[Avodah] Hot Cheese for Shabbat Lunch

[Zev Sero]

T613K at aol.com wrote:

>> But what is the halachic standard for “kavod shabbos”?  Is
>> meat—any kind of meat—the standard? .... I would be surprised if you
>> could anywhere in the Shulchan Arukh where it says that only roast
>> chicken and/or brisket can bring kavod to the Shabbat table.
>> ....Also, is it kavod-dik to stuff yourself with chicken and
>> brisket, when all that your body needs/wants is a piece of gefillte
>> fish and challah?

> The standard is basar vedagim.  If there is not some kind of fish AND 
> some kind of meat, your Shabbos meal is lacking.  The fish can be 
> herring from a jar, or tuna salad, though the gold standard is gefilte 
> fish.

I assume this is tongue in cheek.  What makes gefilte fish the "gold
standard"?  Yes, it's what most Ashkenazim have and expect, but some
don't.  My parents rarely have gefilte fish; usually they have grilled
fish on Friday night.  What's more, they often skip fish altogether at
lunch, and go straight from hamotzi to the cholent.


> The meat at lunch can be cold chicken (thanks to Chazal who were 
> kind enough to make chicken fleishig, for this very purpose).

Huh?  I hope this is tongue in cheek (both of which are fleishig
mid'oraisa)!


> Or the meat can be cold cuts.  The gold standard is cholent.

Well, only if "cholent" is read broadly to mean "hot food".  Nor
must the cholent be fleishig; my bobbe AH's cholent was pareve,
with prunes to give it a meaty flavour.


> The hot food shows that you are not a Sadducee or a Karaite.

And yet Rebbi did not have hot food on Shabbos.  Somehow nobody
suspected him of such tendencies.  (Though if the Tzedokim disappeared
after the churban, and the Karaim didn't start until the 8th century,
perhaps in Rebbi's day this heresy didn't exist, so there wasn't any
need to demonstrate defiance of it.)

When we lived in a small flat, there would be several weeks a year on
which my mother would decree that it was too hot to have a fire going
all Shabbos, so we had no cholent *or* tea.  Only when we moved into
a house did we start having cholent every Shabbos, summer and winter.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas