By Ted Belman
From now on comments on every post must relate to the content of the post.
Comments that don’t relate to the post must go here.
Any person who contravenes this demand will be put on moderation. Also their offending comment will be trashed.
The reason for this demand is so that people who want to read comments which pertain to the post, don’t have to wade through the chatter.
Everyone will be happier.
@ Edgar G.:
It’s a creamy spaghetti sauce that I put on steamed vegetables, like the combination of Caulliflower, broccoli and baby carrots or brussels sprouts with the ends cut off but not sliced, they become like vegan meat balls. I steam the veggies in a simple electric vegetable steamer with an egg timer built-in for an hour until soft and sweet, heating up the contents of the Jar in a metal bowl on top of the steamer and then add at the end. Other sauces I use are Vietnamese Peanut Sauce, Vietnamese Lemon Grass Sauce, Madras and other kinds of curry, other kinds of spaghetti sauce ( no meat) or just sour cream. Vodka is in minute amounts, you don’t need to show id to buy it, you can’t taste it, and you don’t get a buzz, it just tastes good.
https://www.amazon.com/Mario-Batali-Vodka-Pasta-Sauce/dp/B0042ZGSKK
“Ingredients:
San Marzano imported plum tomatoes, heavy whipping cream (milk), Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, Fresh red onions, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, Fresh Garlic, Vodka, Fresh Parsley, Sea Salt, Crushed Red Pepper, Xantham Gum”
Lots of gourmet supermarkets here
@ Sebastien Zorn:
What the dickens is Vodka sauce…….. Do you mean the Vodka steak sauce.or the Vodka salmon sauce….
Of course I live very simply and don’t use any sauce except Kohns Kontiguous 2-State Sauce, even though he IS an Anti-Semite. After all he got shrapnel in the backside, fighting to free us from slavery….or something
@ Edgar G.:
NEW ISRAELI TECHNOLOGY REPLACES SURGEON’S KNIFE WITH NO-CUT ALTERNATIVE
> System devised at University of Haifa can read moods, lies, Parkinson’s
> Hebrew U. researchers show which foods prevent, promote dementia
BY JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH FEBRUARY 15, 2018 19:53
Sure, sure, but can it make six kinds of capuccino at the same time while whistling Dixie, oops, sorry, politically incorrect.
A propos of nothing, and very much in the spirit of “I’ve got mine, Jack,” whereas I used to think that the “Me Too” campaign smacked of a witchhunt and seemed really unfair, I have changed my mind. I now think it’s a good thing. Here’s why.
My favorite vodka sauce, Mario Battali, used to be really pricey, $8.99 a bottle. He got targeted and not it’s down to only $3.99! Awesome, as long as he manages to stay in business and then they will go up as collector’s items.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That operation you mention set me thinking of the old Ehglish Music Hall song that was even still popular when I was a kid. It was called “A little bit off the top”. I remember one verse, (probably not original, but suited to Ireland)
They used to sing it at every brit…… only kidding.. I mean at your op. what if he’d slipped and snipped a little too much to the left….??
…
“Oh the Duke of York, He went to Cork, And ate his dinner without a fork..All I want is a little bit off the top.
“A little bit of the top ..the top.. for me,..for me,,
A little bit off the top ,,the top ..forme, for me,
The Duke of York..etc.etc.
The first time I broke my nose I was lying there and 3 students, pals of mine were arguing whether 3 stitches or 4…..I was mortified, as Jimmy Durante used to say. And then a couple of weeks later it had to be rebroken and fixed properly/
@ Edgar G. I’m not and I have similar issues. I only post this out of Jewish pride. America probably has the worst health care in the developed world except for people who can afford the best insurance and highest copays which is all the best doctors accept. That stuff will never trickle down to the likes of me. It’s just science fiction in real life. Portugal has better health care. I have a cousin who lives there.
I remember my double hernia operation. I heard and saw and felt everything after the anaesthesia wore off during the procedure. The comedic high point of the operation was my listening to the surgeon tell his student with the knife, “no, no, a little more to the left.”
@ Edgar G.:
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I’m always on the lookout for what is discovered in Israel medically. I have a very bad hip joint, and urged to have it replaced already 5 years ago. I couldn’t face permanently losing half my thigh bone, and having mechanical metal machinery inside my body. By some miracle, I have no pain, but must exercise regularly to keep it all from stiffening beyond use. I HATE aimless walking, but do 20-25 mins fast walking 3-4 times a week. When weather prevents it, I climb stairs in my apartment block, 2 flights of 16 steps each. I do this 10 times non-stop, 320 steps, walking up, elevator down. Not easy, but doable. I hate it. I’m impatient for a Stem Cell cure. There are already hundreds of quacks appearing and I’ve been in touch with some of them. They answer all my questions exhaustively, but always skirt around asserting a definite ligament growth in the correct place which separates Femur from hip, which would be noticeable by Xray. No good to me.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Yes astonishing isn’t it. I saw a report in Arutz nearly a month ago and emailed my daughter about it.
Amazing. Israeli company grows bones in lab. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-biotech-company-successfully-grows-bones-in-lab/
In this scene from the original Day the Earth Stood Still, the idiot earth soldiers shoot a precious gift from the stars (we later learn) out of the hands of the visitor from the stars thinking it’s a weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6iF5sINVns
Edgar G. Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mol_ttm6uVI
While Guatemala moves embassy to Jerusalem, neighbor Bolivia once again accuses Israel of being behind alleged crisis in Gaza. Of Course. If they could think of a way to blame the common cold on Israel they would do it. It made me think:
>Niagara Falls
>Israel.
@ Edgar G.:
When I was still in Ireland trying to run a a small group, I got to know a guitarist named Danny Kerr home on a vacation, who had been playing with a few top bands in England for years. He was the brother of my boxing trainer the famous Frankie Kerr which is how I got to know him. He said that he personally knew about 2800 chords.
A question…don’t you find the math question at top a nuisance….? I always forget the damned thing than have to reverse and rack my brains to think what 1+1 is…..
@ Edgar G.:
Meant to add that I knew the Art Blakey group were playing along chords that probably weren’t invented at the earlier musical period, and the bass player talking about Oliver that time was Pops Foster.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
My favourite cornetist was King Oliver. I remember Art Blakey, he was a very faclile and energetic guy, to me he showed up better as a show drummer, I couldn’ stand the music of his group. It was like a competition to see who could be the most unmusical and discordant.
You see we come from different eras musically as well as otherwise. I like music to have a strongly pronounced musical content, and whilst I love improvisation and other embellishment, it has to within the chord structure of the melody.
There is a story by that old time bass player about how he sat with King Oliver one afternoon for hours, and all the time Oliver was playing 2 bar breaks, different each time. I think they got up to nearly 2500 at a rough estimate he said. The conversation had begun about the 2 bar breaks with The Creole Jazz Band with Armstrong, and Oliver said that he used to go over to Louis during the tune, when not playing, and hum a few notes for him as 2nd cornet, and it was this that became one of the standout parts of the group when it was making records. Did you ever listen to any, for instance “Jazzin’ Baby Blues”, or “Snake Rag”, or “Sobbin’ Blues,” “Canal Street Blues” “Mabel’s Dream”. which was dedicated to Mabel Normand etc..
Remember that they were made in 1923. in a rickety recording studio near the railroad tracks which caused a shake now and then. Also the pre-electric needle was suspended on a string, running from one side of the wax to the other. I suppose they tested for the best tension. Anyway, it was THESE recordings which really began the Dixieland craze, with all due respect to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (The ODJB..white guys, who actually made the first Jazz recordings in 1917.) , which is revived every 30 years of so, although some groups and areas have it going all the time.
@ Edgar G.:
Check out these links. Jazz violin. Very innovative. Oh, I guess you did. What do you think? Cornet always one of my favorites. Who is your favorite? An old girl-friend turned me on to Art Blakey back in the 70s my favorite Jazz timpanist.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I haven’t looked at or watched any more recent prodigy. I play(ed) tymps, cornet, piano, a little banjo. Strictly New Orleans Old Style Dixieland Jazz. Of course I was seriously interested in certain classics too, as well as Grand Opera, although not all. Next to girls, and books it was a main life-long hobby, at which I made money on and off over the years. I once ran a New Orleans Jazz Band for 10 years and it kept me and family alive and well. It was an experiment in living on my earnings.
My violin interests, (apart from some of the classical greats) stopped at Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti , Stuff Smith and Stephan Grappelli. I also knew and played with one of the original Swedanes, if you recall them (the great jazz violinist was Sven Asmussen)-often on the Ed Sullivan Show. But he was the guitar player who moved to Vancouver and lived near me. Took a day job as Manager of Sporting Goods in a large department store.
@ Edgar G.:
What instrument(s) did you play?
How do you like Echae Kang? Wowed me. Fairly recent. Within the last few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VVvUwD4M4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5K3rcwDdgs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nla1jMSEI-M
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I actually saw/heard Jack Benny a few times playing on stage with Yehudi Menuhin. I suppose he would not have been bad on his own, but beside the smooth expert Menuhin you could hear him playing sharp quite a bit and often with a high rasping tone. They did quite a few shows together at one period.
And he looked as if he was operating a saw instead of a bow, arm movements the reverse of smooth, as if a little behind and trying to catch up. High elbow. His pizzicato reminded me of an octopus.
I used to play with a Bluegrass recording group, which featured lead violin (was he GOOD) who was otherwise quite simple, his brother on rhythm guitar (a full bodied single cutaway gold Gibson) their brother-in-law was lead guitar playing a Fender Jazzmaster, a string bass, (always more than half-drunk, but a really nice guy) and myself on drums and occasionally piano. The lead guitar also doubled on fiddle. He was a dogsbody who resented me very much but was forced to ask me to play with them to change them into a Western Swing Band. (Hank Thompson was going good then) Anti-Semite I’m sure -Verbrente French Catholic. The two brothers always were afraid to open their mouths unless he gave permission. Reminded me of the stories about parents keeping their kids on a chain at night…..
None of them could read a single note. In fact one time at practice, when I said I thought there was a slightly discordant sound, in a “swing” (Woodchoppers Ball) tune I’d picked, I discovered that the bass player didn’t know the difference between “B” and B flat. They had always played everything in the open keys.
People used to arrange their marriages to fit with the dates they would be available, believe it or not. Big fish in a small local pond. I played 2 years with them every Sat. night, plus Country Jamborees.. They were booked every weekend for about 3 years ahead. And apart from an early, very successful Australia and New Zealand tour, they didn’t get anywhere really in Canada. (The recordings were made for the Australian market by contract). They were all working-for the same local company and were ensconced in their jobs like periwinkles……..
ah, what i was looking for
https://youtu.be/nxpKz4CoLPc
https://youtu.be/cEInRuBhAjY
https://youtu.be/UUxphbyTXF0
https://youtu.be/Mag2mc5Vva0
@Edgar G”:
You mentioned that Einstein was in a quartet. He was, in fact, an amateur violinist, who like Jack Benny, who only pretended to be awful in public, and also was friends with and played privately with the leading musicians of the day. There is an apocryphal story that he was playing 2nd violin, with Heifetz on 1st, Primrose on viola, Piatagorsky on cello and they kept having to stop. Finally, in exasperation, Heifetz turned to him and said, “Albert, can’t you count?”
Which is only funny if you don’t know about Einstein’s learning disability but as I always say, “all humor is based on half-truths, the trick is to find the half that’s funny.”
https://youtu.be/UOCxxFFI4HM
https://youtu.be/Aumx4cfygFo
Napoleon, Eretz Yisrael, And The Jews feb 9, 1797
“A beautiful story, perhaps apocryphal, is told of Napoleon Bonaparte passing a European synagogue on Tisha B’Av and hearing inconsolable weeping coming from inside. When he asked what great misfortune had happened there, he was advised that Jews gather once a year to fast, pray, and mourn on the anniversary of the destruction of their holy Temples in Jerusalem.
When informed further that the destruction had occurred some two millennia earlier, Napoleon is reputed to have proclaimed: “A nation that cries and fasts for over 2,000 years for their land and Temple will surely be rewarded with their Temple.”
