In much the same way that we refer to our secular brothers and sisters as “not-yet frum,” I look at my new 8-quart Farberware (and I have had many over the years) as “not-yet fleishig.”

Soon Chanukah will come upon us in all its milchig glory. While it rarely gets front-cover, glossy, cheesecake coverage like its cousin Shavuos, Chanukah, nevertheless, counts among its many beloved traditions the minhag of eating milchig. In their own acts of self-sacrifice, women all over the world will abandon their diets to uphold the milchig minhag that commemorates the heroic story of Yehudis.

Yehudis fed Holofernes cheese and then gave him wine to quench his subsequent thirst. (Personally, I usually have seltzer — it has never caused me the kind of trouble he had.). When the good general fell into a deep and drunken sleep, Yehudis took his sword and decapitated him. She came into the town square brandishing the head-bearing spear and placed the head on the wall. The Yidden rejoiced in this sign of victory from Hashem, while the Greeks fled in panic, vowing to abstain from feta cheese, at least for the duration of the war. 

But all that comes by way of tangential introduction. The point is that we commemorate this great miracle and Yehudis’s heroism by eating milchig. Both grateful and glad are we that we can celebrate Hashem’s kindness with a cappuccino and not with the roast left over from Succos. But roast or roast coffee, what we’re really grateful for is that we don’t have to celebrate by eating an entire pareve meal. 

For really, friends, what is pareve if not a euphemism for “almost milchig” or “soon-to-be fleishig”? In much the same way that we refer to our secular brothers and sisters as “not-yet frum,” I look at my new 8-quart Farberware (and I have had many over the years) as “not-yet fleishig.” How long will it take this time? One night? Six months? Each new pot is a tabula rasa — a clean slate. But soon life in the kitchen will make its claim on your pareve innocence. What culinary mishaps will deem the right or left side of my kitchen as your ultimate resting place? Human error? Effervescent schnitzel oil?

Of the hows and the whys I cannot be sure. But of the inevitability, I am almost certain. For yours is a transient state. 

Nothing pareve can stay.

My favorite Robert Frost poem is “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief.

So dawn turns into day

Nothing gold can stay.

Now, I’m no Robert Frost or anything … but as people have been bemoaning the shortage of quality frum poetry I felt moved to write my own rendition. It’s not as stirring, but for those who share the dilemma, I hope you find it meaningful as well. I present …

“Nothing Pareve Can Stay”

A pareve Knife first is cold

Her hardest state to hold

She cuts through sharp and sour

But only so an hour

Then Fate leads her to beef

The balabusta sinks to grief

Another gone the fleishig way

Nothing pareve can stay.

(I hope you reread the original several times so you can appreciate the parallels in the rhythm and in the literary structure.) 

And it’s not just the pots whose state quickly changes. Don’t forget about the knives. Oh, the knives. People ask friends who are coming back from Eretz Yisrael to bring them back brachos from gedolim, gold-emblazoned siddurim, Michal Negrin jewelry. Me, I ask for serrated knives. Baruch Hashem for Nechama who started selling the Israeli knives in Detroit, or we’d have nothing to eat around here (at least nothing pareve; fleishig we’re good for).

I know there is a metaphor hidden here about Chanukah. Something about the Greeks trying to make everything seem pareve and okay (What’s wrong with the gymnasium?). And where are they now, those mighty Greeks? (Gone the way of the pareve knife, I guess.) Had they asked me, I could have spared them a whole lot of trouble and told them that their philosophy could never work, because as any balabusta can tell you — nothing pareve can stay. 

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 269)