What it’s like to keep kosher when mom and dad don’t
The hardest thing for 17-year-old Jackie Farber was giving up shrimp, her favorite food. Once she did, she was able to move on to other levels of kosher observance, such as splitting up meat and dairy dishes. It was a while before she became completely kosher and stopped eating in non-kosher restaurants.
“There’s no kosher restaurants where I live,” she said.
Now she maintains her own kosher kitchen complete with separate meat and dairy sponges.
But for Farber, a native of Huntsville, Alabama, that was only part of the struggle of keeping kosher. At 17, she’s still in high school and lives with her parents, who, while supportive of her personal decision, do not keep kosher. In a way, she faces a predicament similar to many other NCSY teens: how to live a more observant life while living in their parents’ home. While many facets of religious life are personal commitments, keeping kosher typically requires the participation of the entire family in some way and can be a source of friction.
Farber spoke about her struggle of keeping kosher on Charlie Harary’s radio program, “The Book of Life,” on NachumSegal.net.
“I went on NCSY’s The Jerusalem Journey (TJJ) in 2011,” Farber told the audience. “Afterwards I started keeping kosher, little by little.”
“What do you eat?” Host Harary asked her in astonishment.
“You’d be surprised by how many packaged foods are kosher,” Farber answered.
To get fresh kosher meat, Farber travels two-and-a-half hours by car to Nashville, Tennessee. Religious Jews are not common in Huntsville and when Farber tried to pick up challah, the attendants didn’t know what she was talking about until she described it. “Jew Bread?” Farber recalled them asking.
Asked how she managed to maintain her commitment to keeping kosher, Farber was frank.
“I felt obligated as a Jew,” she said. “It gives me my Jewish identity and I believe there is a righteous and loving God and this is what He wants.”
For Farber’s parents, Alan and Marcia, the process has been a learning experience.
“We read a lot more labels,” Alan said with a laugh. “To find things around here is not the easiest thing. We support Jackie keeping kosher. It’s something I admire her for doing, especially in this environment where there aren’t so many Jewish people living here. It’s not something that I’ve ever done or thought I thought I could do.”
“We’re very proud of her,” Marcia added. “NCSY helped her do it.”
Sabrina Sandler, of Oyster Bay, New York, was so inspired by her journey on TJJ that she called her mother from Israel to ask to go kosher. Her advisors could hear her mother laughing through the phone.
“My parents respect me and help out a little but it’s kinda up to me,” Sandler said.
The end of the last school year was particularly difficult for her as her friends left to college.
“I had a few rough patches,” she said. Her commitment was reinforced during the next summer that she spent on NCSY’s TJJ Ambassadors. “It reminded me of why I keep kosher. I’m doing it for myself and this is a constant reminder of my Judaism that I find meaning in.”
One NCSYer who is in an engineering program in his high school blowtorched his parents’ kitchen to make it kosher. He re-cleans it every week to ensure that the kitchen stays kosher since his parents bring in outside food.
Rabbi Micah Greenland, interim international director of NCSY, advised that teens who want to keep kosher should be open with their parents about it.
“There is no hard and fast rule of what teens might expect to experience or what the challenges might be for teens,” Rabbi Greenland said. “The only common denominator is the primacy and importance of really good communication between teens and parents.”
He also added that keeping kosher can be a positive experience for both teens and their family members.
“I’ve seen so many examples where teens who communicate openly with their parents and vice versa can come to an understanding that the whole family can live with,” he said. “It strengthens the Jewish ideals in the home, not just for the teen, but for the entire family.”
For many teens, keeping kosher becomes an imperative along their religious journey. Toronto NCSY regional board member Yaakov Samuels decided to take on the commitment after reading an article from Rav Moshe Feinstein.
“One of the first things Rav Feinstein says for Ba’alei Teshuva, returnees to the faith, is to keep kosher,” Samuels said.
He also has difficulty keeping kosher in a house that isn’t kosher.
“I guess the biggest challenge is making sure I don’t offend my parents, which can happen and is something I avoid,” he said.
Rabbi Greenland said that typically teens make the choice to keep kosher based on two factors.
“It’s a desire to connect to their heritage in a way that they know their ancestors did,” he stated. “Kosher is something that can connect them to their roots. It’s also a way to recognize that to grow as a person, some measure of self-sacrifice is often required. Cutting out non-kosher food from their diet speaks to kids as a way to say that, ‘I want to be a growth-oriented person.’”
Some teens found that keeping kosher helped their relationship with their parents.
“Hashem has blessed me with amazing parents,” said Jacob Epstein, 18, from Boca Raton, Florida, whose parents don’t keep kosher but support him.
“We respect and admire Jacob’s dedication to Judaism,” his parents wrote.
Epstein also formed a connection with Rabbi Moshe Gordon, a rabbi he met on NCSY Kollel, who grew up in a similar situation. He was excited to find out that knives that have been used for both meat and milk do not automatically render a food traif if they touch.
“Before that I was worried about getting that answer,” Epstein said.
NCSY encourages teens to speak to their rabbis when they decide to start keeping kosher, according to Rabbi Yaakov Glasser, rabbi of the Young Israel of Clifton-Passaic and the director of education for NCSY.
“Very often, the aspects of keeping kosher that teens think are incompatible with their non-kosher environment can be resolved with halachic flexibility and expertise,” he said.
Rabbi Glasser’s favorite story is about a teen who was so inspired by her NCSY experience she decided to cook her family a kosher Thanksgiving dinner. However, she realized too late that the pots needed to be made kosher as well. Frantic, she called her NCSY advisor who redirected her to Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky, a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University and the NCSY posek. He discussed all the pots individually with her and found a leniency for each one and the family had their first kosher Thanksgiving dinner.
“Your parents are the source of your values and ideals — the decision to layer that with Torah observance is not in any way a rejection of the commitment you have to them,” Rabbi Glasser said.
At the tail-end of the radio program, Harary told Farber that she would be receiving a set of tapes about keeping kosher by the Orthodox Union as well as a shipment of kosher food.
Farber had her own surprise. Keeping kosher soon won’t be too difficult for her. She plans to spend next year in seminary in Israel.
