Shavuot is proof that G-d doesn’t really like Ashkenazi Jews. Either that or He has a great sense of humour. Because any festival that involves feeding dairy products to an interbred, largely lactose-intolerant group, who on a good day suffer from intermittent irritable bowel syndrome when bouts of any form of anxiety overwhelms them, can’t be for real.
And yet we take it on like our faith depends on it. Like unless we consume a half a dozen cheese blintzes by 22:00 on the first night of the festival, questions about our lineage will be asked and fingers will be pointed.
Tell me what you want about our Eastern European past, I still don’t believe anyone in Lithuania served quiche. Or that they simply had to follow a three-course cream-infested meal with Cookies & Cream Haagen Dazs ice cream and Bar One sauce. I don’t believe that there was a need to display, and then taste, three types of cheesecake each with different toppings, excluding the Peppermint Crisp pudding that isn’t a cheesecake but that couldn’t be left out.
And I’m reasonably certain that the Latvian Jews of Riga had hardly a spare moment between pogroms to debate where to best buy the choice mascarpone cheese for the ultimate tiramisu.
There are many ways that my childhood was a blessed one. But one of the unspoken reasons was that my mother was an appalling “milk” cook. She could destroy a non-meat meal like the best of her generation. So much so that if there was worldwide competition in the category of the worst “non-chicken or meat soup” she would win gold. Each time.
What that meant was that we were largely spared the horror of modern-day Shavuot cheese-and-cream festive meals. That was aside from one meal at my grandmother’s house, where on leaving everyone lied about the magnificence of a dairy meal. And proclaimed too often to be believed that it was wonderful to leave a meal without that “heavy” feeling of a meat meal. Even as a child I could hear the insincerity over the sound of my already grumbling and lactose-intolerant tummy.
As a young adult, I recall one Shavuot evening walking from Glenhazel to Observatory to see my parents. There were several of us who chose to make the trek, which we thought would be a blast. And a blast it was. For different reasons. Although the distance wouldn’t have been an issue under normal circumstances, it turned out that one of the walkers was even more “intolerant” than me. And had eaten way too much of something pasta. With cream.
Suffice to say that I will never be able to look at Sylvia Pass quite the same way again.
Each year, I make the same resolution. Come the days before Shavuot, I sit myself down, look myself in the eye, and assure myself that this year will be different. I won’t “have” to try all the cheesecakes, even if one has a caramel topping. I will find meaning in the festival even if I eat no tiramisu, and I will remind myself that quiches are very 1970s.
This year, I will be respectful to my Ashkenazi body. Unless there is some form of Belgian Chocolate cake with whipped cream. Then, all bets are off the table.
