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The Friday 5: Top Trayf Cravings
By Leah Koenig / October 26, 2007
An observant friend of mine celebrates Purim every year with a ‘trayf night -” the one night a year he willingly – even actively – eats non-kosher food. Purim, he figures, is all about shaking things up and turning daily realities upside down (well, that and getting wasted). What better night to indulge in all the delicious trayf foods he abstains from the rest of the year? Whether you’re a total trayf abstainer, an occasional trayfer, or an everyday trayf eater – here is a list of the unkosher foods that Jews love to hate.
Shrimp Cocktail – Shrimp started the Reform movement – no really! According to Wikipedia, “On July 11, 1883, a dinner was held in Cincinnati celebrating the ordination of the Reform Jewish seminary's first class of rabbis. It was a sumptuous feast of Little Neck clams on the half shell, soft-shell crab and shrimp salad, along with beef fillet and ice cream. The meal quickly gained notoriety for abrogating every rule of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, except the prohibition against pork.” Judaism never tasted so good!
Bacon Cheeseburger – What other food offers not one, but three different opportunities (milk and meat, unkosher beef, and sweet, sweet bacon) to trayf it up in one, delicious bite? All the melty, porky goodness…the thought even makes this vegetarian a little weak in the knees.
Lobster – Remember that beautiful blond girl who sat in your English Lit class at Princeton? You know the one. She ate lobster – she ate it on beautiful china at the family country club, delicately cracking open the claws and dipping the meat in a rich buttery sauce? Keep dreaming yid kids – lobster may be fancy and sophisticated, but it’s trayfer than the day is long.
Clam Chowder – Whether you prefer the creamy white kind from New England, or the tomato-tinged version from Manhattan, there’s no denying that a bowl of warm clam chowder dotted with salty oyster crackers holds a special place on a cold, rainy day. Unless you don’t eat clam, in which case, pass the matzah balls!
Pepperoni Pizza – When Subway went kosher, the cheese got sacked – because if you have to pick between meat and cheese, the choice for most Jews is painfully clear. Not so with pizza. Since the dawn of the first pizza, Jews have had to suffer through milchig-only pies.
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It’s not too hard to get a good imitation (i.e. soy-based) ground beef, so lasagna isn’t really a tough challenge. In any case, I personally think vegetarian lasgana tastes better than meat lasagna. All those crunchy vegetables, especially the brocolli…yum! (No, I’m not joking.)
And personally, I think meat is just an excuse for lazy cooks (or unskilled ones, such as myself), or undiscerning palates. Sure, meat is easy; you just throw on some sauce or merinade and pop in the oven. And sure, it’s viscerally satisfying in the stomach. But you can do a lot more creative things with vegetables than with meat, and the resulting dish is far more varietous and flavorful, not to mention healthier! (Anyone here had a good spanokopita? I *love* spinach!)
But all this is assuming you have culinary skills, which, to be honest, I decidedly lack. On the other hand, my palate isn’t picky; give me a bowl of pure unadulterated lentils, and I’m happy. You can perhaps throw in some onions and greens (turnip, mustard, kale, collard, spinach, etc.).
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Anyway, the treif food I most miss is crabs. You get out the mallets and newspapers, put out some bottles of Old Bay, and ask Mommy again how to properly clean out the internals (there’s a veritable ritual of how to do it properly; and even if you know how already, ask Mommy anyway, for this is a great opportunity for mother-son bonding), and you’ve got yourself a family gathering worth cherishing! Crabs taste good, but it’s more the communal experience of eating them that I fondly remember.
After that, I’d say baby-back ribs. Beef ribs are good, but you just cannot compare them to tender baby-back ribs.
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But, I’m observant now, so what can you do? But even though I no longer eat treif, being a baal teshuva doesn’t mean you cannot fondly reminisce about what you once did.
As the Talmud says, a person should NOT say, "I hate pig", but rather, "I love it, but what can I do, for our Father in Heaven has forbidden it". (I wonder how any Talmudic rabbis knew what pig tasted like, to be able to say, "I love it", but so be it.)
As Rambam/Maimonides explains (in his essay "Shemonah Perakim", "Eight Chapters"), the "ritual" sins have no inherent moral value, but rather, they somehow serve to inculcate certain teachings or behaviors in man. (Perhaps they teach you self-control, or perhaps, like matzah and hametz, they symbolize something.) Therefore, says Rambam, there is no inherent intrinsic reason to avoid these sins. Rather, it is solely because G-d commanded them, and had He not, there’d be nothing wrong with them.
