Ellen Uman­sky is the author of The For­tu­nate Ones, a nov­el released last week about the fate of a Chaim Sou­tine paint­ing left behind in Vien­na. Ellen will be guest blog­ging for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil all week as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe series here on The ProsenPeo­ple.


My moth­er pur­chased the dish­es to use pool­side. They were plas­tic and bright­ly col­ored, a rain­bow of plates that nest­ed into each oth­er. I remem­ber count­less sum­mers spent by our pool, pol­ish­ing off lit­tle Eng­lish muf­fin piz­zas my moth­er made and served on those plates, as I read my Trix­ie Belden mys­ter­ies, and books like When Hitler stole Pink Rab­bit and Sum­mer of My Ger­man Sol­dier.

We moved from New York to Los Ange­les when I was six years old, and lived two miles up a twist­ing road that snaked high in the hills. The pool was kid­ney-shaped (that was how my par­ents described it, and how I took to describ­ing it with great con­fi­dence, though I had no idea what a kid­ney looked like) and jut­ted over a sun-bleached canyon. We heard the cries of coy­otes at night. I can only imag­ine what that must have been like for my par­ents to have moved to this for­eign land­scape — for my moth­er espe­cial­ly, who grew up in a small town in North­ern Westch­ester, where her father helped estab­lish the local synagogue. 

We were Con­ser­v­a­tive Jews, raised in a fair­ly tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish house­hold. We kept kosher at home, with two sets of dish­es for milk and meat. Every year my moth­er turned over the kitchen for Passover, clear­ing out the chametz and tap­ing off cab­i­nets that we couldn’t use for eight days, and pulling out anoth­er set of dish­es. But our adher­ence to kashrut was by no means stead­fast. The meat we ate out­side the home didn’t have to be des­ig­nat­ed kosher. And while all swine and the mix­ing of milk and meat was ver­boten, seafood was some­how accept­able. One of my most vivid child­hood mem­o­ries is of going to a rau­cous seafood restau­rant called Gus’s in New York with my grand­par­ents where we all wore bibs as we cracked open lob­ster shells and sucked out the meat. 

At some point, our odd keep­ing of kashrut was cod­i­fied in the dish­es we used. We no longer had two sets of dai­ly dish­es, but three: one for milk, one for meat, and those col­ored plas­tic plates for treif.

My moth­er would pull out the plas­tic dish­es when we brought in Chi­nese food (what is that mys­te­ri­ous meat in hot and sour soup? Who real­ly knows!). They graced our table the time my old­er broth­er request­ed lob­ster for his birth­day din­ner and my moth­er pulled out the stops, buy­ing live lob­sters and set­ting them in our bath­tub for the after­noon before boil­ing them in a huge pot in the kitchen, Annie-Hall-style.

It made no sense. Why have a des­ig­nat­ed set of non-kosher dish­es? If that’s the case, why even keep kosher? I was a sen­si­tive child, attract­ed to rules. For a cou­ple of years, I stud­ied the ingre­di­ent lists on can­dy and gum wrap­pers, look­ing for the OU‑P sym­bol, elim­i­nat­ing any­thing from my diet that con­tained corn syrup. (My deci­sion, not my par­ents’.) Lat­er, I argued with my moth­er about the hypocrisy of claim­ing that we kept kashrut at all; we have a set of dish­es for food we’re not sup­posed to eat! Why do we do this? I remem­ber say­ing, stand­ing in the kitchen with her. 

It’s true,” she said, and she shrugged. She was not eas­i­ly riled up or dis­suad­ed. I’m sure she returned to what­ev­er cook­ing task was at hand, mak­ing sweet apri­cot chick­en for the dozen or so peo­ple who she’d reg­u­lar­ly have over for Fri­day night din­ner. But that’s the way we do it.” 

I’m mar­ried now, with two kids of my own. We don’t keep two sets of dish­es (or three), but in the tra­di­tion of my fam­i­ly, I too fol­low cer­tain dietary rules: no pork or mix­ing of milk and meat in the house, and, for me, not out­side either. The thought of a cheese­burg­er still makes me twinge. As I get old­er, the log­ic of the way we kept kosher makes sense to me. We might not have adhered to all the rules, but we were con­scious of them. Every time my moth­er reached for the non-kosher plates, she was mak­ing a deci­sion, think­ing about what we were eat­ing, how we were nour­ish­ing our­selves. And that aware­ness might not be every­thing, but it matters. 

Those plas­tic dish­es are long gone, I think. My moth­er passed away last year, and my step­fa­ther still lives in the house on the hill, filled with her things. My broth­ers and I haven’t had the heart to go through her belong­ings yet. But I am tempt­ed to look for those dish­es the next time I am in Los Ange­les, just as I want­ed to buy this famil­iar set I spot­ted on eBay. Here we are, col­or­ful in all our con­tra­dic­tions, the dish­es say to me. We are imper­fect, but we try. 

Ellen Uman­sky has pub­lished fic­tion and non­fic­tion in a vari­ety of venues, includ­ing The New York Times, Salon, Play­boy, and the short-sto­ry antholo­gies Lost Tribe: Jew­ish Fic­tion from the Edge and Sleep­away: Writ­ings on Sum­mer Camp. She has worked in the edi­to­r­i­al depart­ments of The For­ward, Tablet, and The New York­er.

Relat­ed Content:

Ellen Uman­sky has pub­lished fic­tion and non­fic­tion in a vari­ety of venues, includ­ing the New York Times, Salon, Play­boy, and the short-sto­ry antholo­gies Lost Tribe: Jew­ish Fic­tion from the Edge and Sleep­away: Writ­ings on Sum­mer Camp. She has worked in the edi­to­r­i­al depart­ments of sev­er­al pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing the For­ward, Tablet, and The New York­er. She grew up in Los Ange­les, and lives in Brook­lyn with her hus­band and two daughters.