Mitzvah Challenge

One of many reasons I like, nay, love being Reform is my game I play called Mitzvah Challenge. In my head it's like Yugioh or Pokemon or Magic the Gathering but with Mitzvot. It goes like this: you have two conflicting Mitzvot and because you're Reform, you get to choose which one is more important or halakhlikly correct....to you.

For example it's Shabbat and after Torah Studies with the congregation, folks want to go out for lunch. Do you spend money on Shabbat? Make a transaction/contract and SIGN your name? Well if the prohibition against handling money means less to you than sharing a meal and spending time with other Jews, then go right on ahead and break that one to fulfill the other two (you're supposed to have three festive meals, yo.)

My latest Mitvah match-off was terrible. I'd been thinking in recent weeks how hard it is to be a nice person. No one will let you. I ask random people if they need help unloading things from their car and they think I'm a creep or a robber, or they're just too embarrassed or whatever to accept. I'm the same way, stubbornly independent. Then I read what I think was a 10 Minutes of Torah post about how it's harder and more important to accept, in this case hospitality.

Now Galicia, Spain has not been very hospitable to the lonely Lesbijew. The only real kindness I've experienced is from my landlady, Isabel who knows that I don't have money for food and keeps feeding me and has agreed to house me even if her stupid government never pays me (i.e. I can never pay her). So the other day, she more-or-less kidnaps me and makes me eat food. I accept, mostly because of the futility of not accepting, but also because sometimes accepting help is the menschlike thing to do. The plate [not bowl] of soup was based on chicken broth but chickens don't lactate as Carey Gottlieb likes to say and also as a vegetarian, I can still digest them (red meat makes drinking sulfuric acid sound like grape juice to my poor digestive system). Then she pulls out some fancy ham leg from Salamanca. Patas Negras, black footed pig is very popular and very expensive. It's also cured which is why people just have pig legs sitting out (“what do you mean you don't put it in the fridge?”). Now, I know I explained repeatedly, in different ways that I DON'T eat meat, not carne, not jamon, no cow, no pig, no pollo, nada. Soy vegetariana.

She knows that I don't eat ham. She knows I'm a Jewish vegetarian, why is she offering me ham? And logically, why offer me nice ham? I don't know the difference. Isabel is very insistent and I know it's nice of her to offer me her fancy ham. I'm not sure if she's trying to offend me or not. Sometimes....often Catholics are offended that I'm Jewish (one time I made the mistake of telling a nun that I technically converted, left, Catholicism to be a Jew—nuns are scary). Isabel either doesn't think Jewish law means anything to me, WAS trying to be offensive, or thinks she can convert me via good ham. I think it was the first and the last. She really is a nice lady.

So I tried a bite of the ham. I thanked her and explained that aside from my religion (Which she doesn't give a shit about) eating this could make me very sick. I don't eat meat and I CANNOT physically eat meat. I know that being a vegetarian here is strange but it's not unheard of: there are at least two vegetarian restaurants in Vigo.

So I ate ham. This is the second time I have consciously eaten ham since beginning my exploration of Judaism at 14 years of age. This is only the third time total and it's the first time since officially converting. Did it make me not a Jew? Did it make me less of a Jew? Nah. But this has been one of the hardest rounds of Mitvah Challenge I've ever played. Not because of the hospitality vs. ham issue as much as: should I have stood my religious ground? As a Jew in Spain, I really want to make a good impression as I am the only Jew for hundreds of miles. I will probably be the only Jew many of these people ever meet. That's some hefty responsibility.

Do I push my dietary restrictions and possibly offend someone...the one person who has demonstrated hospitality and kindness to me? Do I let it slide to be nice? Did I eat past the mark where my stomach is going to rip itself to pieces trying to rip the meat to pieces? I do not know.

What I do know is that it scares me a little to be a Jew here. Even more than being a Jew in Mayville. They do not hate Jews, this is not antisemitism. It's worse. It's complete, blissful ignorance that they do not wish to cure. Even my French/Spanish friend, pretentiously obsessed with “culture” does not really engage...vegetarian is fine because it's almost chic, but Jewish? That's just another archaic religion, not a vibrant thriving culture.

Basically, I ate ham because it helped her fulfill a mitvah even if she didn't know it, I let her be a mamash mensch. I also hope that she realizes on some level that I cut a corner, to try to repay her kindness. And I think that by the time I leave she'll understand that when I told her “soy judía” that my Spanish wasn't wrong...I'm really not catholic: I don't want to go see the Pope, I'm a Jew. Just because I talk to you about Santiago, and el Papa (la papa is a potato) means I'm not ignorant, but still a Jew.

End Round of Mitzvah Challenge. Mitzvot  1.