Cheryl Katz

New post over at Jew and Julia… here’s an outtake:

What is the point of food if it isn’t satisfying?  I will admit that I’ve been struggling with my weight recently, and spending time feeling deprived.  Just recently, I decided that I am simply no longer going to waste calories eating food that I don’t enjoy.  Life is too short… but I’ve already said that.  I may wind up eating less, but I will wind up more satisfied.

Jew and Julia | SatisFAT-ion: how I learned to stop worrying and love the schmaltz.

A few days ago I finished reading Those Who Save Us,  a novel that examines the gray areas between the victims of the Holocaust and the active perpetrators of the violence and atrocities.

The book is a well-crafted story about a young German woman, mother of a baby whose father is Jewish, who is forced with choices like the ones I described above as she struggles to protect her daughter.  It is also the parallel story of the grown child, who struggles herself with the shame and guilt over the SS officer she believes to be her birth father, and what this in turn means for her mother’s actions during the war.

The way the Holocaust is presented in history classes might lead one to believe that it was a direct clash between active evildoers and helpless victims.  I don’t feel that I had ever really considered before what it might have been like for someone who didn’t necessarily believe in what Hitler’s government was doing, but who felt intimidated by the massive military forces and didn’t know what to do to fight the powers or help the victims.

It is all too easy to think that, in the shoes of an average German citizen, one would always “do the right thing.”  I like to think that when asked to be complicit in a government conspiracy to kill millions of my neighbors, that I would stand up and do something to fight it, too.

However, this book phrases the question in more realistic terms.  Would I, if staring down the barrel of a gun or worse, seeing a gun pointed at my child, hide and aid an active officer of death?  In my heart, I would never align myself with murderers.  In reality, I would do whatever it takes to keep myself and my child alive, doing what I can to aid victims without putting lives at risk.

This is a sad fact, and one I hate to admit out loud.

Nonetheless, Those Who Save Us is an interesting, seemingly well researched and thoughtful look at what life was like for the non-victims.  It is structred in flashbacks between the present-day struggles of the adult daughter, and the 1940s story of her mother and her baby self and their struggle for survival.  Frankly, I found that the modern struggles with German identity and guilt paled in comparison with the historical struggle to literally stay alive; that said, each story lent perspective to the other and the juxtaposition and intertwining of the stories was an addition and not a subtraction from the story.

It was neat to get to explore the past and the present side by side, the way that early childhood memories played out for the modern protagonist when she was older.  As it turned out, the modern character was also an historian of WWII Germany with a focus on critical women’s issues, which allowed for the modern scenes to offer a parsing of the past scenes.

I could not put this book down.  It hooked me in both narratives and in the more meta- areas of building an identity in relation to Judaism and the Holocaust, and my interest in gender studies.

I know that there isn’t generally such a thing as being half-Jewish – in conventional wisdom, as far as I can tell, whether inside or outside Judaism people are either Jewish, or not.  Typically this thought process applies to people with only one Jewish parent, though I am considering this entirely differently.  I sometimes consider myself half-Jewish in the sense that I have a whole pre-established identity separate from the idea of Judaism (though of course even that identity was informed by the presence of Jews in areas of my life… but perhaps this is an aside to be discussed another day), and then a line in the sand after which I began laying the foundations of a Jewish identity that I am building for myself day by day.  I have the fortune of being able to choose what I want to be part of my identity, and what is important to me that I want to incorporate into my personal history, but on the other hand this identity-building enterprise is a lot of work and can be overwhelming sometimes.

This work of identity building and self discovery has led to a lot of good things, a lot of research and exploration, and not, I presume, unsurprisingly, the undertaking of a lot of Jewish-themed fiction reading.  Reading fiction about the entire spectrum of Jews out there, from the most Reform to the most Orthodox, is at least allowing me some perspective about where my personal beliefs lie and in general a vague idea of what makes people tick.

I read another book recently wherein several supporting characters were Reform Jews, the wife having converted “for the wedding.”  This is a common stereotype, but I found that reading this fictional account of a woman who was nearly completely apathetic about Judaism after having actively chosen it, and having it be ‘in name only,’ I found myself feeling very angry.

I should explain.  I don’t look down on Jews (hah! like my husband) who are less religious than I am.  My position tends to be, “well, who am I to judge?”  When I start judging others, I am inviting others to judge me, or at least I am within my own head.  But it does irk me to think that there are people who undertake the business of converting to Judaism who don’t value the rich tapestry of heritage to which they have made themselves heirs.  It really irks me, even as I refuse to look down on anyone.

In any case, not having all this cultural background in my life, I’m finding this through fiction and forward experiences.  I fully recognize that life imitates art imitates life, and I don’t confuse reading for reality.  Though it does pass time quite enjoyably, and give my brains a workout.

