Going Cold Turkey (Glatt, of Course)

Mmm... milkshakes, cheeseburgers... ham sandwiches... BLTs...

Cigarettes. Remember those days? Remember when smoking was cool and everybody, I mean everybody, did it? Then suddenly the news broke that it caused cancer and lung disease, and you tried to stop but just couldn't? Doctors told you that you would die if you didn't stop smoking, but in the back of your mind all you could think was that George Burns was still alive. Remember the cold sweats, the weight gain and the frayed nerves of that month last year when you tried to quit? Remember that silly patch you put on your arm? Nothing worked. Finally, one day, you snapped. Another close friend or relative died. Finally, you quit. Now you can run that extra mile, colds come less often, and you did not get fat. You were still cool. Best of all, the whole country supports your quitting.

Imagine if the entire country supported eating kosher. What if every two and a half miles there were a kosher place to eat? What if every time you turned on your television there were commercials for kosher fast food instead of McDonald's? Man, you'd really want to eat it then, wouldn't you? It would be so easy.

My bet is that it would still be very tempting to eat at McDonald's instead of my fictional kosher fast-food place. Why? Because eating kosher isn't about your physical health. It's about your soul, man. The soul is this wonderfully unscientific phenomenon that is popular to talk about these days. The New Age movement has made religion okay to talk about, not the conversation killer it used to be. Face it: it's hip to be spiritual. But it is never hip to believe that one food over another helps one be spiritual. That is plainly, well, not provable, to put it nicely, and fanatical, to put it rudely. Only a fanatical believer would go out of their way to believe that what they eat brings them closer to their god.

But that is the only reason to keep kosher. It is not healthier, it is not easier, and it is definitely not convenient outside of Israel and certain areas of the Northeast. To make matters worse, my fictional kosher fast-food restaurant does not exist. There are no kosher fast-food restaurants every two and a half miles. There are never any commercials selling kosher food. It is not hip to tell your friends that you can't eat in their homes. As a matter of fact, it can downright ruin your life. Okay, it can't really ruin your life. It just seems as if it should. I mean, that cheeseburger with a strawberry shake and large fries... mmm, lobster...

Cigarettes? What is the connection to cigarettes? To me it's obvious. The evidence clearly weighs in favor of giving up smoking, but it is so darn difficult! Life, you know but can't explain, is so much better without them, but one puff can't hurt?

I think giving up non-kosher food is like giving up cigarettes. Some people will never be convinced that they should even think about it. Others will struggle their entire lives with it. Still others will give it up cold turkey and stick with it. Me? I prefer to go in tiny steps. Day by day, I gradually give up non-kosher foods. As for cigarettes, I really count my blessings that I never started the habit.

In the end, nobody will ever prove that kosher food brings one closer to G-d. But for those out there, including myself, it is nice to know that one can take it as slow or as fast as one wants. Sometimes I just like to think that G-d likes the struggle more than the final results.