Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Pie Day

Photo Credit: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/voracious/applepie1.jpg
Seriously doesn't that pie look good!
Today is Pie day. The english date: 3/14 are the first 3 digits in pie, 3.14. Today is also Albert Einstein's birthday. Pie day is exactly what its name applys, an excuse to eat pie. My math teacher organized for our class to have 6 pies brought in to eat. I ate none of them.





I would like to clarify something, I love pie. Apple  and chocolate are my two favorite flavors. I also enjoy pecan pie.

My school has a lot of vacation. We have Winter Break, Midwinter, and Spring Break(there are a few more just these are big ones), before all of them Teachers celebrate the day before vacation with an extremely grilling test but usually at least one teacher decides to have a pot lock style party.  I prefer the second type of teacher.

Nonetheless as much as I like the party's its very rare that the food is kosher, (I got to public school) so how do I withstand the temptation of the food? The answer is simple, but to understand let me tell you a story.

In my Spanish class the teacher decided  it would be fun to make salsa. Split into groups we divided the ingredients that would we would need to make the salsa. All the ingredients were natural products, like tomatoes, etc. so I was planning on eating the salsa. When the time came to make the I realized both the bowl and the spoon were not plastic.

Photo Credit: http://sporeflections.files.wordpress.com



I quietly moaned. I was so upset. I was so bummed that I asked what the bowl and spoon were normally used for. The answer was plain noodles.

Oh my Yetzer Hara cried, " noodles are Parve just eat the salsa, the ingredients are kosher who cares about the dish." At the same time my Yetzer Tov cried, "You don't know if maybe the bowl is also used for pig soup, or if the spoon is used to mix meat and milk. Don't do it." My Yetzer Tov won and I decided I was going to eat the salsa.

As classmates passed out the chips I asked to see the bag. It was of course Trief. At that instance I overcame my Yetzer Hara and realized I could not eat the salsa.

If I ate the salsa (which I later found out was disgusting) I would be committing an Averia and not to mention seriously upsetting my stomach, all for a one minute pleasure. It wasn't worth breaking a connection I worked so hard to make fora small bite of homemade salsa.

I asked myself how would I be able to look my ancestors who fought to just be Jewish. How could I answer those who walked through the mud and dirt everyday to get to Yeshiva? How could I answer those who lived from week to week and quit there job to keep Shabbos?

The most important question I asked myself when nonkosher food is offered to me is what will I tell the Jews who were in the camps and still only ate kosher food?

So to answer how I resisted the pies I first of all tried to avoid looking at them, and and I thought of people who had real Mesira Nefesh.

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