Kiddush can be a rough place, if your not a seasoned pro, you may wind up with the pieces of kugel that could not be removed from the pan with the serving spoon and the scraps of cholent that are made up of burnt beans and the bones with nothing on them. If you lack the confidence to budge through the surging throng of people attacking the cholent for meat scraps with their flimsy plastic forks, you may not even get those burnt beans and pieces of fat, you may have to survive on sugar kichel and cucumber salad.
Many people do not know this, but folks with sever cases of self doubt or a lack of confidence in general can lead to a very poor Kiddush experience. People who lack the confidence to pile their plate right before or after the Rabbi makes his Kiddush, can be left in the dust.
Then you have the nice people, whatever you may think, the words free food, fress fest and Kiddush do not go together with nice. It may do wonders for your shidduch resume, but being a nice guy will get you nowhere in today’s market for free food, especially if it has anything to do with praying or listening to speeches before. Just like in yeshiva or camp, at a Kiddush the nice guy will just wait for his turn. Only problem is that at kiddushim, there are no such things as turns.
You can wait at the circular tray full of piping hot, not too crunchy luction kugel, but in the end its like trying to dig yourself out of quicksand, the more you dig, the more the dirt fills in around you. You can sit at the kugel table waiting for your turn and you know what? You will eventually wind up at the fish balls with the little colored toothpicks. Its all about force, you MUST push, and please know that when it comes to kiddushim all laws pertaining to negia and modesty are left in the sanctuary.
At Kiddush, you must grab your opportunity and if that means reaching through the plastic fork wielders with your bare hand and grabbing a piece of kugel or kishka or kichel without the serving spoon, then do it. Because while you are standing around with your full plate of hot foods trying to find the cool spot to place your hands, because getting a napkin to hold under the plate is just too time consuming, you will notice a whole contingency of nice girls and guys that are eating the cold food offerings wondering how everyone is eating cholent and kishka besides for them. You can have the last laugh at their herring and kichel, if you would just develop your confidence and be a little daring for once. Your stomach depends on it.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
BYOSS – bring your own serving spoon.
Hesh, you can’t go on like this.
Get a fridge, dude.
hesh-u should name this one “how to be a pig in public”
Are you saying that the masses of orthodox Jews who attend kiddushim are pigs, or are you implying that your experience leads you to think that people do not act like pigs at kiddush?
Because I have yet to see a peaceful kiddush!
Dude, where are you living???
I would compare kiddush to survival of the fittest, its all about getting in and getting out as fast as possible. Good descriptions, my favorite posts of yours are the ones that have such brilliant descriptions.
I have anxiety in crowds and never get any good food at kiddushim btw.
just curious were within the frum community do men and woman eat in such close proximity to each other that you actually get to fight over kishke
(humor a close minded chasidish fell0w)
Flatbush, Monsey, Teanack, Queens, and just about every place in between. Besides for very yeshivish and chassidic groups- 90% of kiddushim are coed.
Hey Hesh remember those t-shirts that always said Coed Naked. Well how about a coed-naked kiddush shirt- with naked shull goers in just sheitles and yarmulkes waiting at the cholent table.
Jack: I agree 100% I have never actually been to a real single sex kiddush, some times like in Monsey I have noticed that the people themselves will stay separate, but the kiddush itself is not separate.
Us shy people should band together so we don’t get pushed at Kiddush.
You can take our cholent, but you’ll never take our FREEDOM!
guess there’s a whole lot I don’t know (grew up in most close minded of all places lkwd)
it’s just hard for me to picture the atmosphere of this kind of kiddush
do people just sit in a random mixed fashion or is like this side of table men that side woman kind of thing, and what’s with the lchaiming do people do it like in frumme places oh and do woman make lchaim also?
Yochanan Wallace eh. Brave Cholent!
So Yankal heres how it works, at many shulls it is basically a free for all, especially at the more modern ones. Where I used to live, most of the folks stayed on either side of a long table, with several folks mixing in- but mostly separate.
In many shulls the tables set up will just be for folks that want to sit, most kiddushim I go to- are standing room only.
I happen to be in waitering now for many of these flatbush shuls and all I have to say is good thing I get to eat this stuff during davening in the kitchen because I get to avoid the mosh pit of beards and tallis fringes whipping people in the face as they attack the goods. I’d be hungry too if I had to sit 3 hours in shul bored with no breakfast.
Thats right, you would wonder how how many people went to the kiddush club if there wasn’t a kiddush riot by most of the shull.
The boorish behavior varies from shul to shul. Some people let their kids pile up their plates before the Rabbi has said kiddush. Often, the kids don’t eat the two or three chicken breasts that they took. What is worse, some adults make their first round between kiddush and hamotzi. And some of these are people who pride themselves on having gone to yeshiva or a Bais Yaakov. As for negiah, I appreciate that in some shuls the men will be on one side of the table and the women on the other. I don’t want to be following a woman too closely in line as that may make her think I am a lech.
When I was a kid, the kiddushes in zaide’s shtibl were simple. There would be herring or sable with kugel, bagels and challah or, rarely, a cholent. If that day was cholent day, then no fish. The main objective was to have a bite to eat with the l’chaims. The men stayed at the shul all afternoon to study, daven and sing. I don’t remember thinking that I was being mistreated because there were no salads, cookies or babaganoush.
By providing a smorgasbord, shuls may be providing some with their only kosher meal of the week. However, I don’t know how much the exhibition of bad behavior costs us.
I was at an amazing kiddush with awesome cold cuts, pasteries, etc- one of the most expensive ones ever. The place was so packed it was ridiculous. I thought the people around the table would sort of move along but they just stood there the whole time. I started to realize that the man in front of me wasn’t moving because he was just going to eat off of the table with his fork to his mouth – and he liked his spot too much to move. This middle age dude in front of me actually took bites off the platters using his own fork straight to his mouth. I was going to tell him that the line was moving and to step forward- all the sudden a bearded suit guy cuts in line as if I hadn’t waited politely the past 5 minutes watching all the good bits disappear. 20 percent of the people ate 80 percent of the corn beef. By the time I regrouped and started at a new line, all I managed to eat was at the stale diabetes sugar free cookie table that causes severe diarhea if you eat more than one of them in a week .