For my second fieldwork assignment, I interviewed both of my parents about their views on Kashrut, and the ways in which their views changed once they moved in with one another. The interviews gave me some insight into how my views on kashrut have been constructed, as their child. When I was younger, it felt as though I was expected to keep kosher. The other kids in elementary school ate ham and cheese sandwiches at lunch, but type of sandwich seemed off-limits to me, and it was an unspoken rule that I was not supposed to eat crab or lobster. I did not question those dietary restrictions much, because I accepted that they were a part of Judaism that my parents observed and therefore I was expected to observe them as well.

I remember one time in middle school when Lunchables meals were popular, and I asked my mother in private whether I could take a pepperoni pizza meal to school one day. She had no problem with this, but it turned into a clandestine operation; she called me over to the refrigerator and showed me the Lunchable container that she had put inside of a paper bag, so that my father would not find out about it. When he asked what we were talking about, and I had to admit to him about my treif meal, I felt embarrassed, and as though I had let him down in some way, even though he did not make a fuss about the pepperoni.

When I recently interviewed my father about his views on kashrut, he said that, although he is not entirely sure that he believes in a God, he feels a certain amount of guilt whenever he eats non-kosher foods and so therefore does not enjoy eating them. It is evident to me now that during the pepperoni Lunchables dilemma, I was witnessing, and to a point experiencing, that same type of guilt.

At this point in my life, I only keep kosher within my house and do not think about it much when I am away from home. Even so, I tend to eat less pork than other meats; I’m fairly certain that I just had my first ham and cheese sandwich last year, and although I did enjoy it, I do not seek out ham on a regular basis. It was also in the past five years that I began to eat shellfish regularly, and I think I can somewhat accredit this to the fact that I am no longer affected by the guilt that my father experiences when he eats treif foods.

I always knew that my mother was not as firm a follower of kashrut as my father, but it was not until the recent coursework assignment that I learned how her practices and my father’s practices were fused upon their marriage. Since my dad was more adamant about keeping kosher and my mom not as much, their compromise produced a house with two sets of dishes and silverware, one oven, stove, refrigerator, sink and dishwasher, and a constant supply of plastic silverware and paper plates to be used for treif items.

Since I have grown accustomed to this level of kashrut at home, I think that once I move out of my house and start my own family I will want to keep kosher in my own house.  I know that this practice will provide me with a comfort connected with my parents’ house and my childhood. I do not think I will ever feel a personal necessity to maintain a kosher lifestyle away from home, but the keeping of a kosher household will allow me to stay connected with the traditions of my family.

There was this one day in high school when I got into a conversation with an acquaintance on the swim team about my inability to eat the chocolate chip cookies that he offered me. I explained in an abbreviated fashion that it was Passover, and so I wasn’t allowed to eat bread products or anything else that rises. His response, something that I have never forgotten was, “well if you eat it are you going to get struck down by lightning or something?”

I think I countered it with, “No, it’s just a part of the Jewish religion,” and trailed off. The truth was that when he asked me that, I was a bit stumped. I never thought about it like that; not eating cookies on Passover was just a given, like brushing your teeth in the morning, or changing into pajamas before bed. There were a couple years when my parents and I did not observe the holiday because we were going on vacation and it seemed that in order to completely enjoy the trip, it was necessary to leave all dietary constraints behind. Those times, nothing much happened, apart from the tiny guilty feeling that came after the first bite of prohibited bread, but all the other times when we were home, it just seemed wrong to even touch a baked good.

The rest of the day after that conversation, I kept asking myself the same question. What would happen if I never observed Passover, or broke the Yom Kippur fast an hour early, or did not eat a new fruit on Rosh Hashanah? Certainly the sky would not open up in a Monty-Pythonesque manner. There would not be a visible punishment. Perplexed by the question, I put it on the backburner of my mind: a place where it has remained for a long time, and its consistency has changed over that period. Now it exists more as a question of “Are Jewish traditions meaningful to me, and if so, why?”

This is not to say that I dislike Jewish traditions, because I do not. There are just times when some things seem silly or pointless to me and our conversation about Kashrut the other day is an example of that. We as Jews are not supposed to eat animals that differ from the norm; that is, birds that do not fly, fish that do not swim. I understand the idea of killing humanely, and of refraining from cooking a kid in its mother’s milk (and the fence-around-the-torah ideas connected) but as to the former rule I am a bit torn. Questions like “Am I a bad Jew because I like pepperoni on my pizza sometimes?” come to mind.

Another class discussion that we had cleared a bit of this uncertainty for me: the one about how Jews follow the laws of Judaism in order to feel individually closer to God. I think I had heard that explanation before, but in a less concise way, and so when it was mentioned last week, my appreciation of Judaism was greatened. The ideas to better the world via Tikkun Olam and mitzvot, and purse greater spiritual contentment during one’s lifetime are nice ideas, and make better sense to me than the constant preparation for what comes next, on which some other religions focus.

These ideas, and primarily Judaism’s focus on the individual’s quest to feel closer to God, made me realize that I have been phrasing my questions wrong. It is not constructive to start phrases with “Am I a bad Jew because.” Rather, it is imperative to think about “How can I use Judaism to enrich my life?”

Generally when I think about Judaism I think about how much it emphasizes the importance and existence of community: as Lowenstein puts it, “ties to a common book, a common tradition and a common ancestry.” The interviews in the first fieldwork assignment demonstrated that I am not alone in this perspective, as most individuals who were interviewed commented on how the community aspect of Judaism is most important to their Jewish identity. However, the thought of the practice of Jewish laws bringing one closer to God reminded me that it is just as important to look at the aspects of Judaism that affect the individual. To quote one of the people interviewed in “A Jew is Not One Thing, Judaism is “a community made up of individuals and individuals in search of a community.” To be tied to the Jewish people is more than just the recitation of common memories and the practice of common rituals (both in the sense of little tradition and great tradition) but even more importantly, it is the individual choice to experience and appreciate these traditions.