levite

You know what? In my younger, wilder days, when I was going through my time of questioning, and for a brief time did not keep kosher, I ate bacon several times. And I have to say, honestly, it was good. But I never thought it was all that. I had heard non-Jews tell me my whole life of the glories of bacon, and don't get me wrong, it's quite tasty; but it was so not all it was cracked up to be. Maybe it just got spoiled by the hype, I don't know. But when I went back to keeping kosher, bacon was not in any way shape or form hard to give up-- and it was, by light-years, the best of the pork products. I tried ham, pork chops, etc., and thought they were revolting. Pork sausage: not bad, but in no way better or tastier than beef or chicken or turkey sausage. The whole pork/bacon thing was, IMO, mostly hot air.

On the other hand, I still sometimes dream of shrimp. God, I miss them. I remember the first time I ate one, and I was like, "Holy fuck, how did nobody ever tell me about this?!!" Shrimp, and to a lesser degree, lobster and scallops, were so very much harder to give up than bacon...!!! I still remember the meal at which I realized that, if I were going to be true to myself, and really live with my increasing reconnection to Jewish practice, this would be my last shrimp. It was at a Chinese place in Santa Cruz that I loved, that did this dish called "Three Flavor Shrimps," where you got a little helping of garlic shrimp, a little helping of kung pao shrimp, and a little helping of sweet and sour shrimp, served with shrimp fried rice (for some reason that didn't qualify as a flavor, I guess); and they used the freshest shrimp, daily caught just down the road in Monterey, and they cooked them so gorgeously: crispy and taut on the outside, firm and moist and buttery on the inside. I remember saying goodbye with each unbelievably succulent little morsel of briny goodness, and in my head, saying to God, "You just better have a good explanation for this one when I get to ask You face to face. Because I'm gonna be really pissed if it turns out that You say, 'Shrimp? I never said that! Why do you think I made them so delicious?! I said when you eat them, don't scrimp! As in, have lots of them. Me damn it! That Moses and his poor hearing!'"

Seriously though, don't worry about us Jews. We're okay. 'Cause let me tell you, pork shmork, my grandma (God rest her soul) made matzoh ball soup with kreplach (like won tons) that would have made you weep. We get by, my friend.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)