Added layer of vulnerability

MIRA SUCHAROV

When you get wheeled on a stretcher by paramedics and taken by ambulance to the hospital in the middle of a women’s basketball at the Soloway JCC, you would hope it’s for some particularly heroic play. Alas, an anaphylaxis attack overtook me between warm-up and scrimmage. A trip to an allergist a few days later revealed a heretofore undiscovered allergy to shellfish, part of the dinner I’d cooked and consumed earlier that fateful evening.

Until now, life-threatening food allergies were something other people had. Now, as I’ve now joined the club of EpiPen carriers, I have begun to reflect on the act of cooking and eating in a different way. Discovering a new allergy – the same week the feature story on the New York Times website was the topic of new treatment frontiers – has led me to contemplate how we care for ourselves and others, particularly in communal settings. Discovering a new allergy to an expressly forbidden food in Jewish law also gives me a chance to reflect on kashrut and covenant.

It was rather galling to discover that the last shrimp I will likely ever eat (20 percent of shellfish allergies in adults may eventually disappear, according to my allergist) was the product of a new, rejuvenated cooking rhythm in my weekday calendar. A few factors – a new favorite grocery store, a newly discovered food blog (shout out to Smitten Kitchen) and the elimination of hired weekday help in our home, means that I am now trying to find new recipes that are easy, tasty and healthful to prepare. I was pleased with my creation of panko-coated shrimp that night, paired with steamed sushi rice and crispy vegetables for a quick weeknight dinner sandwiched between daytime work and an evening board meeting followed by my weekly ritual of ladies basketball. Goodbye panko shrimp, hello panko tofu (thankfully also delicious).

The last lobster I’ll likely ever eat will always contain the sweet aftertaste of a friendly weekday lunch with friends during the teacher walkout of a few months ago, as some friends and I spent the afternoon working on our laptops while our kids played together. A friend had brought in the fresh crustacean from the Maritimes, and I had prepared a fennel-grapefruit-dill salad to go alongside. It was one of those unforgettable and inspired afternoons that creates great memories, allergies be damned.

Of course, there is the looming issue of kashrut. On one hand, I will be adhering to at least one more mitzvah than I had previously – but surely being forced to avoid a proscribed food due to its power to kill lacks the covenantal power of kashrut in its intended form. So, for halachah, it’s at best a pyrrhic victory over the prawn.

More meaningfully to me anyway, as a writer and observer of Jewish community, is the meaning that the avoidance of shellfish has in everyday Jewish life. For most of my life, the idea of avoiding shellfish for kashrut reasons seemed to be something that only the strictly observant did. Though now, as most of my family’s entertaining takes place around the Shabbat table, we have tended to avoid the most obvious treif menu items and food combinations in favor of those resembling a kosher meal, at least one that suits the general spirit of Shabbat.

Then there’s the question of how we take care of ourselves and how we take care of others. As an adult, carrying my EpiPen and inquiring of waiters about the possibility of cross-contamination will remain solely my responsibility. After all, that is what being an adult is all about. As I sat in the waiting room of the allergist, however, I focused on all the children seated around me, many of their parents no doubt masking varying degrees of anxiety. Parenting is a leap of faith at the best of times. To parent children with serious allergies is to be forced to shoulder that much more serious of a burden.

In my informal estimation, our community has done a decent job of ensuring that our schools, children’s activities and summer camps are nut-free, at least. I am aware it wasn’t always thus. Surely more can be done to raise awareness around synagogues and other semi-public institutions.

Now possessing a life-threatening allergy means that I am acutely aware of an extra layer of vulnerability. At its worst, vulnerability can lead to inward-gazing narcissism. At its best, vulnerability can remind us of our mutual responsibility for one another – kol Yisrael arevim zeh la’zeh, as the teaching goes.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at huffingtonpost.com, haaretz.com and thedailybeast.com. This article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

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