A Hindu Beef-Eater

     Page One hundred Eighty-Six.
     My Indian roommate has changed his tune. I've mentioned before that he will eat beef. Well, it turns out that he's only eaten beef once before in his life. That was a hamburger in London's Heathrow airport on his way to America last December. While eating that burger, Raja couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. It was dry, dull and dead. He made up his mind right then and there that beef was a Western mystery which would confuse him for the rest of his life.
     When he told me this story, I said, "well, no wonder? It was an airport burger." I proceeded to explain airport food in general and specifically: quality (or lack of), freshness (or lack of) juiciness (or lack of) and flavor (or lack of). He sort of gave me the benefit of the doubt, but not entirely.
     Last weekend, for the Superbowl, I made boatloads of food, including BBQ Beef. I told him that BBQ Beef is a rather typical Superbowl food and great quantities of it would be consumed that evening. Raja admitted that it did look good in the pot; and after the first bite he was hooked. He enjoyed it very much. I think he's interested in trying a steak now.
     I hate to be someone who corrupts somebody away from their religious dietary restrictions, but he clearly wasn't very religious in the first place and he told me so. So it's not entirely my fault.
     Incidentally, one of the best burgers I've ever had in my life was at JFK in New York City. It was the summer of 1989 and I was returning home from summer school in Israel. I'd been there for 8 weeks and their beef sucked the big one. At least the beef that I had was gruesome. It was just awful. I don't know if things have changed, but at the time, Israel's beef had a justifiably terrible reputation. You want some wonderful fresh veggies? Israel's your place. Just don't order the beef. And on top of that, you simply cannot get a cheeseburger in Israel for religious dietary restrictions. (No dairy product may be consumed with any animal flesh according to the Torah.) So I was seriously craving a really greasy, gooey cheeseburger by the time I left that country which has other strengths, just not beef.
     During my lay-over in JFK I disembarked from the plane, walked over to the nearest burger stand and placed my order. I watched them make it. My mouth was moistening like a leaky Hoover Dam. I  sat down and inhaled that thing. It was glorious. It was much greater proof of God than any Torah study class I'd attended in my ancestor's homeland, of which there were many. (After arriving in Jerusalem, as an after thought, I enrolled in Torah study classes at Aish Ha'Torah, a very famous yeshivah or seminary with world-wide satellite campuses.) That burger was glorious.