The first contact Napoleon (1769 – 1821) had with the organized Jewish community probably took place on February 9, 1797 during the Italian campaign, when his army entered Ancona. When he inquired why certain people wore yellow bonnets and a yellow armband bearing the Magen David, he was advised that these were Jews who had to be identified and who returned to the ghetto every evening.
Napoleon immediately ordered that the Jewish garb be replaced with the tricolor rosette; that the ghettos be closed; and that Jews be allowed to openly practice their faith. He later closed the Jewish ghetto in Rome and liberated the Jews there and, when the French occupied Malta on June 12, 1798, he rescinded the law forbidding the practice of Judaism in synagogues…”
http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/napoleon-eretz-yisrael-and-the-jews/2018/02/01/
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Interesting NY Times Op-Ed that admits a lot fo the things we have been saying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/trump-democrats-immigration.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12350?msg=welcome_stranger
‘food glorious food’
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-jewish-avengers-top-secret-group-of-holocaust-survivors-who-plotted-revenge-murder-of-six-million-germans/ar-BBIhLTw?ocid=spartandhp
Edgar G. Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVaYInC1-Tg
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Yes I know it too…”Cheeses”, that guy the Polish missionary works for…..
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I suppose the only answer to that is “SCAT”….!!
@ Edgar G.:
Incidentally, you are mistaken. Or do you put your “he said/she said” anecdotal style of reference ahead of Oxford English
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/salacious
as well as “prurient”
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prurient
and Cambridge English
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/salacious
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prurient
You can always skip over my quotes. By I won’t take your word for anything if you don’t provide them.
It’s basic in academia, as in Law, that the individual making the assertion is responsible for proving it with documented evidence in an adversarial fashion.
Voluminous reading is a necessary but insufficient condition. That’s where the training comes in.
I did learn what rhymes with theses though.
@ Edgar G.:
Yeah, but would your citations back up your theses? You’d be surprised how often they don’t even with reputable historians. I took a whole mixed graduate undergraduate course on just that topic. All detective work. Pretty shocking.
@ Edgar G.:
My, what fun! She must be one cool cat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhm-9-fLF_E
@ Edgar G.:
Do me a favour please. Stop bombarding me with cut and paste plasters from Wiki. I can look it up myself if I feel the need to, which is seldom.
@ Sebastien Zorn
“Scatology” is too exclusive. I meant salacious, which has a wider, inclusive application, I’ve noticed it from time to time. I don’t like it, but you’re American which explains it. My casual conversation standards are different to yours. I’m old-fashioned.
My cousin had a cat, She was always complaining about emptying the “scat”.
@Edgar G:
And, I believe you meant scatalogical not salacious.
sa·la·cious
s??l?SH?s/Submit
adjective
(of writing, pictures, or talk) treating sexual matters in an indecent way and typically conveying undue interest in or enjoyment of the subject.
“salacious stories”
synonyms: pornographic, obscene, indecent, crude, lewd, vulgar, dirty, filthy; More
lustful; lecherous.
“his salacious grin faltered”
synonyms: lustful, lecherous, licentious, lascivious, libidinous, prurient, lewd; More
Scatalogical – definition of Scatalogical by The Free Dictionary
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Scatalogical
the study of or preoccupation with excrement or obscenity. Also called coprology. — scatologic, scatological, adj. See also: Obscenity.
Incidentally, I must confess to my own innocent typo: I meant to write that tvs were in “every” nook and cranny, not “nook and cranny”. It was innocent. Really. Honest injun’. Cross my heart and hope to die. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – Sigmund Freud.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2k3meo
@ Edgar G.:
Don’t you watch the news? I happened to go the gym where they have tvs embedded in nook and cranny with CNN and all the major news channels talking endlessly about the world being up in arms about President Trump’s alleged “shithole nations” remark. Then I picked up the NY Times and other major print newspapers.
Needless to say, there have been no other newsworthy events this week.
Reminds me of President Reagan’s funeral. It took him longer to be buried than to die!
Now, it’s every time President Trump allegedly opens his mouth.
