Diversity Is Yummy

I'm not Jewish. In fact, I live in such a pathetically homogeneous little town that practically no one here is Jewish. There is one old lawyer, and a factory owner who wears a fedora and topcoat and underpays his workers, so basically all the old Jewish stereotypes are alive and well here. I remember the year I was put into AP Reading (in 8th grade) with a girl who was half Jewish. Poor kid had to bring a Menorah in and talk about the magic oil. You could tell it was a memorized speech that her mother and the school set up every year to encourage tolerance.

I am not Christian. I wasn't raised very religious but I always knew that God knocked up Mary and they had Jesus in a barn. Other than that, I knew nothing about Christianity. In fact, I thought the manger was the barn. The manger scene was in a barn so it made sense. Since I didn't know that a manger was a trough thing for feeding animals, and since the baby was always laid down in a little wooden hay-lined basket thing, I grew up under the misguided impression that ancient Jews kept bassinets in their barns. I was angry to learn that baby animals are expected to sleep on the ground in modern times. But I digress. My point was that I am not Christian, although I grew up with Christmas. And of course, once you grow up with Christmas, you can't give it up.

We have Christmas in my house. It is an almost entirely secular celebration full of Santas and trees and piles of presents. Aside from one heirloom nativity, which Ryan has added two Santas and a Grinch to, there is no Jesus to be seen. But recently I have wondered, if I am going to perform Christian traditions for no spiritual reason, why am I not embracing other religions' traditions as well? If I'm not Christian and I do Christmas, then not being Jewish shouldn't keep me from doing Hanukkah as well. So I have added a menorah to my amazon wish list and I have decided to merge my love of carbohydrates and fat with my love of exotic religions. Tonight for supper, we will have latkes!

I really wish I could get my hands on a menorah by tonight. But in this town? There are actually people here who confuse the Star of David with the pentacle.

So I am going to make latkes tonight, which actually sound quite delicious despite the fact that they seem to be nothing more than deep fried hashbrowns. But they are the deep fried hashbrowns of God's Chosen People, so I'm sure they taste much better. And they have onion too, although I'm not sure I have an onion, or money to go to the store. This would probably disturb me if I were Jewish and working with some traditional family recipe, but I'm using a recipe off the net and I'm rationalizing my lack of onion by pondering the availability of onions during a forty year trek through the desert. Or potatoes, for that matter. You'd think oil wouldn't have been all they'd be running short of. I think I might need to study the story better. I probably shouldn't be getting the entirety of my Jewish education from Christopher Moore books and reruns of Seinfeld. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look up Rosh Hashanah on wikipedia.



*omg, the spellchecker is trying to turn "latke" to "latex", and "Rosh Hashanah" to "rash hashish". Yes, Judaism, the religion which celebrates itchy dope and eats rubber. Even my software is WASPish.