Former Orthodox Jew Tries Bacon For The First Time

I'd seen this video before, but never gotten around to posting it. Thanks to an email correspondent known as Baruch Spinoza for bringing it back to my attention.



What a great story. And so typical of Jewish guilt that a grown man with a wife and family still feels compelled to ask Jilette not to use his name so as not to upset his parents. Orthodox parents are either the most fragile people in the world or they've evolved an incredibly manipulative defense mechanism against their kids' leaving Orthodoxy. My money's on the latter.

I wish I had a great story about my first time eating non-kosher. But this is how it was for me:

Sometime in high school, I started eating vegetarian food that wasn't made under the supervision of a rabbi (and was indeed likely "contaminated" by non-kosher utensils and the proximity to non-kosher food.)

I started with salads and graduated to french fries and desserts. Nothing too exciting except for some delicious ice cream brownie sundaes and the ability to frequent and eat at some cool places.

The first time I ever ate non-kosher cheese, I got sick. I was in college, and I went to the Hard Rock Cafe on a second or third date with a conservadox girl. We shared a white pizza, which was delicious. Later that evening, I threw up, a clear sign of either psychosomatic illness, coincidence, or divine retribution.

Either way, non-kosher cheese became a part of my diet with no further issues. Non-kosher pizza became my go-to food when kosher food wasn't convenient and I also was able to partake in a couple of those pretentious yet delicious wine-and-cheese parties.

To this point, I'd branched out mainly out of convenience and so that I could socialize more freely with the sorts of people the rabbis wouldn't have wanted me to socialize with. I'd become somewhat lax in my observance, obviously, but I hadn't yet made a real break with (de facto) Modern Orthodoxy.

It wasn't for a few years that I had my first non-kosher meat. By this point, I had stopped believing in Orthodox Judaism and it was just force of habit that was holding me back. I'd long since stopped keeping shabbos and Subway tuna sandwiches (with cheese) were a fixture in my life.

One Friday night when I had nothing to do (this was after I left the community in spirit but before I'd made many non-Orthodox friends) I went over to the mall to wander around and probably read Richard Dawkins books in the Barnes and Noble. When I got hungry, I went down to the food court and for some reason, I decided this was the night.

I did not believe in God anymore, but the thought of eating non-kosher meat just felt so strange and wrong. I did a complete circuit of the crappy restaurants in the food court trying to make up my mind and then I decided to just get it over with.

There was one of those Chinese places with the aggressive salespeople standing in front with tiny pieces of meat and chicken on toothpicks, trying to suck you in with a free sample. I went straight to the closest one, took what she was offering, verified with her that it was chicken, and took a bite. It tasted like chicken.

Then I was able to sit down to my first really non-kosher meal. Still no pork, no shellfish, and no mixing of milk and meat, but I polished off some General Tso's chicken and some beef with broccoli.

I don't think I've ever had another tuna sub from Subway.

It was probably a year or two after that before I tried shellfish. My non-Orthodox but Jewish girlfriend and I were at the beach and I decided it was time. She hadn never eaten shellfish either, having grown up somewhat traditional and in a land-locked state, so we had to ask the waitress for directions on peeling and eating the steamed shrimp we ordered. It was great, but peeling is a pain in the ass, so I tend to stick to pre-peeled shrimp these days.

Once that milestone was passed, I got to investigate the whole world of shellfish. I love sushi, so I quickly discovered octopus (meh), squid (ok), crab (turns out that's usually fake), and various forms of eggs which could actually be kosher for all I know (love 'em for their texture and saltiness.) I even discovered that eel (not a shellfish, but not kosher) is my favorite kind of sushi. Fried shrimp and calamari became standard appetizers.

Sadly, I can't remember the first time I ate bacon, perhaps the tastiest of non-kosher foods. I do remember sitting down to a big old ham steak (on, I believe, Christmas Eve at some resort) which was weird even after bacon and pork sausages had been added to my diet. To this day, I'm a little skeeved out by ham.

Anyway, that's my non-kosher food story. Not as cool as sitting down with Penn and Teller and having them feed me every non-kosher food at once, but I definitely enjoyed (most of) the process.

Previously: Jewish Atheist's Top Ten Non-Kosher Foods.