In my last post, about omelettes, I ribbed on myself for cutting my teeth on easily kosher-ized recipes.

But something I’ve been percolating on lately is what kashrut is really all about, and I think that I obliquely touched on a piece of it in that last post.

To make a kosher meat omelette, one needs to sub out the butter for a vegetable fat or oil. This seems like a simple replacement, but what it really means is that you can’t start the butter heating and throw anything into the pan that strikes you. Because of this broad stroke of kashrut (milk and meat separation is certainly not a complicated issue as long as you’re starting with a kashered pan) even the simplest dish requires some forethought and mindfulness.

Mindfulness. Something built into Jewish law and Jewish life, and something that certainly has become another broad stroke in our “raising awareness” culture.  Mindfulness is something I’ve found to be central to my experience of Judaism from early in the period of study that led to my conversion.

I found that in my attempts to fulfill mitzvot (commandments), I couldn’t help but take a fresh look at the things that surround me.  If you flip through a siddur (prayerbook), you’ll find that there is a blessing for almost anything you can experience: the first fruit of a season, a beautiful sunset, any special occasion, etc.  Early on, before I knew any blessings at all, I found myself being more engaged in the things I did, saw, heard, tasted, smelled and touched.  “There must be a blessing for this,” I said to myself ALL THE TIME.

But the crux of the matter was not that I knew or didn’t know the words, but more that because oft he commandment to say these blessings, I felt more joy and wonderment at the things so integral to my daily life that I had otherwise stopped even noticing them at all.  And I started noticing far more details.

It’s been helpful for me, in the experience of trying to keep kosher, to try to see the “value added” in my life as a result of my efforts.  (Kashrut can be a little bit crazymaking; it’s a difficult thing to do correctly, especially when it was never part of one’s family background, and even moreso when one is attempting to do so in an environment with others who don’t wish to do so.)  My life is, despite the challenges, better for the experience of it.