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People can't pig out at a kosher barbecue, but what's the beef?

By David Waters
waters@gomemphis.com
October 16, 2002

I was invited to participate in a big event at a local synagogue last Sunday.

At first I said no, thank you. I'm too busy.

Fortunately, something (or some One?) smacked some sense back into me.

I changed my mind and said yes, of course, I'd be honored to attend Anshei Sphard Beth El Emeth Congregation's 14th annual Kosher BBQ Contest - as a judge.

Best job I've ever had.

"You don't know what kosher barbecue is supposed to taste like," Lauren Bender kidded me when she saw my WASPish self sitting at the judges' table behind a glass of water, a fork and a big empty plate.

I knew a lot less than that. I didn't even know that barbecue was kosher.

But then I've lived half my life in Memphis where iced tea is brewed, biscuit gravy comes from a cow and barbecue comes from a pig.

No matter how you smoke it, pork isn't kosher. So the barbecue cookers at Anshei Sphard came up with an ingenious way around the Jewish dietary laws that forbid pork.

They use beef. Kosher beef marinated in kosher ingredients and cooked on the Orthodox synagogue's own grills.

"This is a way of affirming our Jewishness and our Southerness," said Rabbi Joel M. Finkelstein of Anshei Sphard, which hosted the contest in its parking lot Sunday afternoon.

The first Kosher BBQ Contest was held in 1989, after guys at the synagogue started talking about the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

The city's annual pig-out spans the Jewish Sabbath, the original sunset symphony. For Orthodox Jews, work is forbidden on the Sabbath. That includes lighting fires.

"Some of our guys felt left out in the cold," said Steve Kaplan, a member of Anshei Sphard.

It didn't take long for them to warm up. The first 12 Kosher BBQ Contests were held in the heat of June. Last year the contest was moved to the fall.

"This way we can keep kosher and keep cool at the same time," Kaplan said.

Kosher is the Hebrew term for "fit." Not fit as in physical fitness; fit as in proper.

"The major Jewish dietary laws rest on a single premise: Eating meat is a moral compromise. . . . A living creature had to be killed," Rabbi Harold Kushner explained in To Life!

Eating barbecued beef is another sort of compromise to some people in Memphis. But nowadays pluralism is as Southern as a fried apple pie.

Besides, if Burger King can offer sausage bagels in New York, what's wrong with kosher ribs in Memphis?

Not a thing, believe me.

When Elvis was a lad he was a Shabbas goy, a gentile who lights fires or does other chores for Observant Jews on the Sabbath. Maybe next year Memphis in May can recruit some Shabbas goys and add a kosher category to its barbecue contest.

Thirty-one teams competed in Sunday's contest, including Shofar So Good, Moo Shoo Joos and Alter Kookers (loosely translated as "Old Farts" in Yiddish).

Who won? The judges did.

Contact columnist David Waters at 529-2399 or E-mail waters@gomemphis.com. Faith Matters runs on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.