My kitchen is Hogwarts

My roommates are studying to be Jewish school teachers, so the apartment is kosher and the common areas are Shomer Shabbat (i.e., no electricity on Saturdays). I knew this going in, but there's a difference between intellectually acknowledging a radical lifestyle change and actually arriving in a country after 18 hours of physical travel and 7 hours of time travel and realizing that you can't make some toast right now because God says "no." (I unintentionally scheduled my arrival for a Jewish holiday, many of which are celebrated without the benefits of electricity. Or carrying. Or stringed instruments. If you're a time traveler for whom these things are important, plan accordingly.)

Like I said, I did have advance warning, and like any true member of the Scooby-Doo generation, I had a plan. My plan was to basically go vegetarian for the summer. This would allow me to handle with ease the main rule of the kosher kitchen, which is not to mix meat and dairy. Actually, since my arrival, I've incidentally eaten entirely vegan, so all I've cooked is pareve (food that is neither meat, dairy, nor tref), which is universally kosher.

I arrived on Sunday. By Tuesday, I had managed to de-kosher the dishes. How did this happen? Let me explain.

The Jewish kitchen is governed by the laws of kashrut, or, as I have come to think of it, magic. This magic is a magic of transfiguration. Not only must meat and dairy foods be kept separate, but so must meat and dairy cookware, because vegetables that are prepared in a dairy pot become dairy, and vegetables prepared in a meat pot become meat. Hence, one can, as I have done, prepare pareve stir-fry that de-koshers, or as the Jews say, confuses, or as I say, magics my dishes. How? Prepare part of the stir-fry in a dairy frying pan and the other part in a meat wok, and then combine in the same pot. Boom, baby! Your pot is no longer a simple kosher pot, but something altogether more sinister and alarming, in no small part because it's also apparently developed the ability to feel. If mixing green beans from a meat pot and peppers from a dairy pot can confuse a dish, if you put shrimp in it, does the pot level up to outright hostility? The sages don't say. This is how one performs kosher magic.

This magic is way more powerful than that boasted by other religions. To give you some perspective, Jesus turned water into wine. Child's play. I can turn water into hot dogs, just by boiling it in the wrong pot. I can turn quinoa into alfredo sauce and chickpeas into cheese balls, all with the power of my bewitched cutlery. It's like a superpower that I can only use for evil, since the only apparent use of this magic is to de-sanctify my dishes, the re-kashering of which requires an entirely new magic ritual of its very own.

There are some people so afraid of this awesome responsibility, that they keep THREE SEPARATE KITCHENS (meat, dairy, Passover) in order to accidentally avoid triggering their wizardry. My roommate vouches for having been in one of these houses. This cannot possibly be necessary, or else my roommate's acquaintances would be the only actually kosher people. Bear in mind that most of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are on welfare and probably keep it to a modest number of kitchens, unless the Orthodox Jews live in apartments that are actually only kitchen. I have not heard that this is the case.

I'm pretty sure I've managed to control my powers since the Miracle of the Stir-Fry, but there's just no telling when they'll next escape my grasp. I'll never understand why magic in the Potter-verse is so hard. The kids have to bring every ounce of concentration to bear just to transfigure a simple potato into steak, and most of them suck at it. I have to concentrate that hard just not to engage in spectacular displays of sorcery every time I turn on the stove. Where's my acceptance to Hogwarts?