But, then you might be unaware of all that, ensconced as you are in the Himalayas, what was the name of that legendary place again where nobody ages as long as they stay put? Oh, right. Wisconsin. Dublin, Wisconsin.
@ Edgar G.:
Besides, some other dope made the same “clever” alteration, a couple of weeks ago. It was ignored by all….and rightly so.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Why have you suddenly become so prurient, even salacious…Ugh. Not my style at all.
@Edgar G.
Perhaps you should replace the first c with s, making it, “shit chat.”
@ david melech:
You think you’re only joking, don’t you? Here’s the article:
At an event hall in early January, some 80 Californian foodies gathered to indulge in artisanal food prepared by Jewish chefs from the area.
The dishes were locally sourced and carefully presented. An organizer lauded the spread as food made “mindfully,” and a Jewish rabbi offered a reverential prayer.
No rubber chicken here — but each dish was intentionally treyf, or nonkosher.
On January 8, a Jewish food group hosted what it called the “Trefa Banquet 2.0” a playful nod to an 1883 event where nonkosher food was served at the ordination of the first class of American Reform rabbis. A century and a half later, the public Jewish consumption of treyf pushes the same buttons. Some find it scandalous, others delicious.
“The chefs are all already cooking treyf,” said Alix Wall, the food writer and Forward contributor who organized the meal. “This is an acknowledgment that this is the reality that we live in.”
The dishes included a peanut butter pie with bacon bits, a pulled pork kugel and a rabbit crepinette.
The 2018 treyf banquet was part of an ongoing meal series put on by a group called the Illuminoshi, which saw it as an opportunity to retell a mythic moment and highlight the nonkosher reality of the Jewish food scene.
The original event has taken on the power of an origin story, purportedly explaining the division of much of American Judaism into the Reform and Conservative movements over the question of whether modern Jews should continue to follow their religion’s traditional rules.
Shrimp toast with citrus kosho by chef Mark Liberman. One of a range of dishes served at the “treyfa banquet 2.0.”
Lydia Daniller
Shrimp toast with citrus kosho by chef Mark Liberman. One of a range of dishes served at the “treyfa banquet 2.0.”
This year, as the crowd milled about, the featured speaker Rachel Gross, a professor of Jewish studies at San Francisco State University, sought to put the scene into context — by diving into history and retelling the story of the 19th-century “treyf banquet.”
Held for the inaugural graduating class of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the original banquet featured such nonkosher foods as clams, soft-shell crabs, shrimp and frog legs in a lavish multicourse meal. As the story goes, a number of rabbis stormed out in disgust — offended by what they saw as a rebellious violation of Jewish law — and went on to form their own, more ritually minded denomination that would become the Conservative movement.
The Trefa Banquet
1883 in Cincinnati, OH
Following the 8th annual meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) and the ordination by Hebrew Union College (HUC) of the first class of four rabbinic students, a celebratory dinner was held at Highland House restaurant in Cincinnati and was attended by the city’s elite—both Jewish and non-Jewish. The meal included clams, crabs, and frog’s legs, as well as ice cream and cheese following the meat entrees. The event—frequently dubbed “The Trefa Banquet”—highlighted the differences in religious practice among American Jews, contributed to a formal break between reformers and traditionalists, and led to the development of the Reform Movement’s Pittsburgh Platform and the founding of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Conservative Movement.
But was it really such a dramatic breaking point or intentional rebellion? Not so much, scholars now argue. Rather, the early Reform movement was really just serving the type of food that many American Jews were already eating at home. The story, instead, became much more important in the years after, to explain what, in the eyes of other denominations, separated them from the Reform culture.
“While I keep kosher myself, most American Jews do not keep kosher, and, historically, American Jews have had a wide range of eating habits, including rejecting traditional Jewish dietary laws and changing what it means to keep kosher,” Gross said. “The Trefa Banquet 2.0 was a wonderful moment to reflect on the ways that many American Jews eat, how they have talked about what they do and do not eat, and how American Jewish chefs cook.”
In the hours after the event, as news spread through social media, a backlash brewed. For the attendees, eating nonkosher dishes was either a delightfully transgressive or, as Jews who had long eaten treyf, a nonissue; for critics it was evidence that these American Jews are doomed to assimilation. A scathing post on the blog of Rabbi Natan Slifkin derided attendees as “proudly discarding Jewish law,” and dubbed the entire banquet an “event in poor taste.”
