How Israel Lost by Richard Ben Cramer

Author:Richard Ben Cramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S and S
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

See, the way they did it was, you would answer the hostess at the door, and depending on your answer, she’d hand you a big empty plate from the set for meat—or a dairy plate, just as big and empty. And then, you’d be directed to one side of the hall, or the other, where you could load that plate with all kinds of legal delights—and at the tables on that side, you would find the legal (meat or dairy) silverware, and glass-ware, and such…it all worked like a charm. But then, one day—on one such profitable Sabbath—a customer protested, and crisis ensued.

As I was told the tale, it was actually a tourist, but a religious one. (To be precise, as I was told, it was “one ess-chole from Cleve-lond.”) And he protested to the management, because—as he claimed—the steam from the chafing dish of Swedish meatballs was drifting over the hall, all the way to the dairy tables…where it befouled—it made unkosher—his blintzes!… The hotel was in sin!

Oy!…Well, of course, the rabbi had to be consulted—that is, the rabbi whom the hotel was required to pay off—on staff, as it were—to make sure the milk plates didn’t get piled on the meat plates, and things like that. And this rabbi was, of course, torn by dual loyalties—grateful to his employer but faithful to the laws of Moses, and to the rabbi-mafia that caused his employment…and anyway, if he’d been much of a scholar, he wouldn’t have been a hotel rabbi—and the upshot was, he didn’t know what to do. By this time, it was also Sunday—you can’t phone up a rabbi on Saturday—and the buffet was long gone. How should he know if the steam was drifting?…So, he decided to call in the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv.

Now, that was a rabbi —municipally appointed precisely as a mark of his prestige, and great learning—and so he knew, the wisdom of great rabbis in the golden age of scholarship would narrow this question. After all, even if it were conceded—let us concede it— the steam was drifting… still, the prohibition against mixing milk with meat (“Thou shalt not boil the kid in its mother’s milk”) pertained to meat or dairy products that a Jew might eat. Therefore, this problem—this threatening protest from the “ess-chole from Cleve-lond”—was only concerned with food…and so this question must devolve to one further and crucial inquiry: Is the Steam Food?…The Chief Rabbi also was enough of a pol to know that he wasn’t going to shut down the Sabbath buffet at every big hotel in Tel Aviv with only his neck on the line—so he called in the Council of Torah Sages.

Now, these were the Rabbis of Rabbis—a dozen of them, as I recall, and nationally appointed—in recognition of their vastly formidable knowledge and unassailable reputations, and great flowing beards that bespoke decades of scholarship…and (as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv was doubtless glad to hear) they agreed that the question devolved to: Is

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