Monday, July 14, 2008

“. . . not a drop to drink,” redux

Maybe the last laugh is on us.

A few months ago, I got to wondering what, exactly, was in New York City’s unfiltered water, that some Orthodox rabbis made such an issue of it. Was the presence of those infamous copepods (tiny, barely-visible crustaceans) in our water supply an indication of a larger problem? So I suggested to my husband that we buy a couple of those faucet heads with changeable filters from good old West Side Judaica. At first, we were changing the filters about twice a week. Then we found ourselves changing them three times a week. Then, our apartment building’s roof underwent repairs, and we found ourselves changing the filters every other day, and, occasionally, even every day. To make a long story short, we get very little water out of our faucets now, even with new filters, unless we remove those new faucet heads. So now my husband wants to know what the heck is in our water! We thought of getting a permanent filter installed in the kitchen sink, but that creates other problems—a commenter on another blog said that filtering water on Shabbat (Sabbath) constituted a form of sorting (borer?), a type of labor forbidden on Shabbat. The filters we’re using now can easily be removed before Shabbat—we’d simply have to store water that was filtered before Shabbat—but a permanent filter could not be disconnected without some difficulty.

So guess who’s now drinking bottle water?

Score one for the Chumra-of-the-Month Club.

(This Chumra-of-the-Month Club post is a bit on the R side (shoo your youngsters away from the computer), and somewhat challenging for those with a limited knowledge of Yiddish, Ashkenazi Hebrew, and/or “Frumspeak” [English influenced by both Yiddish and Ashkenazi Hebrew] It’s fun, though, for Heshy’s thorough trashing of sexist attitudes.).


Speaking of links, don't forget to check out the latest Haveil Havalim link-fest! Thanks, Jack, both for putting this together and for including two of my posts.

2 Comments:

Blogger rivkayael said...

ick. Actually, I don't think I want to know...

Someone checked my workplace's water (our filters were also dying). Turned out to be flaking rust. Ignorance is bliss.

Mon Jul 14, 04:21:00 PM 2008  
Blogger Shira Salamone said...

Oy. Tell me about it. :(

Mon Jul 14, 11:01:00 PM 2008  

Post a Comment

<< Home

<< List
Jewish Bloggers
Join >>