A good friend phones to share a problem on the home front: a few weeks ago, she and her husband took in Ukrainian refugees who will be staying for a minimum of six months.
On the form my friends filled in when they first offered to share their home, there was a section on dietary restrictions.
Here, they explained that although not strictly kosher (they don’t separate milk and meat), they never eat treif and don’t allow it in the house, so no pork or shellfish etcetera. They knew that their guests were unlikely to be Jewish but felt that it was a request that shouldn’t be hard to adhere to.
When the refugees arrived — a middle-aged woman and her mother — the interpreter acting as liaison to settle them in reiterated the hosts’ restriction regarding food.
He didn’t go into the niceties of not cooking cartilaginous fish, such as skate, or avoiding rabbit stew or falcon fricassée, but my friends asked him to emphasise the no-pork, no-shellfish rule to make sure it was crystal clear.
Aside from keeping semi-kosher, my friends are relatively relaxed as far as I can see. Certainly compared with me.
Many years ago, I lived in a cute cottage in the country, and I lent it to a friend and his partner for a week when I planned to be away myself.
I gave them a page of hints and guidelines for their stay: “Please put bathplug back in after draining water — to stop spiders coming up plughole”, “Please don’t leave clothes-pegs out on line or springs go rusty”,
“Please close cupboard and wardrobe doors to keep out moths”. I thought my injunctions were normal and helpful: they found them hilarious and bossy.
Unfortunately, just before they were due to come, my own plans fell through. Not wanting to let down my friends, I vacated my cottage and stayed with another friend nearby for the week.
But as I was not far away, I decided to pop over and fetch my walking boots. When I arrived, my guests were out and the front door was shut but completely unlocked. As I was leaving, they returned from a bike ride.
When I explained that, as I’d said initially on my laughable list of instructions, they must lock the door if going out, they said, “But it’s the countryside” as if I lived in the middle of Dartmoor rather than in a populous Kentish village.
Back to the refugees…
Yesterday, when my friend opened her fridge (the guests mostly cook and eat separately; my friend says she has never seen so much borscht in her life), she came across a tub of pea and ham soup and a ham sandwich in a packet.
Horrified, she checked the freezer, too, and a huge pack of sausages had taken up residence uninvited. Her husband, who is stricter when it comes to food, said it felt “like a giant slap in the face — it was the one and only important rule we’d given them”.
What none of us can understand is that as this has only happened now, several weeks after the refugees first arrived, what does it mean?
Did they not understand the original restriction but happen not to have bought any pork products before this point (which seems unlikely)?
Maybe they don’t know that ham is also pork? It reminds me of that old tale about Lord Rothschild when a plate of roast pork was brought to him, saying: “I’m Lord Rothschild. I don’t eat pork. Bring me a ham sandwich!”
Or did they think maybe their hosts wouldn’t really mind? My friends are completely baffled and are now in the awkward situation of still trying to be friendly, welcoming, kind hosts while also feeling upset and resentful that their one rule has been flouted.
The question for all of us is — while we accept that we have serious obligations as hosts, where do we draw the line?
Even if some of my guidelines at my cottage were a bit silly or petty (I understand that, even if I believe that the spiders might want to come and get me, other people might regard this assumption as lacking in evidence), it wasn’t unreasonable for me to insist that my guests locked the door when they went out.
For my friend and her husband, even though I will eat anything that stands still long enough for me to stab it with my fork, I think their restriction was reasonable. My husband says he would feel exactly the same way if someone brought treif across the threshold.
Most of us pride ourselves on being good hosts, but we also need to be good guests — to remove our shoes if it is our hosts’ custom to do so, to bring flowers or wine to say thank you for having us, and to dress appropriately if attending a shul with different rules from those we are used to — though I do look absolutely awful in any kind of hat, so you have been warned…
