Tag #129212 - Interview #78031 (Arnold Leinweber)

The Judaic religion so many rules concerning human relations and hygiene, and the kashrut leads straight to absurdity. There is a difference between cooking in a vessel that had milk in it and cooking in the milk vessel or the meat vessel; then you must have a whole different set of vessels for Passover. If you don’t, you must boil them with sodium carbonate to make them clean. You mustn’t eat bread, but only matzah – I mean all this seems a little extreme to me. I had an argument with one of my father’s cousins in Israel. I called him without realizing it was Friday night, and his wife picked up and told me he was at the synagogue. The following day, he told me: ‘Well, Nicu, you committed a great sin. You called me and my wife had to answer the phone!’ - ‘Yes, I did that. And you are so right’, I said ironically, ‘I committed a huge sin, I used the phone and you didn’t answer!’ And I asked him: ‘Do you take your wife out for a walk on Saturday?’ - ‘Sure I do.’ - ‘So this means you should leave your door unlocked; and if you feel the need to go to the toilet, you should refrain yourself. If your wife’s answering the phone was a sin, so is locking the door on Saturday, flushing the toilet, eating, doing anything, right?’ This is all absurd in the year 2000.