Page 62 of Dear Daddy, Please Want Me

After sitting on the floor until Saul’s back hurt and they were both starting to get hungry, they finally roused themselves for dinner. Saul checked in with Levi about food preferences again, because if he were going to be the “best Daddy in the world” as Levi put it, he wanted to know all of his boy’s favorites.

So they’d looked at the menus from a dozen different restaurants, with both of them probably a little more turned on than they should be. It was intimate. A first little move toward their future together as Levi handed over pieces of his trust like gifts.

Of course, once Saul had privately decided what to order, he mentioned that there was leftover brisket and kugel from his mother’s Hanukkah party in the fridge. Then Levi was batting his eyes at him, like he had to beg his way into what Saul would have given him anyway.

He could see how some of Levi’s exes would have found it over the top, but again, he loved all of that excitement. It was almost like Levi wanted to perform his role as a boy, just to make sure he knew exactly where he stood.

When Saul pointed out that the meal wasn’t made in a Kosher home, Levi came up with some convoluted explanation that home-made food trumped kashrut. Especially if it looked Jewish. And pretty, pretty please, because it was homemade.

Saul realized that he was going to be making a lot of homemade meals.

So they shared a lazy dinner of microwaved leftovers and talked about building a fence around the Torah.

Which wasn’t how he’d expected his evening to go.

The building the fence thing was the Jewish practice of, more-or-less, overcompensating and making up convoluted rules to carefully follow all of the religious decrees, especially when adapting them to a modern context. The first one he always thought of was that the Torah only said to not eat a calf in its mothers’ milk, but just to be on the extra safe side, milk and meat couldn’t even share the same air space in the oven or touch the same utensils.

Even if the meat was chicken, which obviously didn’t have a milk-producing mother, in case there was an accidental mix-up. But eating the same chicken with the eggs it had literally laid the previous day, totally kosher.

Saul was actually pretty curious about Levi’s explanation.

“I used to keep completely kosher. I didn’t think about it. I grew up doing it, I ate at the kosher dining hall in the Hillel during college, and I learned to make exactly three meat dishes. I knew all the kosher brands, there are a few good restaurants, and I just… did it.

“But then, I started thinking about why I was doing it. Like, was it the actions or the intentions? Because I usually did it mindlessly. And, seriously, I met a lot of Jews in college who didn’t keep kosher. So I finally talked to a Reconstructionist rabbi who didn’t keep kosher, and she explained her practice of eating mindfully. She suggested I think about my values when I was buying food and cooking and eating. Like, was I choosing products that took care of the people producing them, the earth, and the animals that I was eating? Was I eating to delight in it instead of just rushing? Was I connecting to the parts of the Torah that felt meaningful to me?

“So for about two years, I didn’t keep kosher at all. And let me tell you… bacon double cheese burgers are goooood.”

Saul laughed. “I know.”

“But after a while, I missed the routine. And I realized that it actually did make me more mindful about my eating. So now I follow something that’s a bit more like eco-kashrut. Like, thinking of the values instead of just blindly following the dictates.”

“So, would you eat milk mixed with meat if, say, it was produced by a farm-to-table place where you knew everything had been made respectfully?”

Levi waved his hand side to side. “Maybe. I’d be more likely to order a meat dish without milk because I knew it had been raised and slaughtered humanely even though it wasn’t done with all of the ritual supervision.”

Saul was discovering that with every conversation they had, Levi fascinated him more. He didn’t think they would ever get bored.

“So, were you really serious about studying Talmud?”

“Oh, completely serious. I mean, for me. That’s not a requirement for a Daddy.” He winked.

“Do you do weekly Torah study or something?”

“I’m doing Daf Yomi, actually.”

“Sorry, I don’t even know what that is. I mean, yom means day, right?”

“Yep. Page of the day. There’s a seven-year cycle that takes everyone through the entire Talmud, which has, like, almost three thousand pages? You can subscribe to emails or podcasts where different rabbis discuss their interpretations of the ancient rabbis’ interpretations for that day’s page. We just started reading Pesachim, the laws about Passover.”

“Which do you do? Email or podcast?”

“Podcasts when I have time. There are two that I like. And email when I get behind and just need to catch up. But I hit it about four or five days a week, and then use Shabbat to cycle back.”

“So would you… like a chavruta?” That was a study partner, someone to carefully pore over a text with and then creatively argue about interpretations and applications.

Levi clapped his hands together. “No way. Daddy, really? I mean, really Daddy?”

“I’m probably going to regret this but… we could try it. You’re going to know loads more than I do.”