Thursday, June 24, 2010

One reaction to the 'Trefa Banquet.'

The Trefa Banquet of July 1883, in which the first rabbinical ordination dinner of Hebrew Union College featured a lavish, ridiculously non-kosher menu, was the story of the day in American Judaism, and in time took on mythical and symbolic proportions subject to disputed interpretations to this day.

Here is the menu, which seemingly only lacked pork (although I doubt the asparagus was checked):





(Credit: Cleveland Jewish History.)

This was the Rev. Sabato Morais's reaction, published in the American Israelite July 20, 1883 (5643):