SC - Non-member submission - Re:Lenten feast for non-christian characters

[Bonne of Traquair]

>    >Well, some of us do portray period
> > non-Christians; I can think of
> >     >several people who portray period Jews, and one
> > can easily imagine
> >     >that they, in persona, would find being forced
> > to eat food specifically
> >     >made for a Christian Holy Day (well, several
> > weeks of Lent - but you
> >     >get the drift) to be offensive.
> >     >
> >     >Alban

Special foods are not prepared for Lent. Many foods are not prepared during 
Lent due to restrictions against them. Cooks figured out how to modify 
others in order to serve more variety.  But both the unrestricted foods and 
modified foods might well be served on any other day of the year.  There is 
nothing special about them except that they don't contain flesh.

Someone else already posted references that abstaining from certain dishes 
on the table was how jewish people that had to eat with christians dealt 
with  their own dietary restrictions. The most obvious restrictions being 
kinds of meat and combinations of meat with other foods leads me to beleive 
the dishes jews did choose would be those made in a Lenten style--lacking 
flesh--as these could be assumed to be most likely to protect the jewish 
person from accidental dietary error--only the seafood choices are left to 
worry about.  Therefore, you could conclude that rather than being offended 
at being offered a Lenten feast, a  jewish persona  would be glad of the the 
ease of not having to pay such strict attention to their food choices.

Bonne


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