Writing this on Thursday, I am rushing to complete the annual ritual of cleaning my home, especially my kitchen, in anticipation of the Jewish holiday known as “Dry Cracker Week.” The purge includes any grain resembling barley, rye, oats, wheat and spelt. Frankly, I am not sure what a spelt is, but I can assure you there is none to be found here. Also banished are liquors that contain these, like scotch and bourbon and condiments like soy sauce (wheat) and more.
This is also the one time of year that I clean the oven and the fridge, whether they need it or not. My rule of thumb with the fridge is if something has been opened in there since last year, it should probably go, for example, the jar of horseradish I bought for last year’s Seder.
Whatever the tradition, most holidays are about the food. Sometimes it is about special foods that you eat, sometimes it’s about foods that you don’t eat. Passover tends to be more about the latter as are the Jewish dietary laws in general.
Cooking is the transformation of nature into culture. What we eat or don’t eat says more about us than what we wear, how we vote, or where we went or didn’t go to college. In some sense our food choices are tied to our deepest identity and sense of holiness. One person’s comfort food is revolting to another.
Here is a poem about a point in my life nearly 30 years ago when I decided to try following Jewish dietary laws for the first time while navigating the challenge of frequent business travel. I often found myself in sometimes awkward situations where attempting to select food that met the restrictions of the law was difficult and sometimes embarrassing. I hope you find it amusing. And I hope that whatever your tradition and whatever you are eating or not eating in the coming week it is an expression of your deepest identity that ties you to your tribe and culture. Or, at very least, I hope it is tasty and delicious.
Holy
For I the Lord am your God; you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy; for I am holy.
--Leviticus 11:44
After I started observing the dietary laws,
I travelled to a conference in Charleston where a
stately catered lunch was served in the grandeur
of the U.S. Custom House. As the waitress approached
our table, I asked if she could tell me
about the soup. “Honey,” she said, “The chef
calls that Every Creeping Thing Chowder.”
I passed and chewed thoughtfully on an oyster
cracker as my fellow diners slurped and moaned
with delight. When the main course arrived,
the waitress leaned toward me liberating a small
jade cross from where it lay nestled. It swayed
like a tire swing over a limpid Carolina creek.
“Sweetie, this bad boy right here,” she whispered
nodding toward the plate she was setting down
in front of a woman in a shiny blue dress, “while it
splitteth the hoof, it does not cheweth the cud.
It is unclean for you.” She oinked discretely in my ear
in case I had failed to catch her drift. “How about
the green beans?” I asked, knowing that
the aromatic brown sauce adorning them was almost
certainly a lost cause. “Rabbi,” she laughed,
“They’s ‘bout as trayf as it gits.” “Y’all go ahead,”
I said to my companions. “Please don’t wait.”
She returned with a plate containing a huge mound
of plain mashed potatoes. All eyes dropped away,
pretending not to stare as if I had been disfigured
in an accident or had just wrapped tefillin on my arms
and begun to daven. “Belinda, would you help yourself to
a biscuit and pass the rest down,” the blue dress
drawled. A colleague looked at my plate and then
at me. I reached for the pepper, busied myself with its
application. He was wondering how,
or perhaps, if, to ask.