Keeping Kosher in Israel

ORDINARY TIME

Luke 2:22-32

When the days were completed for their purification
according to the law of Moses,
Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem
to present him to the Lord,
just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
and to offer the sacrifice of
a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.
This man was righteous and devout,
awaiting the consolation of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he should not see death
before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
He came in the Spirit into the temple;
and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

“Now, Master, you may let your servant go
in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

There are a lot of references in that verse to laws, law of the Lord, law of Moses, custom of the law....

The custom that affected me the most in Israel was eating Kashrut.

I'm not complaining, just stating a fact.

Per the Jewish Virtual Library, Kashrut is "the body of Jewish law dealing with what foods we can and cannot eat and how those foods must be prepared and eaten."  Kosher describes the foods that meet those requirements.

Kosher breakfast bar in Nazareth

Course, I didn't know that. 

Before I went to Israel, I really had no idea what kosher really meant.  It's just not eating any pork, which everyone knows Jewish people do not eat.  Right?  WRONG.

It is correct that Jewish people do not eat pork.  But "Keeping Kosher" means a lot more than that.  There are basic rules of what can and cannot be eaten, plus basic rules for preparation of things that can be eaten, plus rules about not mixing some things, not even the dishes of things used for cooking.  (they have two separate storage cabinets to keep the dishes from being mixed up and even use separate dishwashers!!!).  And they do have a "kosher" stamp for packaged foods and restaurants, etc, like "rabbi approved".

But how the food was prepared or where it was bought was never my problem.  My problem was the one law about not mixing meat and dairy.  Period.  And almost every restaurant and certainly all the meals at the hotels I stayed in observed this law.

Kosher lunch "fixin's"

It actually took me several meals to really understand what was going on!  But after the first few days, I had no choice but to "get it"  (It was "immersion learning!  LOL!).  Basically every meal provided by the travel company was prepared and served as all-you-can-eat buffets (one of my favorite restaurant options!) in the hotels.  Only the options were odd and I didn't understand why.

Mom & JP check out the options on a kosher buffet

Duh.  We were keeping kosher.

So it's like this:  The Rabbis say the Torah prohibits eating meat and diary together.  This includes poultry, they may not eat milk and poultry together. It is, however, permissible to eat fish and dairy together. It is also permissible to eat dairy and eggs together. According to some views, it is not permissible to eat meat and fish together.

Is your head spinning yet?  Mine is!! LOL!

So my confusion was the one law about not mixing meat and dairy.  Not that I was worried about mixing them up, heck I didn't even know we were observing kashrut!  LOL!  Period.  But almost every restaurant and certainly all the meals at the hotels I stayed in observed this law.

As it turns out, most breakfasts featured dairy, which meant eggs, milk for cereal, cheeses, plus cream for coffee.  But no meat.  No bacon, no sausage, no ham...you see?  And the eggs were hard boiled.  Once we saw scrambled, but never over-easy or omelets.  Hard boiled.  I'm not sure why.

How about a little fish tail to go with that glass of orange juice and the scrambled egg on your plate?

What breakfast does include is fish. ???  Yes, fish.  Not only fish, but the Torah says "things of the water with fins & scales"...so they tend to leave those items on just in case you were wondering if your fish was kosher or not.  (bleh...hard to stomach first thing in the morning in my opinion!)

Oh yeah, that's fish halves with onions.....for breakfast!...yum....NOT!

This was all very odd at first.  Maybe odd is too tame a word for what it was, strange is better.  Truthfully, I don't know that the pickled fish wasn't just plain ol gross in my book. (bleh!)

And not having anything at all to do with kosher, but just maybe the national pallet, things were not sweet like in the US.  No doughnuts, cinnamon rolls or muffins for breakfast.  No cakes or pies or ice cream at dinner. And fresh fruit was only offered at dinner, not at breakfast.  Weird.

Most of the restaurants did offer cereal & milk for breakfast.  It was very granola-ish and no sugar was offered.  Also, the milk just sat out all morning and was not cold.  (I have to admit that by the end of our trip, I was eating my own food-stash of cereal snack-packs which I had brought from home.  Sugar Pops, Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops were my salvation when faced with all those vinegary veggies and fish in the morning!  Thank goodness I had packed myself some snacks!  LOL!!)

My favorite new foods were both things I discovered at lunch:  hummus and schawerma.

Hummus was everywhere, multiple flavors and colors and textures.  Some was ok and some was awesome!  I have no idea how to tell what was what and although I've bought a couple of brands here at home to try since I returned, I haven't found anything like what I ate over there.

Schawerma from Bethlehem featured meat AND dairy!!!  Yum!

Schawerma was my favorite lunch and once I had been introduced to it, I ate it everywhere I went.  The best place to eat it was in Christian Bethlehem where they did not observe kosher laws and it was dripping with a creamy mayonnaise sauce of some kind!  YUM!

One of only two meals we had on our own was in old Jerusalem on our last day.  We saw this pizza in the window of the cafe, and both Mom and I were like "Pizza! Whoo Hoo!"  and almost knocked each other over getting in there!  LOL!  We ran right in and ordered 2 big old slices. It was Kosher Pizza, which meant no meat, but who cares?  We eat cheese pizza in the US all the time!!  Yay!

