I have a couple of Judaic / linguistic issues stemming from last weekend's Bat
Mitzvah odyssey:
I'd ordered kosher meals on the plane not because I
ever have or ever expect to keep kosher or even because I believe in holy food for
special occasions (see next story) but because I hoped they might suck less than
regular airline food. They don't, in case you were wondering, but they were
interesting. On the way out, they served me a sandwich with the bread packaged
separately from the meat, which by the way was the most disgusting looking corned
beef I have ever seen, and I usually like corned beef. An enclosed note hinted
that "because it might not be convenient to wash your hands at this time, you
might want to save the bread for later". And what would you do then? Eat the
corned beef alone, and then gulp down dry bread in an airport lavatory? If there
is any gustatory appeal to this option, I fail to see it. Also, while handwashing
is indeed a part of the ha-motzi, or blessing over bread, it is generally symbolic
-- dipping your fingers in your water glass is sufficient, and glasses of water
are not usually hard to come by on airplanes. I also found it interesting that
the blessing on the back of the note (not the ha-motzi, which they must
presume anyone religious enough to request a kosher meal would know by heart, but
a blessing for travelers) was in the Ashkenashic Hebrew that would be used by,
among others, Chasidic Jews, rather than the Sephardic Hebrew used in Israel.
Interesting demographic commentary. It's even more interesting because the
difference is not in the written Hebrew itself but in the transliteration next to
it -- Ashkenazic Jews pronounce an undotted taf as 's', Sephardim as 't'. There
was no translation. I wonder, also, why a transliteration was included - how
likely would a traveler be to be religious enough to eat kosher and want to recite
a blessing, but not educated in Hebrew enough to read the original? I know
several people who meet two of those descriptions (first and second OR first and
third), but none who are all three. I also noticed (using the prayer to practice
my rusty Hebrew before the Saturday service) that the transliteration had a word
missing -- not one of the words, like a name of God, that would normally be
abbreviated or used in a cryptic form on a throw-away bit of paper. Even more
interesting, the flight home, bought from the same airline but run by a different
one, with kosher food provided by the same company, did not have the bread
packaged separately.
On Sunday, I had a slight debate with my mother
on a related topic. She was telling the story of someone who had served shrimp
(shellfish are not kosher) at a bar mitzvah: "I can see it at an anniversary party
or something, but not at a bar mitzvah!" I disagree, at least for some cases. Some
Jews don't keep kosher, not because they don't beleive they ought to but because
it is just too much trouble. My mother is one of these, hence her argument. She
has been vaguely tending toward kashrut lately, though -- now she doesn't eat pig
or shellfish, but doesn't salt her meat, avoid mixing milk and meat, or eat only
animals killed according to the proper ritual. Other Jews, on the the other hand,
don't keep kosher -- they don't believe in literally following the Bible and may
believe the laws of kashrut were originally health precautions for a primitive
peoepl in a hot desert, or for whatever other reasons. To my mind, if you don't
keep kosher because you don't believe you are required to do so, then it makes no
sense to keep kosher on special religious occasions. After all, who are you trying
to impress? God? Other people? Either way, it doesn't seem likely to
work.
A final linguistic note: "Bar Mitzvah" means "son of the
commandments", not in Hebrew but in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke, as the
rabbi oddly pointed out during the service). For women, the phrase is "Bat
Mitzvah", "daughter of the commandments". (Purists will point out that
"commandment" is not a complete translation for "mitzvah", but that's not the
issue here.) Oddly, the plural used if, for example twin boys were undergoing
their Bar Mitzvah ceremonies on the same day, is "B'nai Mitzvot", which (I think)
uses the Hebrew word "ben" instead of the Aramaic "bar". The word "mitzvah" is of
the feminine gender so takes the 'ot' feminine plural. For my mother and the other
four women standing up there, the service used the phrase "b'not mitzvot" which,
if I am remembering correctly (on which I might bet trivial sums but not large
ones) is a feminine Hebrew plural added to a masculine Hebrew word (yes, Hebrew
uses the grammatic rule that the male encompasses the female) in order to
pluralize a feminine Aramaic word. Wouldn't the gender of the plural depend on the
gender of the word instead of the sex of the person described? Or in other words,
huh?