Video series: Bugs in Salad that we eat without Checking
Excerpted from “Me, the Office Rabbi:” https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Me-the-Office-Rabbi.html
The Non-Kosher Restaurant
My resolve to keep my religious beliefs private is tested one day when I’m invited out to lunch with our CEO, the head of my department, and a bigwig in the publishing industry. The lunch is in a non-kosher restaurant. “No problem,” a fellow religious co-worker explains to me. “What you do is order a salad and pretend to eat it while secretly slipping it into your napkin.”
What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? I call my Rabbi and he says that won’t work. It’s considered maris ayin—the appearance of wrong doing. If I order a salad other people will think it’s kosher and they might order it as well. “You can order a coke,” he says, “but that’s it.”
As the meeting draws near I’m not sure what to do. Everyone makes their order and then the waiter comes to me. “What would you like?” he asks.
“Just a coke,” I say.
“That’s it? Nothing to eat?”
“Yes, that will be all,” I reply. “Thank you.”
Everyone looks at me. “You can’t eat anything?” my department head asks me.
“I keep kosher,” I explain.
“Can’t you just have a salad?” the publishing bigwig asks.
The blood is rushing to my face. I’m embarrassed and uncomfortable, but I explain that the Talmud states that the vegetables in a salad could have been cut with a knife that cut non-kosher meat.
“Oh, the Talmud,” my department head says, nodding. The Talmud is a is a large, weighty collection of books and in the publishing industry if there’s one thing we respect it’s books. They start discussing the Talmud before drifting back to the purpose of our meeting.
It was terribly awkward, but once it was done it felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I’m a religious person and everyone knows it. I can’t hide it and you know what? I don’t want to.
Video: Bugs on Lettuce
Video: Bugs in Lettuce Co-Operative British Iceberg Lettuce Insects
Video: Worm in Salad at NYC Chop’t
Guess what! You can now get worms as a topping at @Chopt @BrookfieldPLNY @HealthNYGov #chopt 🐛🤢 pic.twitter.com/AU9iivr0oQ
— Laura Anne (@lsimola) January 19, 2018
@Chopt @Seamless THERE IS BUG IN MY SALAD FROM CHOPT ASTOR PLACE IM FREAKING OUT!! I want money back! I was almost done with my salad #NYC pic.twitter.com/3DlNysVArb
— Sky (@skyyylah) July 12, 2017
Oh noooooooooo there's a bug in my @Chopt like a big one like oh no what do I dooooooo 🙁 pic.twitter.com/4DVOQ0UQBm
— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) June 6, 2016