Kosher

There was a bar mitzvah at shul yesterday morning. The lad centre stage was a young chap called Todd who talked about the Holocaust during his speech to the congregation. He actually made me aware that Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Israel, regularly “twins” young Jewish people up with one of the 1.5m children who were killed in the concentration camps during the war. The idea is to give living people the responsibility of protecting the memory of the dead. So if the bar mitzvah boy from today takes his responsibility seriously, then the memory of at least one child gassed at Auschwitz, is cherished for another 80 years. In this case, a 13-year-old Romanian boy called Shalom Tesler.

A staggering and chilling fact, which was brought to our attention by the rabbi today, is that, if Todd lives until he’s 93, the 6 million Jewish people who were killed in the holocaust could be seen in context as 200 people being killed every day for the rest of his life.

There’s always a kiddish meal after the Shabbat service. Sometimes it’s a rather simple affair - a few crisps, some pickles, fruit, olives and pastries. On special occasions, however, like yesterday, they can be rather lavish affairs...

The interesting thing, of course, is that kosher food can only be either meat or dairy-based. It would be impossible for food to be prepared in a kitchen with both food types present. Kosher restaurants will therefore typically declare which of the two they are. Cafes, bakeries and Italian-inspired restaurants will tend towards being dairy-focussed, for obvious reasons. The rules for dealing with dairy are far less stringent, but, unless you’re happy to serve only vegetarian cuisine, you have to get really imaginative with fish. It’s why you often end up with somewhat bizarre-sounding things like salmon lasagne! The rules regarding meat are much more complicated, which is why someone who keeps kosher is most likely to eat vegetarian food if they can’t be sure how something has been prepared. I think I’m right in saying that someone who keeps kosher has to wait four hours if he or she wants to switch from meat to dairy.

As a result of all of this, our kiddishes are usually dairy-based, but yesterday’s was meat-based, and, as a result, the entire shul got turned upside down. All the kitchen surfaces had been carefully covered in tin foil and all milk had been removed from the building, which was a desperate nightmare because the choir is basically fuelled by lovely cups of tea!