I guess it's just their own personal secular interpretation of what the dietary laws are all about. But when they leave home -for righter reasons, they seem to eat shellfish, but very often will not eat the pork. And you'll find that quite a few Jews who aren't of, I guess you'd say the Orthodox group, the conservative reform, will often keep kosher at home. You know, she would go out, we would go out once a year or twice a year, usually once on Christmas, and then she eats shrimp and lobster sauce. But when she would go out for Chinese food on Christmas or other days, she would order shrimp and lobster sauce, which is about the least kosher thing you could think of. SHAPIRO: Well, you know, you write in your book about your mother who strictly followed the Jewish dietary laws when she was at home. And so I'm so I'm surrounded by about 30 people listening in to one-half of the conversation. SIEGEL: They're - in fact, this is one of the Chinese restaurants that's open on Christmas, and it's quite popular and it's quite authentic. SHAPIRO: You know, you - could you just describe the scene there for us, if you would? SIEGEL: Yeah, it's probably about half of my congregation at this… SHAPIRO: I hear some of your fellow diners laughing in the background there. The rabbis don't particularly agree with this interpretation. And then furthermore, there is this concept that if they couldn't identify the food as it's chopped up in an ingredient, as an ingredient in, say, eggrolls, that if you couldn't identify it, then it was considered safe treif. And the idea that Jews could go to Chinatown, wherever they might be in enclaves around the world, and they could eat vegetarian, they could select foods that didn't have pork and shrimp and other shellfish in it. Safe treif are things such as pork and shellfish and not mixing milk with meat. Treif, of course, is food that's not kosher, that observant Jews don't eat. And the last one is the one that I think is probably most likely, which is the concept of safe treif. The other idea was that perhaps the foods are fairly common - garlic and onions and cabbage and so forth. And so - plus the desire to immigrate with the great melting pot. The first being that Jews, when they immigrated to New York, were near the Chinatown, approximate to Chinatown. They're sociologists from New York, and they suggested three possible reasons. Back in 1990s, there were a couple of sociologists, Gaye Tuchman and Harry Levine, who published a paper on this. SIEGEL: It's a great question, and to be honest no one really knows the exact reasons. SHAPIRO: What's with this intense bond between Jews and Chinese food? Why not, you know, Thai or Japanese or Hungarian food? SIEGEL: I have no idea, except they may have substituted the matza for the moo shu as you indicated before. The question is how could the Jews survive for the first thousand years without Chinese food? It says: Chinese history dates back about 5,000 years and Jewish culture dates back about 6,000 years. Well, I want to start with the quip that you write on the first page of your book. Professor DON SIEGEL (Author, "From Lokshen to Lo Mein: The Jewish Love Affair with Chinese Food"): Hello. Our e-mail address is And you can also comment on our blog, that's npr.org/blogofthenation.Īnd Don Siegel is joining us from Bamboo Garden, a Hong Kong-style Chinese food restaurant in Cicero, New York. So, are you one of those people who will never touch pork unless it's in an eggroll? If you don't celebrate Christmas, how are you spending today? Our number is 1-80. He is the author of the book "From Lokshen to Lo Mein: The Jewish Love Affair with Chinese Food." I should mention that lokshen that are Jewish noodles lo mein, of course, Chinese noodles. Professor Don Siegel has spent years exploring this history. But this cross-culture culinary fusion has been around for centuries. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that they're some of the only restaurants open on Christmas. Go into any Chinese restaurant and you're likely to see it packed with Jewish families. And if there were 614th, it might be this: Eat Chinese food on Christmas. And now: The Jewish religion has 613 commandments.
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