Kashrut and Sanctifying The Everyday

Whether you keep kosher or not, you have developed traditions and customs for your household. What do they say about you?

An exercise: Visualize your kitchen. Think about distinctive ways that you and your family act in the kitchen. Do you and your children always sit in the same places, meal after meal? Is one person in your family a vegetarian, another struggling to be kosher, and yet another a gourmet of superior tastes and habits?

Think about how your kitchen is organized. For instance, do you have one set of dishes for everyday and another for celebrations and company? Do you always chop vegetables in the same spot? Do you keep cookies and sweets in a special place?

On a piece of paper, list your family’s personal rituals and customs as if they were a religious guide to living. Then interpret that guide. What rituals have you developed within the life of your family? What do these rituals and customs say about your family? About their relationship to food?

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Now that you have considered your own family’s ways of eating and relating to food, ask yourself the following: If you wanted to sanctify your family’s eating life, how would you do it? Would you use Judaism as a resource or not? What would you do? Why?

And if you already observe the laws of kashrut do you feel that they actually do sanctify your family’s eating life? How? Or do they sometimes feel like they really don’t do much for you? How might you reinvigorate your observance of kashrut? [an error occurred while processing this directive]