Similarly, the Talmudic sages (in a book called Sifra, or perhaps in another called Sifre; I forget which) say that the "social" commandments (lit. mishpatim) are ones that, "Were they not written, they’d still be fit to be written", while the "ritual" commandments (lit. hukim) are ones that "Were they not written, they would not be fit to be written". In other words, the Talmud recognizes some sort of inherent morality in the social sins, whereas the ritual sins are conventional, and are forbidden only because G-d says so.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the ritual sins have no reasons, and are just "busywork" from G-d. Rabbi Saadia Gaon (10th century Egypt and Iraq) explains that the ritual commandments do have reasons and rational purposes, but they are not ones that we’d have ever discerned ourselves, or seen fit to institute ourselves. For example, matzah may have an excellent and valuable symbolism, reminding us of the Exodus, but we’d ourselves probably never arrived at this commandment by dint of our own intellects, had not G-d commanded us. By contrast, the moral sins are obvious, and even without G-d, we’d have arrived at them.
However, Rabbi Saadia Gaon notes that even with the rationally-deducible moral commandments, only G-d can fully explicate them. For example, we all know murder is wrong, but what about the murder of invalids? What about assisted suicide? What about abortion? In all these things, it is dangerous to rely on our intellects alone.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th century Germany) notes further that oftentimes, man’s institutions of social and moral laws are purely utilitarian, and when utilitarianism and selfishness outweigh these laws, these laws are often rejected by man, perhaps with some ingenious yet self-serving rationalizations. Rabbi Dr. Leo Adler (of the Hirschian school) notes that according to the Torah, man’s intellect is enough to tell him what is good (Greek philosophy also said this), but (*unlike* Greek thought) his heart is strong enough to overpower his mind, and his mind will tend to justify whatever his heart has arrived at. Therefore, say Hirsch and Adler, the Torah had to fortify man with both heteronomous ideology (man is created in G-d’s image, G-d is watching you and ruling over you, G-d has commandments and expectations of man, man was created to obey G-d, etc. – as Hirsch and Adler both emphasize, the Torah is an *anthropology*, NOT a theology; it is NOT G-d in man’s eyes, but rather, the Torah teaches man in G-d’s eyes) and strict commandments (as Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, also of the Hirschian school, notes, Kant is correct that morality is logically necessary and fitting and proper, but, continues Berkovits, there is no commandment/obligation to be logical, and only the heteronomous command makes morality **obligatory**, as opposed to merely logical. There is no commandment to follow logical morality, unless G-d commands. Otherwise, man may choose to disobey logical morality in favor of his own heart.)
But back to our original topic: there is nothing inherently immoral about violating ritual sins, so even though I’d never willingly eat pork again, there is nothing wrong with my reminiscing about it. On the other hand, if I once stole or insulted or mistreated other humans, *this* would be something that I should regret and mourn, and not nostalgically reminisce about, because it is inherently immoral, with our without G-d’s command.
Lasagne.
Seriously. The thought of a future bereft of lasagne is pretty much what stands between me and conversion…
Holy Moses, you should start a vegan food blog!!
By the way, you're right. It can be a real bitch eating out. Luckily I'm a whiz in the kitchen. :-p
So what you're saying, Reuven, if I hear you correctly, is that bacon cheesburgers are only treyf in two ways instead of three…they're practically kosher! ;-)
The prohibition on mixing milk and meat applies only to kosher meat. Trayf meat, since it's already 'Trayf' doesnot have a prohibition of mixing with dairy products.
Don't forget the rice!
Cool recipe Ismail.
OK, Helen, here's what you do:
Tofu is a good substitute. Sounds like a dish!
It must be tough being a Vegan if you can't eat eggs. There are so many dishes which use them as 'stabilizers' so to speak. You must have a hard time eating out.
However, perhaps we could scramble some tofu in. This is getting interesting! :-p
Lobster sauce according to Ismail has no actual lobster so its ok to eat for a Vegan. And I've only occasionally seen pork in it, so no reason not to eat it there. I think it would go very well with steamed broccoli and rice. I've often seen scrambled egg in it, which makes it quite tasty. Can you eat eggs as Vegan?
…that it's pretty tasty. Sadly, I'll never know: I'm kosher by default. In other words: vegan. Maybe I can veganize it and post the recipe. Now That would be a challenge: Shrimp with Lobster sauce sans shrimp/lobster/pork… Steaming plate of air, anyone?
Very tasty slop. You should try it sometimes Helen. Its works very well with shrimp. I hate when they put too much garlic in it.
Thanks for sharing, Ismail. Personally, I've never tried it, but my mom has said it's mucus-like. Delish.
A culinary aside: despite the deceptive-to-Western-ears name, lobster sauce contains not a particle of lobster. It often includes ground pork, though, just so the shrimp will have company.
This appetizer is forbidden at my wedding!
I think this is a generational thing, or maybe it's a coastal thing, but my mom, who grew up in New Jersey, has described her family's weekly, Chinese dinners, at which they always ordered the legendarily gross sounding "Shrimp in Lobster Sauce." Talk about trayf.
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