KOSHER

“Any questions?”, I posed.

“Yeah”, Binyamin responded, “Can we use the kitchen?”

“Unfortunately no”, I said, “We serve three meals a days so we don’t let the guests in the kitchen. Sorry. Why do you guys want to use the kitchen? Is it a budget thing or a religious thing?”

“Religious. We only eat kosher food. If we can’t get any kosher food then we must cook it ourselves.”

“Hmm, interesting”, I was curious now, “We just had some Israelis that ate everything on the menu, even the pork stew. They wanted some hashish as well. I’m confused? Are they allowed or?”

“You see Paulo, there are 3 groups of Israelis, the ones that don’t practice our faith at all, the ones that follow all customs like us and the Orthodox Jew, with black hats, black suits, long beards and long sidelocks.

The last group don’t do leisure travel. They follow the religious doctrines 100%. They don’t even join the army as they’re against violence. ‘Conscience objectors’

The ones that don’t practice, they eat pork and burgers, they do anything they want.

Finally the ones like us don’t use black hats or black clothes, but follow all religious laws, like kosher food.”

“Ok I get it now, but it must be very difficult to travel for you guys, right?”

“That’s true. Some of us are afraid or don’t even go abroad because there’s no many kosher restaurants around the world. We’ve only found 3 in the whole of Guatemala. So we just go around hostels that allow us to use kitchen facilities.”

“Wow. But tell me something”, I pried, “I couldn’t just go to Guatemala and take hundreds of photographs and talk to some people but never try the street vendors. I love food and trying different stuff is part of the fun of travelling. I fully respect what you guys believe in, but you guys aren’t even a bit curious about trying the local gastronomy?”

“Sometimes we do wonder what certain things taste like, Paulo, but we can’t. It would go against our religion. We know our limits and we live happily by our laws.”

“Cool to know. I really had no idea what was going on. Thanks for setting the record straight.”

...

Could I ever live in a society with so many rules? Don’t know really. If I was born and bred in such a society then I’d know no different and would have to embrace the culture blindly, I suppose.

The good thing about this trip and specially working in a Jungle Hotel is that I’m constantly meeting people from all different backgrounds. Every day, I’m learning valuable lessons about the people that inhabit this world, especially the Israelis. We’ve had lots of Israelis in the hotel lately. All of them have been cool people to hang out with, although some have been more liberal than others.

...

I didn’t tell them that last night I spent a few hours naked with other Israelis in a hot water spring. What would they think?

Ciao 4 now

~ Paulo ~