a minute and offer a hearty “Bruchim HaBa’im” – welcome – to any new readers who’ve wandered over here from the Cleveland Jewish News. An article that appeared in this week’s edition (“Connect with each other on CJN Connect“) listed a number of sites “by or of interest to members of the Cleveland Jewish community.” If you want to get the latest GoingKosher information there, click on over to CJNConnect, create an account and check out the “Chatter” section (about halfway down the page).

While I’m extremely excited to be included in the blogs listed, the others are, quite frankly, incredible and worth mention here as well:

• Israel Travel Secrets
• The Rebbetzin Rocks
• Portion of the Week
• Out of the Ortho Box
• Transcredible Exploits
• This day in Jewish history
• Getting to the Quad

That said, if you are new here, feel free to click around and get the lay of the land.

To get a quick overview of the site, check out the “About Us”  page. You might also find the posts on “What This is All About” – Part1, Part2 and Part3 – to be helpful.

If you like what you see, you can stay in touch via Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feed or good old email updates (use the box in the sidebar to sign up).

Most of all, thank you for stopping by, even if it’s just this once. But I hope you’ll come back for more.

Like many human endeavors, our efforts to make things clear have – to the un-initiated – made things even more confusing. does “P” stand for pareve, or for Pesach (Passover)? The answer – like many answers to Jewish questions – begin with the phrase “well, that depends…”

By tempting them with bacon.
Whaaa fuuuh huhhh?!?!

I am not making this up. I couldn’t. I’m not that creative.

But according to this article on Gizmodo, that is exactly what is happening.

Microsoft wanted to double its Kinect for Windows team from 35 to 70. And with good engineers typically already working for other companies, the bacon cart is a great ploy for Microsoft to grab their attention and tell them to “Wake up and Smell the Future”. The food cart is serving free bacon today at Amazon headquarters in South Lake Union, Seattle and has plans to move over to Fremont on Tuesday to be near Adobe and Google.

I wonder if the ADL is going to get involved, because in my mind the implication is either that no observant Jewish programmer is any good; or they’re good, but Microsoft (like a certain cantina at the Mos Eisley Spaceport) doesn’t serve their kind.

[Edit] In my haste to get this posted, I overlooked a point my Rabbi just made: They are saying the same thing about traditional Muslims and Hindus. Not to mention the rock solid programmers who are vegetarian or vegan.

image courtesy of JoyOfKosher.com

One of the things I’ve marveled at is how, once you start making Shabbat part of your weekly routine, previously “big” holiday meals start to feel a bit empty

Last year I posted links to a few Thanksgiving Haggadot, which gave our American Turkey-centric festival the old Passover treatment.

This year, just in time for your own feast, I’m posting my notes from last year in case you enjoy tormenting your guests and children as much as I do.

Our seder began before we even sat down. You see, on the night before Pesach we hunt for chametz – bits of bread-stuff. So of course a Thanksgiving seder had to include that experience as well. But with all the stuffing around, bread was NOT the target of choice. No, we hunted for… CHOCOLATE!. In this case, we had secreted away some pareve chocolate Hanukkah gelt (we opted for pareve rather than milk chocolate in case some of our kosher-observing guests had already eaten a meat meal before arriving.).

Once we were certain that our house was clear of chocolate, we were able to begin the seder proper with a rousing rendition of America, The Beautiful – all four verses and four (slightly different) choruses, including the one about Pilgrim’s feet (my boys loved that one). You can find the lyrics here.

Next, we said a shehechianu and said the blessings over wine and bread.

We read responsively, sharing the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence together as a group.