Organizers were surprised by the backlash. Wall, who was raised Reform but now moves in Renewal circles, said she wasn’t trying to offend or to impose her views on any other Jew. In fact, she argued that the type of locally sourced, eco-minded food she was serving was itself a type of ritual observance. All the pork, she noted proudly, came from a Jewish farmer who conscientiously raises the animals in Marlin County.
“The whole humanly raised movement makes a lot more sense to me,” she said.
Rabbi Camille Angel, a professor of theology at San Francisco University, was one of two rabbis in attendance. She comes from a long line of rabbis and said that her father, a Reform-ordained cleric, made a point of eating nonkosher food at home. It was part of how he saw himself as a Jew and an American.
For that earlier generation of treyf-eating American Jews, “there was a pride in being modern and eating in an assimilated way,” Angel said. “In those days, Jewish tribalism wasn’t what we were going for.”
Over the decades, Reform Jews have returned to some ritual observances and restrictions, like dietary restrictions. Still others are exploring what some call eco-Judaism or eco-kashrut.
Dana Evan Kaplan, the author of “American Reform Judaism: An Introduction,” said that debates around dietary restrictions — of one form or another — in Reform circles are, clearly, still active.
“Today, as in biblical times, the idea that ‘you are what you eat’ remains compelling,” Kaplan wrote in a email to the Forward. “That the act of eating may manifest beliefs and values is just as rational a position now as it was in the past.”
Contact Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com or on Twitter, @skestenbaum
Read more: https://forward.com/news/391980/jews-gather-to-eat-bacon-with-a-rabbis-blessing-and-celebrate-their-history/
and\
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An Event In Poor Taste
Earlier this week, in San Francisco, a number of rabbis and Jewish scholars attended a special banquet with a unique menu. (Shows people seated in front of a roast pig)
Everything was treife.
(picture is for illustrative purposes and is not from this event)
I don’t mean treife as in not having a Badatz hechsher. I don’t mean treife like Braekel chicken or Cornish Rock. I don’t mean treife like desert locusts, which no kashrus agency approves but which are certainly kosher. And I don’t mean treife like peacocks, which virtually no Orthodox rabbi eats but which is undoubtedly a kosher bird. I mean straight-out treife – rabbit, bacon, lobsters, meat-and-milk, and so on.
The “Trefa Banquet 2.0” memorialized the infamous 1883 “Trefa Banquet,” held in honor of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College. At that meal, pork was not served (unlike in this week’s event), but there was crab, shrimp, and frogs’ legs. Along with the 1885 declaration of the Reform movement that kashrut is an “archaic practice,” this led to a number of people leaving the Reform movement in disgust and creating the Conservative movement and the Jewish Theological Seminary.
An article about this week’s event interviews Rabbi Camille Angel, whose father was ordained at Hebrew Union College, and who proudly identifies as a “second-generation lobster-eating rabbi.” She reports that “My mother loved sending me to school during Passover with a lunch of matzah with ham and cheese.” According to the interviewer, “this led to teasing from another Jewish classmate, who felt that this somehow diminished Angel’s Jewish cred.” You don’t say! At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I would like to note that while you might have two generations of lobster-eating rabbis, it is highly unlikely that further generations of proudly discarding Jewish law and tradition will produce any rabbis or even any Jews.
Rabbi Sydney Mintz of Reform Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco enjoyed eating the bacon, and declared, “I would rather eat food that’s humanely and ethically raised than kosher.” Now, it is indeed true that most kosher meat and chicken is not humanely or ethically raised (like all factory-farmed animals). And Rabbi Avi Shafran’s recent disavowal of Kashrut agencies having any responsibility for this beyond government legislation is incorrect from a Torah perspective (not to mention that kashrus agencies are often particular about issues entirely unrelated to the actual kashrus of the food). And let’s assume that Mintz’s bacon was indeed ethically raised (although I do wonder if that was the case). But why on earth does she present it as a choice between the two? There are plenty of options available for eating food that is both humanely raised and kosher. Or, you can go vegetarian. What ethical principle is there that requires one to eat non-kosher food?
