No longer living in Boro Park, not a pyromaniac, & not a dinosaur :) : A close encounter, blogger-style, with Steg

I'm slapping myself in the head for not having had the foresight to make sure I'd read Steg's latest rant before he and the Punster and I got together on Tuesday night. My official duty was to hand over a cassette of Fudge's radio interview of that guy she knows :) who used to have a band called "Kabbalah." Well, a fine time was had by all, anyway. We talked about our respective posts re clothing and the interpretation thereof. Steg ranted about people assuming that jeans-wearers support Britney Spears instead of shmirat mitzot (observance of the commandments). (Yep, that's pretty much what the other guy said--read Steg's post.)

We also yakked about some problems that I've observed among non-Orthodox Jews in terms of understanding the "rules." The Haggadah speaks of the child "sheh-eino yodeah li-sh'ol," who doesn't know to ask. I've found that to be a real problem in the circles that I haunt. For example, the most well-meaning people make mistakes in the area of kashrut (the laws of keeping kosher/Jewish dietary laws) because they literally don't know that there might be a problem, and that, therefore, there's a question that they have to ask. (Problemo Numero Uno: Many non-Orthodox Jews don't know that not all non-dairy creamers are parve, so they serve any old one with fleishig/meat or poultry, assuming, with the best of intentions, that what they're serving is kosher.) Steg and I talked about the problem of well-meaning but perhaps not-so-well-informed people bringing food from home into, for example, a synagogue or Jewish day school and creating kashrut issues for those partaking of a kiddush, or "treifing" a micowave unintentionally.

Now if only he can figure out how to snag himself an invitation to the WYUR studio on a Thursday night . . .

Go read Steg's rant. And listen to his new songs, too. Very nice, indeed!