I found this quote through Metaquotes on LiveJournal:

Yes, go ahead and support Israel all you like, but don’t do it because enough Jews there will cast ‘Summon Jesus.’  (Link.)

Besides the RPG-lingo chuckle, and general agreement with the sentiment in this line – the original post has an interesting take on the appropriation of Jewish stuff for generally non-Jewish purposes.  I’ve had thoughts in similar patterns, but haven’t condensed them to expression point just yet.

Time is going too fast for me.  I keep putting off topics about which I’d like to write because I don’t feel that I know how to best say the things I want to say.  However, this particular swirl of perfectionism serves no one, and I hereby declare myself OVER IT.

I completed my conversion to Judaism on Tuesday.  Nearly a week ago, now.  It feels at once both immense and insignificant, and truly that is how it is.  Nothing is the same and yet nothing has changed!  What I have now, that I didn’t have a week ago, was a line in the sand of my life that divides now from everything that came before.  And yet the rituals of conversion were meaningless in the face of changes I undertook and to which I fully committed many months ago.

And so I’ve not avoided talking about it, but I’ve hesitated to approach it as if the topic were the center of the known universe.  I feel joyful, I feel peaceful, and I feel completed in the intangible and indescribable way of water.  Life continues.

Sami, however, would like it to be known that she is not a Jew.  She became juice.  Blue juice, to be exact.  To each her own.

And I’m somehow still staying kosher for passover. In fact, somehow I’m still functioning more or less as a human adult!

I have a lot on my mind but with the wee one home from school this week, I have no time for writing it all out. I want to promise posts to come, but can’t really commit to that, especially since I’m now extra cautious about sharing my most personal beliefs.

Stay tuned for some kind of noise. Chag sameach!

In case the Zagats ever wonder if they’ve  “made it,”  it may be reassuring to know that people are even parodying their guide styles in reference to ancient Israelite burnt offerings. 

Nextbook | God’s Zagat: Dining with the Deity has its own rules

I made a lovely dinner of roast chicken and potatoes today.  I came away not only totally satisfied but with a sense of having connected with a greater (folk) culinary tradition in this country and many others.  How simple and wonderful is a roasted chicken?  I can’t even begin to describe.

But the point of this post revolves around the second half of dinner.  The tarte tatin that I had planned to make.  The tarte is almost a non-entity since the apples burned soon after the sugar started caramelizing, bringing my cast iron pan and my hopes of a good tarte for dinner.  All of this occurred, though AFTER I’d made the crust dough, which contained 10 tbsp of very cold butter.

Thanks to a kitchen calamity, I was spared actually eating the dairy-based dessert with our meat dinner.

I’ve been putting a lot of thought and attention into keeping kosher, trying to figure out just how far I need to take it to achieve a meaningful level, while also considering what is practical in the life of a new Jew by Choice who is married to a born but Atheist Jew.

For example, I don’t really care that I put butter into the Cuisinart container, beIt’cause no meat has been or ever will be, in all likelihood, in my Cuisinart.  What sense would it make?  With that said, though, do I care that I should ever use anything that comes out of my dairy Cuisinart in a meal containing meat?  Yes – this is a serious problem; it’s hard to keep track of and it affords the risk of driving me completely batshit insane.

It’s a little sticky.  On one hand, I want to be an observant Jew – not Orthodox, but making my Judaism an active and meaningful part of my life.  I find that the laws of kashrut, in particular, tend to make me mindful of things that I like paying attention to, or that I think it is good to pay attention to, anyway.  I like to know what’s in my food, that it’s organic or fair trade or free range, and so forth.  Checking the kosher status, and whether a product contains meat vs dairy is another angle to that but which helps me to be mindful of the basic principle that food is a privilege when it takes the life of another creature in order to sustain mine.

I wonder if on some level that is what many of the mitzvot (commandments) are designed to do – raise awareness of the rote habits we go through every day of our lives, and determine what their meaning and value are.  In any case, I find kashrut particularly meaningful, though other laws as well.

On the other hand, I could literally go crazy worrying about whether I should ever eat bread from my bread machine with meat ever in the future because I used a pat of butter in there in one loaf once, or which pans I’ve used dairy in so that I can decide whether it can be used for elements of a meat meal (if not for meat itself.)

It sounds crazy (hence the quandary) but since I have determined that this system of self governance has meaning for me, now I need to decide to what extent I should take it.  I cannot afford to have entirely separate fleichig and milchig cookware, dishes and dishes/flatware.  I think that to be constantly, or even occasionally, kashering all of my kitchen equipment is wasteful of water and energy, not to mention my time (though my time is more abundant than many people’s.)  I can’t even begin to imagine how I’d keep track of what all my pans are or have been used for.

To take the discussion to an even further level still….  The Torah’s milk/meat prohibition says that we should not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.  Literally, that is all that is said.  I can appreciate, then, not eating milk products with beef, or goat milk products with goat, etc.  I can even appreciate not eating any form of meat, poultry, etc with milk as a symbolic avoidance of taking a life and consuming it in a sauce concocted from the very liquid intended to sustain new life.  But where this all breaks down for me is why I can’t use the same pans.  What is the likelihood of microscopic drops of milk sticking to my stainless steel through cooking, scouring, hot water, soap, and rinsing to make it through a second heating of the pan?

I don’t mean to deride the Talmudic applications of kashrut, and clearly I’m torn on whether I am able or willing to get to this level of observance.  But how do we know that a hundred or a thousand years from now, Talmud II won’t have been compiled with a new set of writings, teachings and conclusions?  Someone who knows more about why Talmudic law came down so strict about the milk and meat issue, I would love to have a comment from you.

Here’s what I have determined, though.  In our house, each meal will be kosher in preparation.  I will not bring non-kosher foods into our house to be prepared, nor combine milk and meat in any meal cooked at home.

Also, I’ve negotiated with Ben that specifially the kitchen will be the kosher area.  He was not OK with the idea that I might tell him he can’t bring his cheeseburger home, and since living together means compromise, I’ve just asked him to promise not to bring it into the kitchen, if such an event were ever to occur.

While what I’ve concluded probably sounds tidy and manageable, it doesn’t resolve the feeling that I’m not doing my absolute best here.  I feel as though I am half-assing something that actually reflects my native values, the ones that don’t depend on religion – they come with this body.  How do I balance kashrut against my personal sanity?  Again, I would love to have comments from people who have achieved some kind of comfort zone in their struggle to keep kosher while also keeping happy and sane.

The silver lining is that I can use my tarte crust tomorrow, and then it will be kosher.

Not too long before we left for Perú, I made two decisions.  One was to try my best to live as Jewishly as I am able to, most notably by keeping as many laws of kashrut as I am able to do.  The second, as a logical (to me) outgrowth of that, was to become vegetarian.

Let me ’splain.  In November I was reading about the reasons and details of kashrut and what it all boiled down to was a controversial little phrase called “the sanctity of life.”  (This does not mean what you think it means, but this is a topic for another day.)  To lay out a long path quickly, I recognized that I am not comfortable with the idea that my life should be recklessly and wastefully sustained through the sacrifice of another life.  The easiest way for me to reconcile my feelings with dietary needs was to eliminate animal protein entirely.

…And then we left for Perú.  Where (un)surprisingly, there is secret meat in everything.  We ordered an innocuous dish called “fried cheese” and lo, rolled inside was a secret swatch of ham.  This was merely the first night, a few hours after we’d landed in Lima, but it worked out to be a good predictor of how the rest of the trip would be.  Needless to say, I was bound to reality by the nature of being a busy traveler in a completely foreign country, and I relaxed both my efforts to attempt to keep kosher and my vegetarianism.  I merely avoided treif and meat consumption as often as I could.

But a funny thing happened during our travels.  I got my first frank look at a country that has a healthy relationship with its meat farming industry (if you can call it that.)  There are farms literally everywhere in Perú, and on those farms are grown a variety of products, terraced into the mountainsides, and fallow land grazed by… cows, pigs, sheep, llamas, alpacas, etc.  Much of the meat people eat in Perú is raised by actual people, on actual pasture land, not on mechanical feedlots with a heaping side of antibiotics.  They say happy cows come from California, but this is just not true.  The cows looked happier and the milk tasted better in Perú.

Spending three weeks in a place where a) people on average eat far less meat than Americans do and b) the animals are farmed responsibly and cared for in a way that honors their life and minimizes their suffering, I couldn’t help but take away that a healthy food system is a goal that we should have.  A healthy food system is something that should be supported.  It’s my responsibility to model ethical meat consumption by minimizing the frequency and quantity of meat in my diet and sourcing those animal proteins I do consume from ethical farms.

Which brings us back to kashrut, the basis of which is to be mindful of the animal lives we take in the name of human sustenance. I think that my chosen dietary path falls neatly into the laws of kashrut, and the rest is my symbolic journey to create a Jewish life where I didn’t have one before.  I can give up shellfish, I can commit to separating milk from my animal proteins, I can absolutely live without pork products and guinea pigs.  (The extent to which my home is kosher is yet to be determined by a frank discussion with my husband, who… likes him some treif as well as the next non-religious Jew.)

Beyond ethical living, keeping kosher becomes a way in which my life changes because I am becoming Jewish.  I can’t and wouldn’t want to live my same life after conversion; what would be the point?  I should always look to change my life for the better, not least because I am adopting a new culture.