I haven't intentionally been avoiding my blog but frankly, I have been so busy digesting the smorgasboard I ate during Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, that I just haven't had the energy for anything else.
There's an old Jewish joke that goes something like this: "All of Jewish holiday history can be summed up with the follow statement -- They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat."
If you are not Jewish and you are reading this, then you might not find that so funny. However, to any involved Jews, it is a really hilarious observation because it is so true. Even if we pray first, or fast first or participate in some other ceremonial activity first, in the end we always eat. And we don't just eat a ceremonial snack. WE EAT. We eat like we might never see food again.
It never ceases to amaze me how I can put another bite in my mouth when I have vague recollections of being super-satiated from at least an hour prior to the moment that I am eating yet again.
And to up the ante even further, every holiday has its special foods in addition to all the traditional fare. Shavuot means dairy everything. Chanuka means fried doughnuts and potato pancakes. Passover means no wheat products, but as many eggs as you can humanly consume in eight days.
If you think about it, we are a tribal cardiac arrest in the making. Chopped liver, fried onions, doughnuts. It's true that the Jews are a living miracle. Forget about our enemies spending the entirety of history trying to kill us. If they were smart, they would just leave us alone and let us eat ourselves into intensive care units worldwide.
But the piece du resistance of the Jewish food issue is that just prior to or after we eat to the point of internal combustion and we are on the brink of physical destruction, we collectively find our innate survival instincts and have a fast day. Most people think that Jews fast once a year on Yom Kippur -- wrong, wrong, wrong.
Most holiday feeding frenzies are accompanied by a fast day -- either immediately before or after the "pig" fest. (No, not a real pig. We don't do that.)
As my friend Ilan said last week on the fast day immediately following Rosh Hashana: "if this fast didn't exist then someone would have had to create it."
It's true.
If we didn't have an external force imposing fast days on us we, as a people, would have probably died out long ago. Or we would have been more like my possibly misconstrued view of Christians. No food in the house, but enough alcohol to fuel the entire American army. Scotch for breakfast. Gin for lunch and wine for dinner.
I guess that every culture picks its own poison. I'm just glad that mine includes kishka, chopped liver, roasted potatos with oil dripping off them, bagels with 30% cream cheese, ....
Okay, all this typing has burned off some calories. I think I am ready for the pre-Yom Kippur meal.
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