It may seem more normal to me because anyone keeping really strict kosher couldn’t eat anything from my plates, pots, and utensils either; so I understand that sort of restriction. The idea is that the dishes etc. aren’t clean of the non-kosher things that have been in them unless they’ve been ceremonially cleaned.
They’re not saying the person is essentially contaminated in the ordinary sense. Ceremonially unclean is not the same thing. They themselves (at least in Judaism) are routinely made ceremonially unclean by various normal issuances of the body or sometimes by other things, which call for specific cleansing techniques.
Luckily none of my family are that strict about it; though some of them I’m careful not to serve pork, shellfish, or mixed meat and dairy.
I don’t know whether there’s a specific cleansing technique, in whatever religion, for discovering that one has accidentally eaten something forbidden. It seems to me that if there is, then the person should be told, so they can do the cleansing ceremony.
I tell him, unless I know him well enough to assume he/his parents prefer bliss over religious adherence. Not telling is tantamount to you not caring about his religion.
There are multiple reasons to take this approach. If nobody speaks up, nothing is stopping the scenario from repeating at someone else’s house. And it’s unlikely the kid makes the offhand “I didn’t think I’d fit in, having to eat halal food” comment again. It could blow up when kid’s parents first go to dinner at some other house and learn their kid has been breaking the rules for weeks, months, years, as opposed to just one meal.
I’d probably just keep my mouth shut. i.e. I don’t see any reason to tell my vegan friend the bread he ate at my house a week ago contained some animal products. Just to be clear, I would never deliberately feed someone something with ingredients they didn’t want. But unless they consume something that might harm them, why bring it up?
My Daddy put calfbrains in our scrambled eggs every Sunday morning.
We never knew til we were grown up.
It was his long con joke he pulled.
I still have my doubts.
I just can’t reproduce his scrambled eggs tho’. I’ve tried for years.
Also, my husband’s old Aunt was a strict Baptist. No alcohol ever passed her lips.
Til, we were at a wedding shower.
They had champagne punch. She had about 4 cups.
We poured her in the car and took her home. Next day her head hurt and she just couldn’t understand.
I said nothing. I don’t know if she ever knew.
Exactly, and there may be rituals the person is obligated to undertake to cleanse themselves of impurity which, if you do not tell them about the impurity, they won’t have the occasion to cleanse.
There are examples in the Bible where severe ritual impurity spreads by touch and can defile an entire sanctuary or assembly of worshipers (specifically, handling corpses, see Numbers 19).
Modern Judaism has no such cleansing ritual, so at least for us I see no reason to tell. The burden IMO is always on the guest to let their hosts know about any dietary restrictions, ideally as far in advance as possible.
The ritual was and is to have a priest sprinkle water treated with ashes of a sacrificed red cow, which is no longer possible due to the lack of red cows and a temple for sacrifice. One opinion I have heard is that, therefore, every Jew is ritually impure and cut off from God.
That kind of “impurity” has nothing to do with disobeying commandments. All Jews today are indeed impure in the red-cow sense, but happily the only thing that prevents us from doing is entering the Temple, which hasn’t existed for 1954 years anyway.
The mother is not responsible for what happens at someone else’s house. She prepared forbidden food for her son and his friend. Once. And it will never happen again, because she respects the friend. Her house is now a safe zone for the friend.
That is all that matters.
If the friend and his parents eat at other people’s homes, well, they should take responsibility and tell the other people about their diet restrictions.
And, after it has already happened, I would never tell someone I fed them forbidden food. What’s done is done. Just be more careful in the future.
(I have lots of experience with this…on both sides, as the guest, and the host…The rules for kosher food are vastly more complex than halal, and people observe many varying levels of strictness.
Moral of the story: Mistakes happen— and are best ignored.
(like answering the famous question: do these jeans make my butt look fat? …some things do not need to be said. Life is too short.)
To me that is a bit different, because there is no “feeder” involved who would be embarrassed. I would suggest that you tell the vegetarian, gently, that Caesar salad often involves anchovies, so she might want to be extra careful about making sure she only eats the vegetarian version. There ARE Caesar salads that are vegetarian - I know, because I’ve made them (they feature capers instead of anchovies).
No doubt she has virtually always eaten anchovies in her Caesar salads, but no need to rub it in.
I met a Rabbi once at a very non kosher BBQ. He told me that to not eat when you’re hungry is a form of self abuse, which is a bigger sin than eating non-kosher. And that rejecting a neighbours hospitality is also a sin. So just avoid the obvious pork products and don’t eat too much and g-d will be fine.
I also remember some film director (Alan Clarke?) wanting his young jewish actors to react to eating pork in a realistic way. So he told them that the beef sausages were in fact pork so they would cry and vomit. That’s the opposite of this thread and a real dick move.
That sounds tasty! I’ve had Caesar salads, including those made at fancy steakhouses where they’re prepared tableside, and I’ve seen the anchovies going in (not big fan of anchovies here), but they do add a bit. But capers would be really interesting to try in a Caesar salad instead of anchovies. Thanks for the tip!
I’ve had to warn relatives that Mennonite pie crusts are often made with lard. It doesn’t occur to everybody that there might be pork in a dessert!
And to point out to some bakers selling at market that “shortening” isn’t enough to put on an ingredient label – you have to specify what kind of shortening.
In the delightful documentary The Search for General Tso, a Jewish celebrity explains his kosher-keeping family’s approach to Chinese food in the 1950s: “If you can’t tell what it is, it’s probably fine.”