That was pretty much the end of the serious stuff. From that point on we borrowed liberally from “Company’s Coming“, with the following additions:

• When we mentioned “The Bitter Herb”, we produced our ancient beloved bottle of Goldschlager. We keep it around because every year when it’s time to read Parsha Ki Tisa, we say we’re going to drink it. We never do.
• We included an explanation of the Thanksgiving Seder plate. Of course, we first had to INVENT the Thanksgiving seder plate. Like the Passover counterpart, this plate contained all the items emblematic of Thanksgiving, including:
  • a football
  • a figuring of a pilgrim
  • Pepper (Passover is all about salt – in the water, in the soup, etc. Let another spice get some attention already!)
  • Marshmallows (on top of the candied yams. Nobody in my house ever ate them. It just sat on the table turning into a paperweight.
  • nondairy creamer (as a reminder that this is a fleishig meal)
  • matzo (to remind us of the joy that this holiday brings since WE DON’T HAVE TO EAT ANY!)
  • a cantaloupe

OK, the cantaloupe requires a bit of explanation. One summer, we took a family vacation to visit a friend in Boston. Part of the trip involved going up to Plymouth. But the line to see it’s most famous rock was too long, and the day was already over as far as our kids were concerned. When we expressed our disappointment back at home base, our hostess grabbed a cantaloupe and wrote “1620″ on it. She explained that weather and memento-seekers had worn the rock down until it was about that big so we now could say we’d pretty much seen it. Thus, the presence of the cantaloupe on our seder plate.

• After the meal, we had a rousing hunt for – no, not the afikomen – but the wishbone instead!. The finder of this scrumptious morsel won the right to take it home (her parents were so proud) along with a Sacagawea dollar.

I wonder the same thing. I wonder if it would be a good way to test the interest in a kosher restaurant in ANY market, and more specifically whether any market might be interested in a restaurant which was good and-oh-by-the-way kosher.

London is Testing Out a Pop-Up Restaurant for 2 Days in December: “Kosher Roast”

“Kosher Roast” is renting out a bar called “The Shop” in the Kensal Rise neighborhood of London. The Shop will be converted into a Kosher restaurant for 2 Sunday’s next month: December 4th and 11th.

This is clearly a concept that the founders of Kosher Roast are testing.

For each of the 2 days, only 60 places are being offered, and tickets must be purchased in advance at £25 each.
>> Purchase your tickets to Kosher Roast < <

With your ticket, you’re entitled to one of 2 menus: Meat & Vegetarian:

KOSHER ROAST SUNDAY LUNCH

• A selection of classic British bar snacks
• Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings; goose fat roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables, gravy
• Coffee/tea and chocolate surprises

KOSHER ROAST VEGETARIAN LUNCH

• A selection of classic vegetarian British bar snacks
• Vegetarian Wellington; rock salt and rosemary roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables, mushroom and red wine gravy
• Coffee/tea and chocolate surprises

The Kosher supervision is being provided by Rabbi Moshe Dadoun, a prominent member of the Porat Yosef Synagogue and Hendon Jewish community.

“A father is obligated to do the following for his son: to circumcise him, to redeem him if he is a first-born, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a trade. Others say: teaching him how to swim as well.” Talmud (Kiddushin 29a)

Once upon a time not so very long ago, those obligations were very real and true in the most literal sense. A parent had to ensure that their child was known in the community, had a certain level of education, learned a trade, found a spouse. That much of the Talmud’s quote makes intuitive sense.

But what about swimming? I’ve heard some people teach that this was a Talmudic shorthand for a parent’s responsibility to teach a child how to protect themselves from dangerous natural forces – more than protect, to have the skills to turn a dangerous situation (drowning) into a positive activity (swimming). In the same category would be teaching a child how to handle animals, how to read the lay of the land to know where to plant or build and how to navigate through terrain to get to their destination safely.

Today, everything this quote from Talmud teaches is still true, although sometimes in a more distilled form. We still welcome our children – boys and girls – into the community and ensure their identity is known. We still work hard to ensure they have the proper level of education. When we are lucky and skillful, we are able to help them grow into people who can create an honest, open and loving relationship with another person; when we aren’t lucky or skillful, they still seem to manage it OK, although with far more bruises than we’d like to see.

We help them see their own natural inclinations and skills and guide them to leverage those skills into a meaningful career.

But again, I’m left with “swimming”. How, in this modern-day, does the injunction for me to teach my children to swim fit in?

Of course there’s summer camp and swimming lessons – the p’shat (plain text) sense of the reading. But there’s got to be more.

I submit to you that in today’s world, the equivalent of “swimming” is “cooking”.

