Q&A: The Krembo Cookie
The Krembo Cookie
Question
Hello,
perhaps you’d be interested in responding to a post by Zohar Levkovitz, the famous high-tech entrepreneur from the program “Sharks”
Answer
What is there to say in response to this ridiculous demagoguery?
Go and see the profound discussions of the greatest art critics about the qualities found in some movie or some stupid anonymous painting. About sports commentators who deal with sophisticated football moves (whether that guy should have dribbled with his left foot or his right), about the question whether so-and-so condemned so-and-so or whether he just wants to inherit his position and his words were taken out of context, etc. That is what sustains most of today’s public and media discourse, and for consumers of that trash to look down on halakhic discussions about the blessing for a krembo really is the height of absurdity. Apparently these are qualities that only those who studied the core curriculum can understand.
Discussion on Answer
That has nothing to do with the question of whether he himself consumes that trash. When criticism comes from a secular direction toward a religious one, it assumes a comparison between the societies. When asking which society deals more with less important things, it seems to me that the main criticism should be directed at his friends, the consumers of “Big Brother,” “Survivor,” and “MasterChef.”
Hey, easy there with MasterChef. There’s a limit. 🙂
If you admit that Jewish law is entertainment on the level of Big Brother, then all is well. What’s the difference between Big Brother and other kinds of entertainment (food, sports, music)? Not everyone is occupied with theoretical science all the time. But engaging with deadly seriousness in halakhic nonsense like whether it is permitted or forbidden to do labor on the Sabbath, permitted or forbidden to eat on Yom Kippur—that is simply laughable. Lunatics! Nonsense is something people engage in lightly, for amusement.
There are practical differences regarding the blessing on a krembo among the different programs:
According to “Big Brother,” the main part of the krembo is the cream, since it is the larger part; in contrast, according to “Survivor,” the biscuit is the main part, because by means of it the cream can survive and stand securely. And according to “MasterChef”—one should ask the manufacturer what he considers primary, and it would seem that according to the manufacturer the cream is primary, since it is called “krembo.”
From The Blessing of Sweetening Judgments in the Laws of Sweets, Menashe Fish”l HaLevi Zukhmir
I don’t know whether he personally is a consumer of that trash. In any case, maybe it would be possible to respond to him substantively, especially since he’s considered a prominent figure in the world of investors and so on, and it could generate interest.