5 posts tagged “kosher”

So, I finally got back to the gym after a week off due to being alternately ill and busy. JB and I left around 7:30, and headed out across the grassy common towards home. We were approached by a girl carrying a blue plastic bag and the exchange went like this.

Girl: Wanna buy some meat?
JB: Sorry?
Girl: Do you want to buy some meat? I've got about 30 quid's worth; you can have it for a tenner.
JB: Er, no thanks...

It says an awful lot about my home life with JB that my sole addition to this conversation was "Sorry, we're kosher."

In the grand tradition of JBs everywhere, JB has a best friend called Daniel. This is his party law, based on stereotypes that mostly, it must be said, turn out to be true:

- 2 bagels per Jew / Greek (eaters), 1 per non-eater plus fillings
- Vegetarian nibbly crap for all from, and I quote, "Asda or similar pikey supermarket"
- 1 beer per Jew / Greek, 2+ per non-eater
- A couple of bottles of spirits for non-beer drinkers / stereotypical women

Remember that Jews / Greeks will bring a bottle but drink barely half.

Works for me. JB's mum suggested vol-au-vents made from pastry cases and Campbell's mushroom soup and that sounds like way too much effort. Still, she's donating a small ocean's worth of smoked salmon and the obligatory bag of Kettle Chips so I'm not inclined to argue too much.

Today's disclosure in the London Metro that state-funded Jewish girls' school Hasmonean has been charging parents a £50 "deposit" for extracurricular activities - an admission fee by any other name - makes the third bid of bad press I've heard about Jewish faith schools this week.

Hasmonean isn't alone among faith schools of any type or denomination in this practice, incidentally, and faith schools are a law unto themselves when it comes to funding anyway. The other two stories troubled me more.

Back in November, I discovered as I poked around the Londonist this week, JFS, JB's alma mater, got into trouble for giving preference to children of born Jews over children of converts. The fact that I would be unlikely to go through the Orthodox Jewish conversion process was another layer of complication that put me off - I would be pleasing and convincing no-one except the most liberal and they wouldn't mind too much if I stayed just what I was. JB himself is in practice very reform, up to and including breaking most of the food laws, and one of his closest school friends, a girl I adore, is the now atheist child of a convert. So this principle is relatively new, evidently, or they just didn't bother checking before. What made the whole matter even more stupid was the fact that one child in question was the offspring of a member of staff - the Head of English no less! Converts are good enough to imbue a sense of Judaism and impart truths about the faith but their children are not good enough Jews? JB was baffled at the post himself, saying he'd never heard the term "ethnic Jew" before.

JFS was found to have broken anti-discrimination laws and forced to change its official stance, but it isn't going to change the underlying message sent out to converts. Surely someone who has gone through the process of becoming  part of your faith and then wants to send their children to a faith school is just as valuable as a child who just happens to be born of Jewish parents who aren't particularly religious but feel faintly guilty that they're not really imparting a sense of Judaism at home? I'm not for a minute suggesting the average "ethnic Jew" is of the latter persuasion, incidentally, some are and many aren't, but that's my point exactly. The only selection criteria should be the genuine desire for a Jewish education. Beyond that, maybe a lottery is in order.

The Londonist also provided me with the last issue, a rather different one. Girls at Yesodey Hatorah put their principles where their pens were and refused to answer questions about Shakespeare in an exam on the grounds that he was anti-Semitic. Rabbi Abraham Pinter was proud of their principles and their stand, and so he should be. But by refusing to engage with Shakespeare these girls are missing a phenomenal opportunity. Instead of encouraging 11 to 14 year olds to spoil their grades, why not study the history of anti-Semitism in this country? Why not spin this off into projects that could help fight it? Why not compare the portrayal of Jews in Shakespeare to that of his contemporaries? If they're going to refuse to answer on Shakespeare then half the canon of English Literature is out too, most Russians, and a few other nationalities besides. Do not ignore the ugly parts of history as it refers to you; we continue, after all, to study the Holocaust for a reason. History must not repeat itself because those who suffered from it refuse to acknowledge it.

Faith schools can provide a phenomenal atmosphere and education. I worked in a Roman Catholic school, despite being Greek Orthodox, and thought it was the best school I set foot in throughout teacher training. I think JFS did well with JB; after all, he did go to Israel for a year after school, so they must have done something right. But those schools must look hard at the times they find themselves in and decide whether it is more important to be Jewish and enthusiastic or tick certain boxes and make a perhaps ill-conceived political stand.

I've come to the conclusion it was a really stupid idea to have a house party. Not because the flat, known by me and JB as the "Weasel Nest"*, is small. Not because we've invited far more people than can actually fit into it (we can shove them over the balcony, it's fine. The children downstairs can eat them). I've invited Jews and Greeks. This can only end in tears.

