He forgot to put kosher kitchen on the wedding registry
We are cleaning up the kitchen on Easter night. David is behaving strangely, muttering under his breath and slamming pots and pans.
“Look at it,” says my husband. He shoves the roasting pan under my nose, disgusted. “Look at it! It’s pig jelly!”
“Yes, honey,” I say. “We had ham.”
“I know we had ham.” He gestures to the table, where there is a lot of leftover ham. “I mean, look at all that ham. What are we supposed to do with all that ham?”
“We didn’t know how many people were coming, so my mom bought extra. It’s fine.”
“I feel sorry for Ali and Blair,” he says. “I know they don’t eat much ham.”
“They knew we were having ham,” I say. “There was a little something for everybody. We had vegetables. And pierogies with cabbage. That’s a vegetable.”
“I mean, next time, we shouldn’t serve that much ham.”
“You’re very disturbed by all this ham,” I say. This is what a therapist who specializes in ham phobias and other pork-related phobias would say.
“Well, look at it! There’s enough ham to feed 20 people!” He is shaking his head and looking like he might cry.
“We could have had 20 people. Anyway, we had a lot of people, and a lot of them ate ham. You had the ham, I don’t know why you’re getting all worked up.”
“Uh, I didn’t eat the ham,” he whines.
“So you ate the kielbasa.”
“Yes. What’s in the kielbasa?”
“Ham.”
He is stricken. “Are you sure?”
Now I am laughing and he is not happy. He is even less happy than he was when we started this conversation.
“I just—” I throw up my hands. I cannot complete my sentence.
“No, no,” he says chivalrously, “you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“I really don’t,” I say, “because you didn’t tell me about your ham issues, so there was nothing I could have done about it. This is self-inflicted Jewish guilt.”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to have more of a connection to my grandparents?” he demands.
“It’s not my fault that you tried to make bitter herbs out of minestrone soup and pack Passover into the one night I was away. You are feeling understandably frustrated because your children are both under six years of age and it didn’t go so well.”
“I don’t know what else to do!” he yells. He is in despair, surrounded by Gentile pork products and a wife who does not understand his terrible remorse.
“Is this why you’ve been carbo-loading with matzoh crackers? I found a buttered matzoh cracker stuck to your wall behind your desk,” I say.
He stalks out of the kitchen.
When I enter the den that is not a den, he is sitting at his computer, intently studying a website with the header: HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP KOSHER?
“Whoa,” I say, breaking into a cold, hammy sweat. “Whoa there, Jew Boy.”
He swivels in his chair to face me. “The hardest part is to keep the dishes separate.”
“Is it? Is that the hardest part?” I say. “Because I can think of lots of hardest parts.”
David swivels back to Kosher.com.
He is rapt. This is the Hebrew version of the Rapture. Any moment now, there will be lightning and flashing Stars of David and my husband will be swept up and given the best table at the Kosher restaurant in the sky, leaving behind his clothes, and his sinful shiksa wife, who will have to scrape the pig jelly out of the bottom of the roasting pan all by her little doomed self.
I read over his shoulder. “It says rock badger is not kosher. If we can’t send the kids to school with rock badger sandwiches, then you tell me what we are going to do in the mornings.”
He ignores me. This is getting very unnerving.
I am whining now. “We CAN’T EVEN MAKE IT TO ONE HAND-IN-HAND AT THE SYNAGOGUE,” I say. Hand-in-Hand is the Jewish education program for kids.
“The Jewish faith starts in the home, honey,” he says.
“I just think you should talk to the rabbi, the one who never sees us at his nice interfaith synagogue because we can’t get to his nice interfaith synagogue on time, ever. I just think maybe, just maybe, YOU SHOULD GET BAR MITZVAHED BEFORE WE DISCUSS A KOSHER KITCHEN.”
“I guess actually finding kosher cheese is going to be hard, because of the rennet factor,” he says.
“The rennet factor, yes.” Surely he is pulling my Gentile leg.
“Because rennet is an enzyme used to harden cheese,” he says. “That’s all right, we’ll look into it.”
“What is that website?” I demand to know. If I am going to get a divorce over a kosher kitchen, I want to know who is to blame.
“JewFAQ.org. Definitely a good site,” says David, the suddenly-born-again Jew. “It just puts it in straightforward language.”
“Straightforward.”
“Kosher slaughtering is the most humane way to slaughter an animal.”
“See,” I plead, “I understand that. I buy kosher hot dogs when I can.”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “Make sure you put that in your blog.”
I am really having trouble managing my panic. My knees are weak so I sit down. I cannot swallow.
He is still reading. “We might need another dishwasher too, because we can’t wash the dairy and the nondairy dishes in the same dishwasher. But maybe we can get around that.”
“I feel like this would be a good time for me to stick my fingers in my ears and do that la la la thing. I can’t hear you I can’t hear you except I can and you are really freaking me out. Do you hear me? You are really. Freaking. Me. Out.”
“What’s wrong with trying to honor my grandparents? What exactly is wrong with that?”
“My grandparents were Catholic, and you don’t see me trying to hang a crucifix in every room of the house! You don’t see me stenciling Jesus fish on the cabinets! Who are you?”
He sighs. “There just a purity to a kosher kitchen. It’s very appealing to me. There’s a mindfulness.”
“I am mindful of the fact that you are not the man I married. The man I married did not say anything about wanting a kosher kitchen. This is as bad as suddenly wanting an open marriage.”
He points at the screen. “Okay, here’s the dishwasher.”
“There’s a kosher dishwasher? At Best Buy?
“It really wouldn’t be all that hard.”
“Yes. Yes, it would be that hard. If you ever want me to learn how to cook, having a kosher kitchen is not going to help that.”
He is very disappointed in his wife. “I just can’t believe how negative you’re being about this.”
I am apoplectic and my hands are all over the place, jabbing and twitching. I am having a Seizure of Resistance. “I love the idea of honoring your grandparents. Great! Terrific! Let’s hang mezuzzahs on the doorways. Let’s teach the kids the Hebrew alphabet! Let’s read right to left! We could host Shabbat dinners every week and talk about Jewishness and how great it is to be Jewish and get chocolate that looks like money. Shabbat! Every week! When is that? Fridays? Saturdays?”
He tries to look confident. “I think…Fridays.”
I look past him, at a new site he’s found. I read out loud: “WHO IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW IF YOUR FAVORITE TV STAR IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE A LIST OF FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE JEWISH? Oh my God, is that URL actually Jewhoo.com? Is that what I am seeing?”
“This isn’t a very helpful site,” he mutters.
“Would you like to know if your favorite TV star is a flaming Catholic? Would you like a list of FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS? You personally.”
I am cackling in nervous disbelief. I cannot stop.
“Shut up!” he says. He buries his head in his hands.
“I’m going to bed because this is just beyond me,” I say.
He returns to JewFAQ.org to find out more about recommended kosher dishwasher options.
The next morning, I awake to David leaning over me, gazing soulfully into my eyes.
“Don’t freak out or anything,” he whispers, “but I separated some cutlery.”
I stare in openmouthed horror at the stranger in my bed. He starts laughing.
I whack him. I whack him again.
He heads off to have a shower, with dreams of kosher frankfurters dancing in his head.
51 comments April 25th, 2006