Food

5 Smart Answers to Stupid Kosher Questions

Image by Flickr

By Amy Atkins Sawyer January 22, 2017

If you keep kosher and have a diverse group of friends and dining partners, it seems inevitable that you will at some point have to explain yourself. Kosher can be complicated, and of course a 3,000-year-old practice will never be as fashionable as the diet du jour. Then again, Paleo came back from the Stone Age, but I digress.

Inequality being what it is, the lucky 1% either inherited or somehow acquired an aptitude for the clever comeback. That leaves the rest of us with the useless skill of ruminating over a missed comeback for days, only to come up with the perfect response just in time to beat ourselves up for the delay.

So we’ve consulted with Marty Nemko, award-winning career coach, radio personality and Psychology Today contributor, for bulletproof answers to common questions about keeping kosher.

1. What does it mean to keep kosher?

SHORT, SERIOUS ANSWER: It means following a set of dietary laws, he explains, including but not limited to the following: “We don’t eat meat with milk, and we avoid shellfish and pork. It’s a tradition with its roots in religion as well as rationality, because in ancient times, food preservation wasn’t what it is and shellfish kept poorly, for instance.”

MORE EFFECTIVE RETORT: “For the same reason Christians eat those fruit cakes with green things in them.” Nemko explains: “This answer is inclusive rather than defensive. It’s a way of saying I’m not weird, every religion has its own seemingly random or inexplicable traditions.”

CONCISE COMEBACK: “Like Hebrew National Hotdogs, we answer to a higher authority.”

2. Does this mean you’re, like totally Orthodox?

Click here for your answer options.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO