Parody of the Talmud by Miriam Yang

Note: jLab is for blog posts about creative, fun, or interesting Jewish or congregation-related topics. To submit a post, you must be a member of our congregation, and the topic must be Jew-ish, related to our congregation or the wider Jewish community. If you have something to share, please submit it here. The views and ideas expressed are those of the author and not necessarily representative of the views of Agudas Achim.

Miriam is of Chinese heritage and wrote this last year at the beginning of her journey exploring Judaism as a way to playfully engage with Jewish writing and teachings. She is intrigued by how both Chinese people and Jewish people struggle with cultural identity in a world where the default is Western and Christian.

The gemara asks: one who is a Jew and who is Chinese, is he required to cook his own food on Christmas? Rav Nuchem said, this is not difficult: one should not request another to perform work that one is not willing to do themselves on a general day of rest, and thus one who is Jewish and Chinese should cook his own dinner, if he wishes to enjoy Chinese food on Christmas.

Rav Pappa responds that different nations have different sabbaths, and so it is no problem at all to ask someone to work on a day that he does not consider a day of rest.

Rav Akiva, holding an opinion in between, states that the complexity of cooking Chinese food is well known, and thus one who is Chinese and Jewish may ask of someone else to cook his Christmas dinner for him, but only if he will use the time that he would have spent cooking Chinese food to instead watch a movie of at least one hour and twenty minutes in duration, on a screen of at least eight cubits.