Event organizer Alix Wall “told the crowd that her mother was a child during the Holocaust, hidden with a family of Poles; she grew up eating what they ate, including plenty of pork. In this family, an essential 20th-century Jewish story of Holocaust survival is tied to pork. So for Wall, “keeping treyf” (if I may coin a phrase) connected her to her Jewish history, just as keeping kosher does for others.” How bizarre. Following this logic, perhaps just as her mother was given away, she should give away her daughter to a non-Jewish family, to let her connect to Jewish history? Yes, there are people who were forced to survive the Holocaust by living as non-Jews, but living as a non-Jew is hardly a way to connect to Jewish history.
The journalist concludes his article by claiming that “Judaism — and history of the Reform movement in particular — is full of this: not a transgression of religion, but transgression as religion.” Well, Reform Judaism may well be full of transgression as religion (and one wonders how, if that is the case, they expect full recognition in Israel), but it’s hardly accurate to describe classical Judaism in that way.
Moshe Basson, Chef for the Biblical Museum of
Natural History’s special events, with a plate of locusts
It should be noted that for people who are desperate to taste non-kosher food, the Talmud states that for every non-kosher food there are kosher equivalents. These featured as part of the Feast of Exotic Curiosities held last year at The Biblical Museum of Natural History. We served kosher bacon (made from a certain type of seaweed), kosher oysters (made from certain mushrooms along with real oystershell, which is kosher), food that replicates the taste of meat with milk (udders), and non-shrimpian invertebrates (locusts).
There is no nutritional or ethical need to eat non-kosher food. And there are very good reasons to be loyal to Jewish law and tradition, even for Jews who do not believe that the laws of kashrut are divinely mandated. If people wish to ignore those reasons, well, it’s a free society. But to promote it as something that is actually in the spirit of Jewish tradition is incorrect, and in very poor taste indeed.
http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2018/01/an-event-in-poor-taste.html?spref=fb
as the animals were slaughtered by a reform shochet surely that makes the meats edibles??
Jews Gather To Eat Bacon With A Rabbi’s Blessing — And Celebrate Their History
Read more: https://forward.com/news/391980/jews-gather-to-eat-bacon-with-a-rabbis-blessing-and-celebrate-their-history/
And these people think Israel should take them seriously? Give them administrative say over the Kotel or anything else? Ha Ha.
https://forward.com/news/391980/jews-gather-to-eat-bacon-with-a-rabbis-blessing-and-celebrate-their-history/?attribution=home-hero-item-text-2
Some of them claim that they have donated money so they are owed (as if that were a legitmate reason, anyway), but haven’t they just donated money to their pet progressive causes, in many cases to Israel’s detriment?
The only right they have is the right of return, though even that gets dicey with reform judaism because it’s no longer matrilineal.
@ RodrigoFabZH RodrigoFabZH:Is this a joke? A Russian advertisement to invest in Belgian real estate? Belgium, the capital of the EU which hates Israel. Which persecutes Israel. Which falsely accuses Israel of stealing the fakestinians’s land, among other blood libels? On a pro-Israel website? And in Russian, the language of “that ambidexter” state, smiling at Israel one moment and Iran in the next? Very good. Ha Ha. I am better able to appreciate the humor of this instead of getting angry since I have a slight cold and am therefore feeling somewhat flemish. Qchuit Pooh!
http://t-babel.com
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/middle-east/saudi-arabia/herzog-offers-temple-mount-to-saudis-if-labor-wins-next-elections/2018/01/09/
If liberal American Jews — mosf of us — had any say, he’d be Israel’s PM. Ironically, they are even worse than him as they don’t take Iran seriously as a threat and still support Obama’s policy of blocking with Iran against Saudi Arabia!
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Edgar G.: @ Sebastien Zorn: She’s not a friend, only met her a few times-in Israel. (She…
Made me think of these two humorous pieces.
https://richardlangworth.com/shaw
and
https://vimeo.com/93042482
and more on hats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhmxPyWWS90