Never take No for an answer?
What if you could have everything you want?
New York in the 1970s was a kosher consumer’s paradise. Unlike many American Jewish communities, we had pizza places, delis, Chinese. Places you could buy a whole Shabbat without cooking a thing. Bakeries that sold bread, challah, cakes and cookies of all sorts, shops for cheeses and smoked fish. All kosher.
But kosher wasn’t just a technicality – a certification printed on the package. It was a state of mind. We wouldn’t go into a McDonald’s to use the pay phone, or the bathroom, or buy a kosher Coke. Because it’s not a proper place for a kosher-keeping person to be. Even if no one sees. It’s not “kosher behavior”.
We also wouldn’t put Bac-Os fake bacon bits in our salad or tuna casserole, even though it was certified kosher. Why would you want to eat fake food? When there’s so much good food your mother, or grandmother, slaved over a hot stove to prepare for you ...
But really because why pretend you’re eating something you shouldn’t eat?
Is the point only to keep the rules? Or to also let the rules teach you something while you keep them?
I’m not interested in the practical conclusions here – ask your Rabbi – but in the spiritual question: When the world gives us things quickly and easily, do we just take it? Without stopping to ask how it stunts our spiritual and moral development?
When modern life and technology reduce adversity, what other paths do we have for developing patience, discipline, modesty and humility?
Facon and non dairy cheese are just the tip of the iceberg, and this is about way more than food.
Benefits come with Costs
These days, Jews around the world are counting the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot (Pentecost or the Festival of Weeks). Used to was, counting every evening was a challenge. If you forget one, you don’t get to recite the blessing on the rest of the nights, so you put effort into remembering. You stick a reminder on your frig, bathroom mirror, or steering wheel, wherever you’d be most likely to see it every evening for 7 weeks.
Now there’s an app to remind you. Which greatly increases the chance you’ll count all 49 - technically you check the box - but it’s not the same experience. You’re getting the result but outsourcing the responsibility. My question isn’t – is this allowed – but – is this a good deal for us?
Let’s say you can eat whatever you want because so many things are kosher; you never need to deny yourself anything. And you can keep track of so many things without them taking up space in your mind because your phone keeps track for you. It doesn’t stop there.
Imagine you’re young and Jewish, we’ll call you “Orthodox” and you’re recently married. You think it would be nice to be married for a few years before you have kids. Modern contraception will allow you to do that while enjoying the benefits of married life. Is that OK? Your Rabbi, if you ask, may not approve. The married state, in a traditional Jewish view, is meant to come with perks and responsibilities, especially children. It’s a mitzva; it’s not optional. How many, how fast, these are things to consider, but the idea of taking the good parts only is inconsistent with Jewish ideals.
Another place this shows up in Jewish marriage is [the ritually prescribed] separation between husband and wife, during the woman’s monthly period until she immerses in the mikva (ritual bath). Many books have been written about the spiritual meaning of these practices and what husband and wife can learn from them about moderation, respect, self restraint. About sexuality as a gift to be expressed in a Godly way. Here, too, various methods of contraception enable a woman to engineer things so she won’t get her period every month. Hence no separation needed. Is that a good idea?
How can we keep ourselves honest and pay attention not just to the gain, but to what we’re giving up? Because if you think there are benefits with no cost, you’re definitely not being honest with yourself. The costs are sometimes harder to see or measure, but they’re there. We need to acknowledge them to better understand the deals we’re making.
“Slow food” as a a spiritual (not culinary) practice
I’m no Luddite. I’m super grateful for all the benefits of modernity - housing, plumbing, refrigeration, food distribution, transportation and medicine. I also don’t believe in gatekeeping. Trying to keep information about, or access to, birth control, fast food or anything else complicated isn’t the way I like to go about things.
But I believe it’s for our own good that we make thoughtful decisions for ourselves and our families.
One thing I’ve experimented with is finding things I can do “the slow way” and still enjoy it. Not surprisingly, they all have to do with food, which is a central aspect of our relationship with satisfaction, immediate and delayed.
We have no microwave; food needs to get warmed up in a toaster or on the stove.
I have no mixer; we knead dough and mix cake and cookie batters by hand.
We rarely buy prepared food and keep bought snacks to a minimum.
One of our kids famously opened the frig once and proclaimed “there’s no food here, just ingredients!”
My stance is not, to my mind, extreme. I don’t grow my own food. When the kids were little I paid for cleaning help. I don’t have any ideological objection to a floor robot or to the occasional use of disposables. I own and use a food processor and blender. There’s not any book that told me what to do the “easier” way and where to intentionally slow things down nor do I think this is a recipe I can share, or that the choices need to be completely consistent.
Character skills like patience, humility and gratitude aren’t things we can afford to give up; human society, and we as part of it, suffer greatly when we do. When modern life makes things too easy, we need to find areas of life where we willingly encounter some level of difficulty so we can grow.
The problem with trying to find the easy way out religiously, is that even if you can find a heter for almost everything, there will always be something that you can’t honestly get out of. And then what do you do? Who are you? What do you believe in? Because we will always be tested. The path of least resistance is never forever. It always ends at a crossroads. And then what?
I don’t like all the restrictions. It’s not my personality. Within my discretion, outside issues outside of religion, I like easy.
I sincerely do believe that life is inherently challenging and inherently makes you grow if you allow it to. Even if you take the “easy” way out. My honest opinion.
But I think that it is extremely clear that this is what G-d wants from us. To deny ourselves. To a reasonable and functional extent- not toward the point of mental illness.
Not to torture others ostensibly for religious reasons.
But to practice self-denial until we understand that we don’t need these things to be our core selves.
So I think that self-denial is extremely important in Judaism. G-d’s message is extremely clear.
Does it speak to me? No.
But that’s clearly what He is saying.