DADDY, WHY AREN’T FISH-EGGS KOSHER?

You cannot escape the reality that caviar is fish eggs. Why some people find that disgusting is beyond understanding. After all, we eat chicken eggs in a hundred different ways. Yet, a chicken looks far nastier and googlier than a sleek, shiny sturgeon, salmon, or whitefish any day.

If you find fish eggs disgusting, you are mistaken, my good friend. Caviar is a supreme delight – beadlike as freshwater pearls, yielding to the caress of tongue with a beckoning “pop,” melting into a briny essence, not unlike nibbling on your lover’s, uh, belly button.

The most sensual caviars derive from the Caspian, surrounded by our enemies, Russia, Iran, and the various “stan’s.” Besides, to strictest standards of Halacha, they come from treife fish. This raises ponderous questions of divine justice in which God must perforce assume the role of bad guy.

The gentiles have discovered the only way to savor caviar: a dab atop a lightly buttered, crust-less triangle of toasted bread, and perhaps a sprinkle of finely chopped egg yolk. Purists will not quaff vodka, as alcohol numbs the taste buds. It must be served from mother-of-pearl spoons, lest a metallic taste be transferred even from the finest sterling.

Yehudim are at a disadvantage with caviar. Beluga, as I say, is treife. We are thus relegated to ball-bearing sized salmon eggs, or gravelly whitefish or mullet roe. You may purchase them online for about $100 a kilo. Did anyone ever use a kilo of mullet eggs before it spoiled?

The only time I have seen Yehudim eat caviar is as a murky layer atop a bowl of egg salad. I have no idea from whence this ignoble recipe came, but I have been proudly served it at more than one Chanukah party. Invariably, only one spoonful has been removed, after which everyone discovers that the egg salad has turned yellow-grey and that mayonnaise and mullet do not go together.

The incompatibility of Yiddishkeit and caviar remains an enigma. Why? Why? Perhaps when we line up to ask Moshiach to resolve our vexations, one of us should ask that penetrating question . . . but only after someone else demands that he ask God about declaring lobster and shrimp kosher.