Wednesday, May 09, 2007

It Ain't Kosher


The other night my neighbor phones me in a panic

Will you come downstairs? Pleeeeezzzzz? I need your help. I need your advice

Sure. Gimme 5 minutes.I reply

(Scene II: Five minutes later, in neighbor's kitchen)

Okay. I'm having guests over for dinner in a few hours and they're religious - from the synagogue I go to. And I think...I mean maybe...well there might be worms floating in the soup I made. Can you tell me if they're worms?

Yup. Looks like worms to me. What're you gonna do?

Oh god. Oh god. I don't know! What should I do? I mean what if they're not worms? Where did they come from? I mean maybe I can serve the soup anyway. I don't want to make it all over again! Maybe they won't notice. How could there be worms in the soup? Tell me what to do. What should I do?

Aside from being slightly affected by a touch of hysteria, my neighbor is also prone to different views on cleanliness and the art of food prepping. She would toooooottttaaaallly serve the soup to the guests. Because that's okay in her book. She tasted it and it was yummy& that's good enuff.

Thinking rather quickly on my feet - and knowing she's er, um, spiritually and religiously inclined I asked:

Hey, are worms kosher?

No. They're not.

Hmmm. Well if your guests eat the worms and they aren't kosher but the guests don't know there were worms in the soup to begin with, you know it's actually your sin and not theirs because they didn't know...

She toooottttallllly dumped the soup. Good thing. I mean, it is about conditioning and the fact that we have learned (in most Western cultures) that eating worms is not okay whereas in some parts of the world it's totally okay. But never mind.

Guess whose house I'll NEVER go to for dinner?

1 comment:

mother in israel said...

I had a friend tell me about a soup she made that had worms in it, and the lengths she went to to get them out. She keeps kosher and she was certain she got them all! She served the soup to her guests.