Something Fishy

According to Chazal (Pesachim 66b), it is unhealthy to eat a mixture of fish and meat at the same time, because it can cause tza'raat. They attributed that specific skin disease (aften translated as "leprosy", but it is something else) to this practice, and therefore we accepted their ruling. Although it has shown that you really cannot get  tza'raat from eating fish and meat together, to honor the sages, we retain this custom, and Yoreh Deah 77 echoes this prohibition that we keep to this day.

For example, let's say that you are a typical Ashkenazi who will have some Gefilte Fish as an appetizer on Shabbat. Obviously, we won't have meat at the same time. Some people will rinse their mouths out afterwards, before eating meat, and still others will wash their hands between courses. And, of course, any silverware that even touched the fish will have to be removed, even if you cannot see any evidence of fish upon it.

In other words, we expanded the tradition tradition of not eating fish and meat together to be as though a single drop of fish essence upon the meat will cause your skin to flake and rot, even though the sages in Tractate Pesachim stated that if one cooked meat in a pot that already was used to cook fish, then that's fine. The problem they had was in cooking them together (because of that original health diagnosis). So the reality is not that we have to be neurotic about it, but that you don't eat fish and meat together as a mixture. And who knows, maybe the original statement in Psachim was metaphorical, since they also taught that tz'raat is a spiritual, rather than a physical affliction.

Given a chance to be neurotic, we leap at the opportunity!

As a final note, some people have added another custom to drink some liquor between the fish and the meat meal to "rinse out the palatte", as though anyone really needs a reason to do a L'chaim! And perhaps this was added because of the error in thinking that a fish and meat mixture caused tza'raat.

So, in reality, I do not eat meat and fish together, and I even support the tradition to take away the plate and fork that was used on the fish before bringing out the meat, but excuse me if I don't shriek out a warning if someone is using the same knife on a piece of turkey that was used on the fish.  It's just weird to treat it as if tz'raat will immediately spread if you don't act with zeal.

Chometz and Cows

Ok, I admit that right after the holiday of Purim, religious Jews (well at least those in charge of house cleaning) start to get a bit weird. Furniture might get covered, rooms are taped shut, children (and sometimes, the husbands) seem to have disappeared from the planet when help is needed, and the usually sane home will often take on a "tinge" of tension.

Different groups among Jews have different degrees of accepting what food one can and cannot eat. My wife once mentioned that is we accepted everyone's bit of weirdness concerning what one can and cannot eat on Pesach, the result would be a week-long fast!

If you look at the food products that are available, you will find indicators that a certain food is "Kosher for Pesach", some also include the information "with/out kitniyot" (which is another weird discussion on its own!). But these indicators also have various degrees of acceptance, and some of them, say an American-made chocolate bar, will have a very good indicator ("heksher") and be without kitniyot, and is considered by most (excluding the minority who refuse to consume milk that does not have a "cholav Yisroal" label) fine for eating.

One week before Pesach, and only in Israel, as far as I can tell, most of the cows are no longer fed their normal feed, which is "chometz", but is switched to a "kitniyot" feed. The major Israeli milk buyers, such as T'nuvah, require this, and if you want to sell your milk to them, you abide by their rules. As a joke, I mentioned to a woman that since she nurses her child, and since she only has one stomach while a cow has two, that a kal-v'komer should be that she stops eating chometz one week before Pesach as well.

Let's just say that this suggestion was met without any degree of acceptance, and I was rightfully ignored! Of course, she is not planning to sell it to an Israeli chocolate company, so my argument doesn't hold water.

So everywhere else in the world, the cows keep eating their oats (or whatever they feed them), except in Israel, and yet products from both will have a "Kosher for Pesach" label. Now it certainly cannot be that they consider that the milk produced from a cow, after it's multi-pass system, has the attributes of what it takes in, because, if that were so, then only those who can eat kitniyot would be able to use the milk that comes out during Pesach from Israel, and there is no such labeling on the Israel milk containers.

So why is it done? Certainly not because the output takes on the input attributes, or else the milk would be labeled as kitniyot. And not because the feed might fall into the milking pail (most milking doesn't have some lone person on a small stool squiting milk into a pail these days), because that would be a concern outside of Israel. Remember, I am talking about the period that is before Pesach, in which there is no dispute if one may benifit from chometz.

There is a good overview of this quandry at Yeshivah Har Beracha web site.

The fact is, it is just another one of those weird things that some people do, and we go along with it in our own brand of weirdness.

Delusions or deluding?

There is a particular Rav (I use the term rather than "Rabbi", since he never received smeicha) by the name of Nir ben Artzi. You can Google the name and find many of his predictions. Even more fascinating is the YouTube video of his supposed abduction for more than three years. He is gathering a lot of faithful followers, and he is coming to my town tonight, so I thought I'd post this.

In my early years, I became enamored by magic. So I went to study at a place where many mentalists hung out. There were stage entertainers who used "psychic" abilities to entertain. Of course, they were all tricks. I learned how to use tarot cards and even balloon animals to tell someone about their past, present and future. This style is known as "cold reading".

Before he would take me on as a student, a particular teacher of mine required that I read a classic fictional work "Nightmare Alley", about a circus performer who does cold reading and starts to believe his own press, gaining power and money, and eventually falling. Mentalism is for entertainment, and so long as you don't believe that it is anything else, then you will succeed. I never really had a good patter for it. And while my showmanship skills are a bit lacking, but I still was able to do it pretty well. I still have some of my old reference works - classics. But I never got as good as some of the people that I encountered who gained groupies, wanting private readings, which most of them declined.

While living in Chicago, I attended more than one tent revival meeting. These are people who are doing some good work; some of the money goes to charity. They speak of God and of our mission on this earth. They do a "miracle" or two, a cold reading, a supposed healing, a choir singing a song (one had an "Authentic American Indian performing a ritual healing dance"). It's pure entertainment, and as long as you go with that mindset, that's fine. It is when good people who want to do good get caught up in their own press, that things go sour.

The weirdness with Nir ben Artzi is taking on some very uncomfortable proportions, some of which are certainly near the line of "Judaism ends here". Claiming that he needed to Atone for "Adam's sin" smacks of Evangelistic statements. Another is that that he will cleanse the sins of the nation - people get carried away when they get caught up in some strange religious fervor and forget to think and listen.

Nir ben Artzi claims that he surrounded himself with unscrupulous men who kidnapped him for more than three years. When confronted with the question as to how can one, who claims that he can see a movie about anyone's past or present, could have missed this, people cry out "Everyone knows that a psychic cannot use powers to help himself!" Really? And where do we know that from? From those who need to provide an excuse. He cannot seem to predict who will be the big donors, so he needs to find them. He could not tell that his wife would try a failed suicide attempt by drinking ant poison (Really? There as so many better ways to accomplish this!). The thing about Mentalists, is that believers remember their "successes" and conveniently forget about their failures.

By the way, there is a documentary showing only his side of the story can be seen here on YouTube. Be prepared for a lot of weirdness coming from his mouth.

So I am going to end by paraphrasing and expanding up the words of the early Sages:

"No one is satisfied with a little bit of money, power, honor, fame, and other things that inflate one. And like a balloon, too much inflation results in what anyone can predict." - Eliyahu (not the Navi!)