Kosher Pizza: the only place we saw dairy at lunchtime!

Crazily, there wasn't a cheese-only option, but veggie pizza is still pizza!  Although I have to say I steered clear of the section with corn on it.  ???  Corn??   LOL!  They can't touch our pizza here in the States, that's for sure!

One more funny note about our kosher lunches -  when we were in Masada, they had a sort of food court which is where we had lunch that day.  I don't remember what any of the other restaurants were, cause the minute I saw the McDonald's, all I could think about was a giant glass of sweet iced tea....

As any southerner who loves her sweet iced tea like me knows, it is not easy to get that wonderful nectar even in the United States, and I have experienced a lot of unavailability when I travel.  Up north, out west, in the midwest....people look at you like you are crazy when you ask for ice tea!  Do you know I saw iced tea on a menu in New York City for $7.75 per glass?!?!?  They obviously DID NOT want any takers on that!!

So when good ol' Mickey-D's started their "Sweet Tea $1" campaign, it was like a dream come true for sweet and southern me and I could immediately get great sweet ice tea anywhere in the entire United States!  Awesome!

Course, this was Israel.  

But my brain saw the McDonald's arches and just naturally assumed it could get some sweet tea there!  

Nope.

In fact, although there were no signs saying it was a kosher McDonalds, I suspect it might have been.  It sure wasn't like any Mickey-D's I had been to before.  (up to this point, the weirdest McDonalds I had been to were in St. Louis and Las Vegas!  But they both had sweet tea!  LOL!)

Note the middle of the menu below:  BIG AMERICA

I did a little searching on the internet when I got back and it seems that McDonalds has a big (and I mean "Big") campaign going on outside the U.S. for people to eat like Americans....(yeah right).  

They feature names like "Big New York" (sirlon burger) and "Big Texas" (bbq sauce & onions added).  They are pretty darn expensive too! I think Japan has about 6 or 7 versions of the "Big America" series which include Hawaii, Idaho and Alaska!

One of the commercials in Israel even features President Obama stopping in to get a Big America burger!!  I don't even want to think about all the underlying meaning in that......

I got the McRoyal Meal.  It was priced for a king, that's for sure.  At NIS 45 = $15.00 US!  It came with fries and a coke, but no cheese or mayo!  LOL!  Didn't matter, we were pretty happy - and the fries were great!

 

I'm not going to pretend it tasted anything like a burger from the U.S.  Makes me wonder about the restaurants I love back home - Chinese, Mexican, Japanese.... hmmmmm.

Kosher dinner was the opposite of the meatless breakfasts.  There was meat.  Lot's of meat. 

Chicken and beef and chicken and fish and chicken...did I mention we had chicken for dinner?  And lots and lots of salads.  Not green salad - pickled salads.  Like pasta salad and corn salad and bean salad and un-recognizable-veggie salad and all with oil & vinegar on them.  Nothing creamy, cause you know - no milk.

They do have a wonderful way with seasonings and all the meats were super flavorful and really yummy!  

Spices for sale in the market in Jerusalem

Just look!  These people are serious about their spices!!  (Makes our little jars from the supermarket seem pretty lame, huh?  LOL!)

But back to dinner:  No milk to drink.  No butter.  No cheese.  No casseroles.  No creamy soups, gravies, dressings, desserts.

All those great great wonderful beautiful breads and NO BUTTER!  What a crime!  LOL!  Not that I'm whining or anything, just noting my observations....
 

And not that keeping kosher was bad or undesirable, but it was confusing because I didn't know what was going on and was not prepared for it.  Which is so funny because before going to Israel, I had looked up their national and/or common foods specifically so I could embrace the Israeli diet and culture!  I wanted to just soak up all I could from the experience of being there!

But none of the websites I visited, nothing I read anywhere on the internet, said a word about eating kosher.  And never, ever, did it occur to me that the entire country ate kosher.

DUH!!!!!

(I mean come'on, how did this escape me?  If I went to China, I would expect to eat Chinese food wouldn't I???)

LOL - looking back now, I think my first meal headed over on the airplane was kosher!  I remember at the time thinking "wonder if they have any ranch dressing for this salad?"  Hahahaha!  Glad I didn't make a fool of myself by asking!  

OK, so I have to admit that although I wanted to soak up every single morsel of culture and ambiance of my entire Israeli experience, I could never get myself to eat pickled fish for breakfast.

I never got used to eating dry bread in the evening, nor dry potatoes, nor dry rice....

I never embraced the whole no-cold-drinks thing (never even saw any ice the whole time I was there except at the McDonalds in Masada).  I certainly wasn't a fan of the room-temperature milk.

And my favorite meals were lunch!  

Thank You Lord for opening my eyes and my mind (and my palate) to another culture and people and way and laws and customs.  I hope that I can "catch on" to any new experiences you have for me, maybe a little faster than I "caught on" to the kosher way of eating.  Amen.

2012 Pilgrimage to Israel