cellio | interviewed by celebrin

1. What has been the hardest adjustment from gentile to obeservant jew?

Probably my interactions with less- (or non-)observant Jews.

Take my husband's family, for instance. Back when I was a gentile, my presence (e.g. at Pesach) didn't challenge them in any way. I'd ask questions, they'd happily go into "teacher" mode, and all was well with the world. Now, though, I'm much more observant than they are and, in some areas at least, I'm more educated than they are, with the result that there's some amount of unstated unease during visits. They worry about whether I'll be able to eat the food (so do I, frankly, but I don't say it); I worry about how to balance my need to keep Shabbat/Yom Tov with their desire to go out to the theatre; etc. I end up making compromises I don't want to make (left to myself I just wouldn't eat in any restaurant during the week of Pesach, period); they are of course also making compromises. I'm not judging them at all, but I guess I worry that they'll see it that way when I'm really just trying to take care of my own needs without affecting them more than necessary. There is lots of good will -- I get along very well with almost all of them -- but things can still be awkward. People in general have trouble understanding the difference between "this is wrong for me" and "this is wrong"; they're the sort who take personal offense when I ask if there's butter in the cake.

2. My mouth waters when you post what you serve on Shabbat...until I get to read that there's stuff I'm allergic to. Do you have a recipe for a meal that contains no nuts, tomatoes or seafood of any kind? (by meal, I'd say fleshig, main course, two sides one dessert.)

Sure, I think we can work with that. (And thanks for the compliment!) I'm going to assume you mean a Shabbat meal, so prepared in advance and kept warm until after the start of Shabbat.

Roasted chicken: take olive oil and mix with crushed garlic, oregano (or other herbs of your choice), and black pepper. Rub this all over the chicken, seal in foil, cook at high temperature (say 425) until the juices just run clear (how long this is depends on how big the chunks of chicken are and whether there's bone). Remove the foil and cook for about 10 more minutes to brown a little. You can now seal this in foil and hold at a lower temperature. (Note: don't use a casserole with lid; that doesn't make a tight-enough seal and the chicken will dry out.) Aside: some of my readers know a lot more about roasting than I do (paging magid in particular), and I hope they'll speak up.

Roasted veggies: As long as you're roasting stuff anyway, carrots, parsnips, onions, and potatoes can also be rubbed with that oil and roasted alongside the chicken. Add some whole cloves of garlic for good measure. You don't need to cover them until it's time to hold them; there's no risk of carrots drying out. :-) Bell peppers also roast well. I have not had much luck with "soft" vegetables like broccoli; they disintegrate or turn brown.

Salad made with fresh spinach, red onion (sliced thin), radishes, broccoli, mandarin orange segments, sliced apples (dunk in lemon juice before adding), and dressed with vinegar and oil (or just lime juice works well too).

Optional: chicken soup with beef dumplings; I usually buy the soup from the kosher market, and the dumplings come from the frozen-food section. Optionally, you can add cooked rice or noodles to the soup, though I find that the dough around the dumplings provides starch enough.

Dessert: apple-spice cake (made with applesauce); if you need a recipe let me know. (I have a couple cookbooks with parve versions that I've used, though it seems to be a common-enough cake that anything you find via Google is probably fine too.) In season, fresh fruit also makes a tasty dessert.

How's that?

3. What are ten books that you have read that made an impact on you?

Hmm, let's see... I'm not claiming these are the top ten; that would be an impossible task. But here are ten:

The Little Prince. I was pretty young when I first read it (maybe second or third grade?), and it was utterly different from anything else I'd read. Both the prince and the pilot saw the world differently than I did at the time, so reading it was pretty neat.

Conversations with Rabbi Small. It's fiction, and so-so fiction at that. But it was my first informal condensed summary of some of the key ideas of Judaism, so it was formative.

Fish: The Basics. Really. I understand much more about cooking fish now, and I eat a lot of fish.

The Mythical Man-Month (first edition). This taught me a lot about software projects in the real world, where things are not neat and tidy and packaged in semester-long chunks ideally tuned for the number of people available.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. This is actually the only Heinlein novel I have read (well, finished). The political ideas really resonate, and I was in the midst of a small-scale rebellion in a club at the time.

The Phantom Tollbooth. I have nothing grand to say about it other than that it's a book I think everyone should read. Yes, everyone. (Well, everyone who speaks English, anyway.) Nominally a children's book, but not exclusively.

Lapsing into a Comma. A very well-written style guide for modern English. This speaks to my inner pedant.

Two Jews Can Still Be a Mixed Marriage. Coping strategies.

A Shabbat Reader (Elkins). A collection of essays from a variety of viewpoints, many of which really speak to me.

Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music. Ok, it's specialized, but it did provide the essential source material that enabled me and my co-author to write Joy and Jealousy.

4. What about 5 good movies?

This is both easier and harder. I don't watch a lot of movies, so the choices are more limited, but on the other hand, I know I've missed a lot of good stuff. So, five movies that really appealed to me for various reasons:

Prince of Egypt. They did a very good job with the exodus story (aside from some gratuitious midrashic fluff they added), and I also liked the music quite a bit.

The Right Stuff. I'm a sucker for space history to some extent, but this is really well-done.

Dances with Wolves. A lot of people have problems with Costner, and I'm not saying he's great, but this movie really touched me on several viewings.

The Hobbit. Yes yes, the recent LotR movies are stunning and beautiful, but the animated Hobbit was endearing. (It's been a long time since I've seen it, so I may revise that opinion later, but this is how I remember it.)

Jesus Christ Superstar. I saw the movie long before I saw a stage production; I like it in both forms. Upon watching the movie a few years ago I was struck by how much sense Judas was making, especially in the beginning -- didn't pick up on that when I was a kid!

5. As someone who isn't a parent, you get a special view at children. What do you wish parents could/would do better?

Accept responsibility.

If you are a parent, then your life must to a large extent revolve around your child for many years. This will affect how you live your life. It will affect your free time, your finances, your ability to go out spontaneously, perhaps your career, and perhaps your time with family and friends. If you aren't prepared for that, don't do it. Society doesn't owe you the ability to pursue this venture with no external impact.

Nothing irks me more than parents who decide that their children aren't going to stop them from having fun no matter what, so they (say) bring them to an SCA event and then just dump them while they go off to do stuff with adults, relying on the good will of the community. Some even cite this as an advantage, claiming that it takes a village to raise a child. That may be true, but you don't have the right to co-opt unwilling villagers. Along similar lines, there are the parents who think that their kids have some special privilege to be disruptive because "kids will be kids", but don't accept that there is a time and place for it. If your kid is carrying on during the show, leave, at least until you can calm him down. If your kid wants to run around as if at a playground, it's not the right time for a meal in a nice restaurant. If you can't get a babysitter, maybe you need to pass on the (adult) meeting you wanted to go to rather than inflicting a kid you know will be bored and disruptive on the rest of the attendees. And, if your kid damages something, accept responsibility immediately.

Part of taking responsibility is also recognizing that you aren't entitled to special treatment. I've seen parents whine about how "anti-child" a community is, but what that really means in a lot of cases is that the community hasn't bent over backwards to make children the most important thing. I see this a lot in the SCA, but I also see it elsewhere. I'll link rather than repeat a past rant on entitlements, and also one on the cult of the child.

Most parents aren't this bad, of course. But there are enough who are to pose a problem for those who've chosen not to have kids and for other parents, and that's just plain rude.

Monica

interviewed by celebrin

Re: Yes, You Do....

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