Everyone knows that when you come away from a Greek party or wedding, the memory that remains is the food. Utter social devastation can be caused by one person saying "it was okay, but the food was disappointing". Or worse, that there wasn't enough. My cousin makes jokes that his mother caters for the Israeli armed forces when she's having a couple of people round, but he's not entirely wrong. There has to be enough for leftovers to last at least two days and everyone has to leave threatening to instantly develop a hiatus hernia.

Jews, it turns out, not too much to my surprise, are just as bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it. Which is all find and dandy when you're attending a party hosted by one or t'other, but it's a bloody nightmare when you're hosting your own.

Leaving that aside, I have English guests too. They're pandering to their own stereotypes as well by just being interested in one thing: booze. Which is easier dealt with, if more expensively, but leads to lingering worries about people throwing up in places other than the toilet.

So now I somehow have to find a goodly selection of booze and cater for 20+ people squeezed into a tiny one bedroom nest. We intend to have a birthday cake at some point (I'm on Sunday, JB the next Friday, but it's also a belated housewarming put off since November) so we'll have to serve parev stuff  - things classified neither as milk nor meat - plus milky stuff. It's going to mean a lot of fish, I guess. Or pizza, but I have a fear of pizzas at parties - it harks back to the days I used to be one of what seemed like 4,000 small children all attending a schoolmate's birthday party. I'm thoroughly tempted to go really retro and have pineapple and cheese on cocktail sticks stuck into half a grapefruit, but I'd yack if I actually had to eat that. Especially the grapefruit. *shudder*

This is going to mean a shitload of bagels, and JB is going to have to help. I was supposed to take the day off tomorrow but after I quit, and took two sick days this week, that wasn't possible so he's using the last of his holiday to clean house and buy supplies. I've got a mother-daughter pampering session I promised my Ma on Saturday, so we're going to be very, very short of time. Plus we're out Friday night at his mother's doing the Shabbas thing.

Calm yourself, Alex. It can be done. They're Jews and Greeks, not rabid bagel-devouring monsters.

In a word: oy.

*I'll explain some time.

I'm a full time professional blogger. At least, I will be until the end of the month when I shift from technology journalism to web editorial for a charity. I've always, always wanted to work for a charity, and luckily I'll still get to blog some of the time. Everyone at Vox has already succumbed to the sometimes narcissistic, always cathartic nature of the weblog beast, and it's even better to be paid to do it.

Still, the reason for this blog is very different than previous ones. My Livejournal is just for me and my real life, actual, old friends. CultureFootle is to give me practice writing reviews, something I love beyond reason. This is the first time I've come close to unpeeling a layer off myself and exposing the results publicly. Why, after my experiences with YouTube commenters, I still want to do this, I'm not entirely sure.

Why bells? Because I actually started this to talk about wedding bells - mine. JB is planning a proposal but we have already agreed to be married. We've had the oddest route here, through friendship, inappropriate friendship and finally love, but the first months of our relationship were punctuated with arguments and stressful family revelations...

I'll never forget my mother telling me I simply wouldn't be the same person if I converted to Judaism. I had thought I might have to - ultimately it became clear that I was far too much of a GGG to actually give it the proper, sober consideration it needed. I read, I asked questions, I considered, I even keep a (mostly) kosher household to make life easier for JB's friends and family, but in the end the pull of my upbringing was far too strong. It wasn't just the octopus and the magiritsa, or even the intoxicating incense of the church. There was a quite serious point at the heart of it, all about the truths that I feel are right for me in Christianity. But then came the task of convincing JB's parents (who, thankfully, love me) that, if anything, I have pushed him to be a better Jew, not suggesting for a single second that he swing to my "side".

So now I have the complete opposite problem to what I thought I'd started with. Instead of having to painfully deal with family resenting our union, the enthusiasm with which it has been treated has freaked me out! I have names and numbers for liberal rabbis who will conduct blessings for those "marrying out" (how I hate that phrase, but it's a rant for another post), I have suggestions for simcha venues - I even, possibly, have a wedding dress. JB's mum is a beader and has a sample for me to try on if I want to.

We're not formally engaged yet. The date has not been set. I am complaining about something that is so preferable to the alternative but it is frightening. This time two years ago I was convinced that no-one in the world would ever, ever love me. Now I know better but it still feels like I'm writing this about someone else!

In due course this blog will, I'm sure, be filled with questions and pleas for suggestions - for the moment it's an outlet, a record of a dual faith marriage to be, a new way to think about myself.

As for bad titles, well, alliteration is the last refuge of the desperate.