I don’t know where you live, but here in Cleveland, there is a Speedway 5 minutes from my home, right in the heart of the Orthodox community. It’s open 24 hours, and you will always see Orthodox Jews coming in and out, buying Slurpees.
Why??
Well. You need to understand a few somethings.
- When you keep kosher, there are very few fun foods you can buy for a buck.
- There are also very few stores you can buy fun food at that are open 24 hours.
- The fact that Slurpees are kosher is very exciting – us kosher folks are ALWAYS scouting for “what’s kosher?” at Costco, Target, or the local grocery.
- When you have kids (as most Orthodox Jews do, for a lot of child-rearing years), a Slurpee is a great easy incentive that all kids love.
- When you’re a teacher of Torah or a parent of a Torah-observant home, you are always seeking to motivate your kids to learn Torah/do mitzvot; hence easy, cheap incentives are always being sought.
Note: the frightfully blue tooth color actually does fade with time.
AHA! It all makes sense now! 🙂 I still think the kids in high school who call home during the school day to ask their moms to go get and bring them a slurpee are pushing the envelope a bit though. 🙂 Luckily my kids aren't into slurpees yet so they don't expect them often– but I HAVE been wondering what the appeal is in the middle of a Cleveland winter. Another great post! Thought provoking as always. 🙂
Agreed, and it's usually the same ones who call home and ask for snacks, forgotten notes, and sweatshirts. GRRRR… Thanks Heather!!
<mild rant) As a newcoming to the Cleveland orthodox community, I'm actually a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of – not just slurpees – but pop (soda, soda pop, etc) and sugar in general. It seems like every learning program (especially on Shabbat, but other days too) ends with the Rabbi/Teacher/Teenager-In-Charge handing (and sometimes flinging) jawbreakers, gummy candy, blowpops and of course cans of pop. (Thankfully nobody has thrown slurpees yet. I mean, this isn't GLEE, for goodness sake!).
Even though we keep a pretty tight lid on "junk food" in the home, the pervasiveness we've found here is really astonishing. As far as I know there's nothing in Torah, Talmud, Mishna or even Midrash that says "rotten teeth, bloated belly and sugar-induced twitches do a good Jew make".
My hope is that the "healthy eating" concept which has taken over the Reform movement and developed strong roots in the Conservative world might also spread to the Orthodox community too.
For the sake of our dental bills, let us all say: "speedily, speedily and in our days, amen, sela"
ET: I'm with you. I wish, too. The only justification I can think of is, it gets the kids motivated to learn. The Talmud does state that one should use sweets to motivate kids. Apparently, though, sweets then were almonds. Yeah, try that today and see how it flies 🙂
It's also a non-jew thing. I grew up on slurpees.
And as an adult I can't think of nothing more disgusting than a big blue slurpee!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! A very large mystery of my life has been answered. My daughter on the other hand (at seven years old) wants to know what HaShem was doing before he created the universe…
We grew up in Miami and slurpees were a treat when we did well is school. We would go with out entire class to 7-11. It may have had to do with the heat as well but this post is SO ON THE MONEY!
Amy:Tell her "surfing at night". What else would Torah mean when it said there was darkness, and God's presence hovered over the water?
You can use this for support:
(video of people surfing at night.)
Hey, just trying to help further the kid's education!
The good news: it's almost impossible to find a dead mouse in your can of soda pop.
The bad news: because after 7 days, said mouse would have been reduced by the acids to "a jelly like substance"
http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindewmouse.asp
And how much of this stuff do we want our kids drinking, exactly?