A couple of months ago, I was in a New York diner with my husband and in-laws when I had a minor epiphany. We’d just placed our orders and the waiter had brought over our drinks, along with the requisite plate of pickles. My mother-in-law took one look at them and turned to my father-in-law. “Joe, are those goyishe pickles, or are they half-sours?” she asked. Acting as taste-tester, my father-in-law dutifully bit into a spear, and assured her it was kosher.
“Goyishe pickles,” I thought, and smiled. Instinctively, I understood what she’d meant. There are Jewish pickles, and there are most certainly non-Jewish pickles. I was raised in a Jewish home, one that took Jewish food quite seriously. But even as a sweet gherkin never entered our house, the concept of Jewish versus goyishe pickles had never been raised aloud.I assumed my mother-in-law’s term was her own invention. But that was before I heard about a class at Chabad of the Conejo called “The Art of Kosher Pickle Making,” and before I spoke to the Kosher Pickle Rabbi — Rabbi Shmuel Marcus, executive director of Chabad Lubavitch of Cypress/Los Alamitos.
It all started with Marcus’ visits to an elderly friend’s home. After many visits of laying tefillin together, Marcus learned his friend had once been in the pickle business. The man, who was retired, still made pickles at home, and offered one to Marcus.”I had a taste, and they were fantastic,” Marcus said. “I started coming back every Thursday. I’d put on tefillin, and I’d get a pickle.”
Last February, it occurred to the two that kosher pickle making would be one Jewish lesson Marcus’ Hebrew High students might appreciate, but “we didn’t expect it to blow up as it did,” Marcus said. Parents were as interested in the class as the kids were, and Marcus quickly followed up the Hebrew High class with a general class a month later. It included about 50 people, and about 15 percent of them were non-Jews, by Marcus’ estimation.
Since then, interest has only grown. They have created a booklet now used by some private schools to guide students through the experience. Marcus says he’s heard from curious parties as distant as Florida.
The workshop teaches people the history of the American kosher dill, how to make their own pickles, as well as what makes a “kosher” pickle (answer: kosher salt), and what makes a goyishe pickle (answer: vinegar).
So I guess my mother-in-law didn’t make up the term. But I told Rabbi Marcus about that day in the diner, and apparently I’m not the only one with a pickle story.
“As a Chabad rabbi, you do more than one program in your life,” Marcus said, “But with ‘Kosher Pickle Making,’ no one could just call and tell me ‘Put us down for two people.’ Everybody had a song and dance: ‘I’m coming because my grandmother’ … or ‘I’m coming because my daughter….’ A lot of people who come, there’s a pickle connection. Everybody’s got pickle baggage.”
Nov. 13, 8 p.m. $15. Conejo Jewish Academy, 30345 Canwood St., Agoura Hills. (818) 991-0991. chabadofconejo.com.
— Keren Engelberg, Contributing Writer
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