SC - list newbie/Seasonal food.

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Alban wrote:
>  >Actually, I don't get the drift here. I mean, I can imagine anyone being
>>offended by anything, definitely. But Lent isn't a 'Holy Day', and it
>>wasn't then. It's a season. Furthermore, the different foods prepared
>>aren't foods that are sacred to the season, but ways of dealing with
>>certain restrictions. Eating unleavened bread and meals without pork would
>>not be automatically offensive to a Christian persona-- except, perhaps,
>>in Spain during the Inquisition, where Jewish eating habits could get you
>  >condemned if you were of Jewish extraction.
>
>I must admit I am extrapolating a bit here. . .
>The food restrictions that Christians have during Lent, happen because
>it's a period that's important to those who follow Christianity, and those
>restrictions came about for religious reasons. One can theorize that Jews
>would very much not want to follow purely Christian laws/customs during
>a period that occurs only for Christians, just as Christians would not have
>wanted to follow kosher-for-Passover laws because they were purely
>Jewish, for a Jewish religious period.
>If one were a Jew who kept closely to Judaism, why would you want
>to follow a purely Christian custom?

As a guest at a feast, why not? As long as there are no forbidden 
meats and seafoods and there are dishes that don't mix meat and dairy.

In Muslim countries, at least, Jews were often important and trusted 
advisors to Caliphs, Emirs, Wazirs, and their ilk, and i assume that 
they would sometimes dine with their "masters". Now, granted both 
Muslims and Jews don't eat pork and their animal slaughtering methods 
are similar, however, many Muslim dishes mix meat and dairy, and i 
believe that Muslims ate seafood that was forbidden to Jews. So at a 
feast, just eat around the religiously unacceptable dishes.

In the Christian regions, i've no idea if Jews and Christians ate 
together, but i know that in Spain, even within a couple years of the 
fatal 1492, Jews were important and trusted advisors to nobles and 
even kings. Did they eat together? I just don't know...

>  >How often, however, would Jews and Christians eat together in period?
>  >Documentary evidence, anyone? I suspect it did happen, but very seldom...
>
>I have no idea - but we were talking about SCA feasts, and those who follow
>their personae more closely than most of us, sort of. Would a person with a
>Jewish persona want to eat a Lenten-type feast, because it follows the pattern
>of a purely Christian prototype?

So, as a non-Christian persona i should refuse to eat "Christian" 
food? Are you saying I should be such an ungracious guest!?! Or that 
i should refuse to dine with my Christian friends and acquaintances?! 
It seems to me that only if i distrusted the person and was 
suspicious of their motives in inviting me to dine, should i refuse 
an invitation.

However, we're in the SCA, folks, not Medieval/Renaissance Europe, 
and in the SCA people of many religions, from many places, and many 
time periods meet and eat (heck, some are even married to each 
other). As a mundanely non-Christian human portraying a non-Christian 
in the SCA, I still don't see how someone can be offended by eating a 
Lenten meal. It's far from the same as offering pork to a Muslim or 
Jew and expecting them to eat it.

Besides, Lent is the run up to Easter and Easter falls darn close to 
the major Jewish holiday of Pesach, aka Passover with its extreme 
food restrictions, albeit only for a tad over a week.

So i'll ask a similar question:
How many people here who are not Jews mundanely or are not portraying 
Jews in the SCA would actually be offended by being invited to eat a 
Passover meal, assuming none of the religious ritual stuff was 
included, just the foodstuffs? (as if one could find Medieval Jewish 
Pesach recipes)

Anahita