CHOLOV STARBUCKS

I’ve gone to Starbucks from Montreal to Port au Prince, but I never drink coffee there. Coffee gives me a tummy ache. But they do have a wonderful lemonade slush in which I could bathe when it is -30º outside. Their apple fritter is also nonpareil. The only reason that astronomers are interested in life on other planets is to see if it’s feasible to set up a Starbucks there, one per block, one per supermarket, one within each Starbucks.

In all my years of being a Starbucks devotee, the only item they’ve lacked is one accommodation for the (very) religious Jew. By a treaty signed in Liadi, Lubavitchers will drink a cup of black coffee in a Starbucks. Black, because they will whiten their coffee exclusively with Cholov Yisroel, milk/cream prepared from exclusively Jewish sources, under rabbinical supervision.

This has not fazed Starbucks from having planted themselves in orthodox communities. Ben, my Lubavitcher son, lives right across from one. One recent Sunday morning we repaired to the Starbucks to avoid a crying baby and shrill mother-in-law as we worked on his resume. I ordered my customary lemonade slushy, and Ben a Venti black coffee.

“Ben drinks black coffee?” I contemplated. This is a guy who doesn’t drink Coke without two extra tablespoons of sugar. Meanwhile, we found a table. He opened his laptop. He reached into his backpack. He removed a Zip-Loc bag that contained a white liquid. He whitened his coffee with it.
“I guess that’s Cholov Yisroel that you brought from home,” I wondered aloud. “What a novel way to park your cow at Starbucks!”

For a moment I thought, “What a mishugas.” The next moment I thought, “Well, maybe this is a way to protect the integrity of Judaism.” Finally, I came to a compromise. Neither mishugas nor mitzvah, but a fascinating social commentary: a perfect, if slightly goofy, amalgam of the very symbol of the contemporary American lifestyle, Starbucks, with a custom so esoteric and medieval that 99 percent of American Jews have never heard of it.

Not too shabby. This is America, Columbus’s Medinah, the Land of Opportunity, yes, even the opportunity to have your milk and Starbucks, too.

Leiben zol Columbus!

KASHRUT IN THE GRASS

I’ve always assumed that Jewish people did not choose hunting as a sport. Inflicting pain for recreation is forbidden. And besides, when you punch a hole in an animal and it dies, no question that it’s treife.

All of my assumption went sour when I paid a visit to the Ginsburg’s. Racks upon racks of spiffy-polished shotguns on display in the den, set upon set of antlers tastefully mounted on the living-room walls, booty from family hunting expeditions.

“So, I guess you do a lot of hunting,” I observed like a dumbbell.

“We go out early Saturday mornings so I can teach the boy the finer points of dropping a deer, you know, setting up the platform, making the right kinds of calls, where to spray the urine to attract the young’uns.” No, I didn’t know. “Rabbi Schwartz (the local Lubavitcher) told us that it was OK to hunt on Shabbos so long as we ‘field-kashered’ whatever we shot.”

I admit that I had never, even in Yeshiva, heard the phrase “field-kashered.” “Tell me how you field-kasher a deer?” I didn’t have to feign ignorance.

“Rabbi Schwartz said that so long as we slit the deer with a specially sharpened knife to let the blood drain, it was kosher.”

“I don’t think so,” I mumbled. I didn’t take the issue any further, so as not to impugn the credibility of my Lubavitcher friend.

Naturally, I promptly called Rabbi Schwartz to inform him that he had been cited as the authority that permitted hunting on Shabbos, so long as the prey had been field-kashered. “You’re kidding,” he said. “He may be an incredible sportsman, but an even better pathological liar.”

“How could we take care of this?” we looked at each other. We agreed that first we had to get him back into schule. “Ah,” Schwartz had an epiphany. “Get a spray-bottle, fill it with you-know-what, and give a couple of schpritzes around the doorway; it’s irresistible.”

“But once he gets inside, what do we do to make an impression on him?”

“Don’t worry,” the Lubavitcher averred. “He won’t get too far. Once he gets inside, we’ll just have to field-kasher him. After all, it is Shabbos.”

A LITTLE COLOR ON THE PLATE
Once upon a time, my secretary and I would lunch at a mediocre Chinese buffet. When we’d come to the end of the line, she’d examine my plate and glower. This was my cue to return to the buffet and retrieve a spear of broccoli.

This was more a culinary issue than a health concern. You eat with your eyes before your palate. A plate has to have a little green on it. Rice, chicken, potato kugel, brisket, naked on a plate, bode of dreariness. A touch of color around the edge? Vivid. A hint of springtime. A stroll in the park. An intimation of youth. Just ask Dr. Phil or my secretary.

Even the best colorful intentions go awry when they turn obsessive. Example: At dinner on the weekend of an interview, I was presented a plate of the balaboste’s specialty, gefilte fish napped in aspic of raspberry Jell-O flecked with horseradish. “Doesn’t the color add a pretty touch?” she gloated.

Then there was my ditzy former sister-in-law. She thought that her chicken soup looked a little listless. So, she added in half a bottle of yellow food coloring. You’ve probably figured out that a perfectly tasty broth turned into a radiant pot of “pea” soup.

My winner of the color wars is not among Yehudim, but yokels. Traveling the rural South, I stopped at a country store for a Coke. If you’ve ever been in one, you’ll always see a five-gallon jar of pickles on the counter. Strange, I thought. I’ve never seen pickles that were dirty mauve.
“What kind of pickles are those?” I pointed.

“Why don’t you try one?” answered the balabos. “It’s on me.”

I reluctantly agreed to taste a nub.

I gagged. “Now will you tell me what they are?”

“Around here we eat our pickles purple,” he proudly announced. “After they’re just right, we soak ‘em in Kool-Aid for about two weeks.”

“They taste even better when you eat them with one of those pickled eggs,” pointing to the pink-stained ovals on the other counter.

I offered him a blessing and paid for my Twinkie, hopping into my Volvo, and praising God that the worst I’d had to eat until then was my Aunt Leah’s pitcha.