If, in its original form, “swimming” was representative of natural danger, then we need to teach our children to handle themselves in the kitchen to avoid the inherent dangers that food presents: eating too much, eating too little, eating the wrong things. As they move into adulthood, we want them to know that (despite what Bill Cosby says) chocolate cake is not a good breakfast choice. We want them to know that traditional cooking techniques do not include “Swanson” and “Lean Cuisine”.

More than that, we want to teach them to respect and honor the things God provides. We want them to know that they can elevate the fruit of the earth and the trees into something that is both fulfilling and joyful. You can’t do that when it comes from a box in the freezer section.

Keeping kosher adds yet another flavor to the Talmud injunction. As parents we need to teach our children how to feed themselves while maintaining the mitzvah of kashrut, even when their shopping cart contents don’t come with OU stickers.

As I write this, my family and I have been keeping kosher for about a year and a half. It’s been an incredible journey where we’ve learned a lot. But one of the unanticipated results is that all four of my kids are much more involved in preparing our food. I’m not talking about “stir this while Mommy reads the recipe”. I’m saying the 8-year-old takes things from raw ingredients to a prepared dish on the table with little supervision. My older two kids work part-time at a kosher bakery.There is an awareness of (not fixation on, but a healthy respect for) food.

I don’t think that would have happened had we not started down this path.

On Friday afternoon, as everyone is bustling around the kitchen, preparing the best they have to offer in an attempt to clothe the Shabbat table as beautifully as they will clothe themselves for synagogue, it does look a bit like synchronized swimming.

Of course, the idea of swimming – of avoiding life’s dangers – goes beyond cooking. Knowing how to manage one’s time or money both could count as swimming, as do a host of other skills some of us take for granted while others struggle with (and suffer from the lack thereof) their entire life.

So consider, for just a moment, whether you are honoring the Talmudic tradition – are you teaching the children (and by extension the adults) around you to swim? Are you yourself drowning? What can you do to rectify that?

How that translates to kashrut is that I’m don’t break a sweat when I cut a (cold) cold cut with the wrong knife. Cold is cold, after all. And I’m not always so careful about whether I use the dairy sponge or the pareve sponge to wash a (dairy or pareve) dish.

When it comes to kashrut, part of the reason I’m comfortable doing this is because of how far I am from the original Torah commandment. (And yes, I know that the Rabbinic commandments are (almost) just as important.) But we’re still a few kilometers from that truck stop.

How far is my dishwashing “faux pas” from the original injunction of not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk?

• First, it’s not goat meat.
• Second, it’s not meat at all.
• Third, it’s not directly touching – it’s something (milk) touching something else (a pot or fork) touching something else (a sponge) touching something else (the pareve item).
• Fourth, it’s not being done to “flavor” the other object.
• Fifth, IT’S COVERED IN DISGUSTING DISHWASHING LIQUID!!

I might have casually mentioned this to my Rabbi recently. I was expecting a knowing wink and a smile, an indication that yes, young grasshopper, I have learned The Way of The Kashrus.

Instead, his eyes bugged out a bit, and in tones that showed he was attempting to remain calm despite an overwhelming desire to hit me with a kosher clue by four.

“You can’t do that,” he explained. “Even though you are right – all of that is essentially ‘protecting’ you, you can’t work with that in mind as your initial plan.”

Then he started talking about some girl named “Betty”. Her last name is Eved, I think. The upshot is that (according to this girl, I guess) if you do some of the stuff I mentioned above by accident it’s OK. But you can’t expect or plan to do it that way because all that happens is people (ie: me) push the limits just a bit further until you actually do mess up a commandment.

It’s clear that Betty dated guys like me in High School. Or maybe she had brothers.

Anyway, I got the point: no planning to make a mistake. My wife will be so pleased to hear that yet another loophole in my “live fast, kosher as you go” philosophy has been closed. In the meanwhile, I am sure I’m going to make legitimate mistakes, and that Betty and I will have a chance to become better acquainted.

For anyone I may have offended here – in this corner of the internet – by my words or actions or tone as I posted or responded to your posts, I ask your forgiveness.

I would like to wish everyone a New Year filled with prosperity, growth, discovery and joy.

L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem