I wasn't always kosher.
Now, I speak all over the country about how I went from TV producer to kosher cookbook author.
I'm not saying the transition was easy.
My busy career was once my whole life, and I was too time-crunched for introspection. But then one day, I came across a story: A rabbi said to a 20-something, "What's your goal in life?"
"To be a dentist."
"So when you die, you want the eulogy to go 'Here he lies: he just filled his 1 millionth 40 thousandth cavity.' That's what you want out of life?"
The question actually bothered me. I began to wonder: 'What do I want to be? Who do I want to be?" It was the scariest thing I ever did. I had no answers, so I went looking and somehow, I landed in my own backyard.
To be frank, when I first heard about keeping kosher, I sort of went into shock. We're talking about Rules with a capital R. Until then, I answered to no one. There were no boundaries. Short of killing someone, there was no right or wrong, just shades of grey ranging from "OK" to "not so OK." Now they're telling me that G-d cares what I eat?!
Until then, I had used the term "kosher" in my everyday speak, as in, "That doesn't sound kosher" (meaning, "You better back off the deal because something ain't right!"). And I was vaguely aware that religious Jews would only eat food that's kosher, foregoing the culinary adventures the rest of the world relishes. I mean, would normal people lock themselves in like that? Yet, I was drawn to friends with kosher homes more and more. And I began to understand.
Kosher is a way of life. While it initially meant a set of dietary rules, it actually defines the people adhering to those rules -- how they make choices every day, from where to eat dinner to huge moral issues. It's living on two planes simultaneously, physical and spiritual. In Jewish life, they are never separated.
And that's where self-discipline comes in. Hey, I know. That term is anathema to our "Free to be you and me" generation.
What puzzled me is that the "kosher" people seemed so relaxed and happy, despite the restrictions they voluntarily accepted.
Then I realized that I, too, could say no. I could say no to self-indulgence; I could say no to going along with the crowd; I could say no to a lifestyle that wasn't really doing it for me. I began to see that a little self-discipline makes me feel strong and proud, and connects me to a tradition that gives my life larger meaning.
So I decided to go kosher. I even decided to get married, have a family, go the whole nine. After my wedding, I was literally the bride who knew nothing in the kitchen. I had never even turned on an oven, thanks to my mom, who is really great but kept us alive on take-out.
Learning to keep kosher and learning to cook simultaneously turned out to be an even bigger challenge than meeting a movie star. Let me sum up kosher:
• Meat & dairy never mix.
• Most seafood is out.
• Pork: no way. (I bet you knew that.)
Quite simple, really, until you consider the implications. "Never mix," means that meat and dairy remain as separate as two ex-spouses at a Hanukkah party. They can't share the same cookware, dishes, silverware or dishtowels. And then there's the question of foods like bread, wine, eggs -- are they meat or dairy? It turns out that they belong in a twilight zone called pareve which means more neutral than Switzerland.
Forbidden seafood doesn't include most fish, though some fish are off-limits. Having fins and scales gives a fish the privilege of winding up on a kosher menu.
The no-pork thing is best known and least understood. It has nothing to do with health or sanitation. It has everything to do with the spiritual aspects of food, and to explain it means going into Kabbalah that would make your head swim, so just take my word for it.
Learning to cook kosher (OK, learning to cook at all) was probably the biggest hurdle of my life. A lot of kosher recipes take hours, even days. And I was such a harried bride, with my job at HBO still intact (with unprecedented permission to be off on Shabbat) and a husband who liked to eat real food, not something out of a box. But I devour challenges. I hunted down terrific recipes and developed so many ways to cut prep and cook times that I decided to write a cookbook of my own called Quick & Kosher Recipes From The Bride Who Knew Nothing.
It sold like crazy and suddenly I was a celebrity. I had a blog, was producing an online kosher cooking show and giving demos all over the country. Instead of stilettos and a press badge, I was wearing flats and an apron (oh the horror), but I loved it when the media started calling me "the kosher Rachael Ray."
And all that positioned me to be the CFO, Chief Foodie Officer at Kosher.com, an online kosher supermarket. You could say that all my HBO and CNN experience went kosher.
My second cookbook, Quick & Kosher: Meals in Minutes, was just released. Like my first book, which grew directly from my own inexperience (and doesn't hesitate to confess all), this one emerged from having a career, a family and lots of friends who drop in for dinner on short notice. When I get word that folks are coming over, my first instinct is to check the clock to see how much time I've got till they come stomping up the driveway. I based my book on that "moment of panic." It's actually arranged according to how long it takes to prepare a complete menu. You've only got 20, 40, 60 minutes? No problem. It's the book I've been needing for myself all these years, so I wrote it!
It makes cooking easy. It makes kosher easy. I wish someone had done that for me.
Everything kosher with Jamie Geller
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Jamie Geller - Quick and Kosher Recipes from the Bride Who Knew ...
Her kitchen has to stoves with shabbos timers.
She has multiple sinks, and prep areas.
She tovels everything with care.
But a few years back, when we were at the market together, she took it too far, even for me.
She had driven me there because I was having trouble walking...and we shared a cart for the same reason. I needed shrimp, which I put in the cart without thinking...and discovered that it made her horribly uncomfortable. She told me that many of the younger wives took their clues from her...and if one noticed the trief in her cart, they might assume the wrong thing,
"If they are assuming anything other than you are being a good friend to me, they really need to see the Rabbi." I replied. She could not help how she felt...but I thought it was absurd. The same market used belts for the food she purchases. Those belts have non-kosher products on them all the time...but that did not render her kosher purchases treif. What I know of JudIism suggests that you should be less concerned with people having the wrong idea about you, than doing the right thing...but then, I am not a rabbi.
That said, it strikes me as preferable if the restriction is somehow connected to a moral or a health or ecological issue and is not simply pedantic rules that lack all other meaning except perhaps to separate one group of believers from another.
Fortunately heaven is relatively short on lawyers and the ones it has aren't very good... so simply mispelling it on purpose is sufficient to trick them and get around the issue.
That being said. Right Action in diet is righteous diet
But then his spiritual teaching could only be match with Christ, Buddha, Mohammad and Krishna. And of course the great legacy of his and my own teachers of the path of Kirya Yoga.
Funny, how the Christian Churches share the old testament with Jews, and true it does not SPEAK CHRIST. Why I call religion "Churchianity"
That being said, I wish I new how some Jews are so lost in materialism for 1000's of years. Yes, some truly are not. Question I have unanswered. Strange that it was Moses who prepared the way for GOD (the father, the son and holy ghost) to walk the earth. The only purpose of the old testament for followers of the WORD. Until then there was only faith
From my point of view, that process and the benefit it gives to a person happens -- just happens -- to be completely independent of theology or the greater structure of the religion that inspired it. What motivated you to be creative and find meaning was taking on a set of rules and learning how to generate newness and interest within those rules. If the rules had been different, it would not have mattered -- you could just as easily have found inspiration and fulfillment.
Personally, I want to write a cookbook consisting entirely of low-carb, sugar free, fat free deserts. Now THAT is a challenge. So far, I have a recipe for brownies made from black beans and splenda.
If you give it a second, you will notice that the laws forbid to eat any predators. Those are usually the most inelastic species. It takes decades until their populations recover yet they are very important to keep the ecological balance. Overall, the laws recommend the eating of species that are known to recover very fast, in terms of population.
If I were to eat in a spiritual manner, I personally would go for the vegan organic thing. Humane to animals, organic is good for the earth, and all of it good for the body God gave me. But since I don't do it, I've got nothing to say about those bacon cheeseburgers, or lack thereof.
It was probaly a defensive strategy when the Middle Eastern people were being invaded by outsiders herding swine . The seafood of the seapeople. If we prohibit 'Their' foods then "Our" people can't mix and marry with "Their" people and dilute "our"(church) power over the people.
Whether it's a Chruchman or Congressmen writting common customs into law. Whoever writes the law seems allways to favor and strengthen His vested intrest and inflates His importance.
Some people may think that it is a dangerous attitude to take toward the Bible, to pick and choose what you want to accept and throw everything else out. Some view is that everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in the Bible. The most egregious instances of this can be found among people who claim not to be picking and choosing.
Example: One friend whose evangelical parents were upset because she wanted to get a tattoo, since the Bible after all, condemns tattoos. In the same book, Leviticus, the Bible also condemns wearing clothing made of tow different kinds of fabric and eating pork. And it indicates that children who disobey their parents are to be stoned to death.(in Psalm 137 (Blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks) Why insist on the biblical teaching about tattoos, but not about dress shirts, pork chops, and stoning, adultry laws today?)
Interesting to me
Written above from the book -Jesus Interrupted- Bart D Ehrman -Scholar
My own method as an atheist raised a Christian is to follow the rules that are easy for me and ignore the ones that aren't: no tattoos or eating roadkill but lobster and Veal Oscar are still on the menu.
What a refreshing example of freedom ! (;
If you don't have a problem with that, maybe you would care to join me for pork chops tonight?
Pope Theobald the Uncouth, Apostle to the Semi-Literate