Kashrut

In E. L. Doctorow's City of God, Kashrut—the Jewish dietary laws—is invoked only to be dismissed. The novel's narrator, Everett, mentions it in passing while describing his regular dinners with the Episcopal priest Thomas Pemberton and, less often, Sarah Blumenthal, the rabbi of the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism. The three meet at Amarillo, a restaurant on Broadway, and Everett notes that their choice of venue is "not a matter of rabbinical decorum (kashruth is one of the inessentials)." The parenthetical is telling: the dietary code is acknowledged as part of the Jewish tradition, then immediately categorized as peripheral. In a novel preoccupied with the weight of the Holocaust, the nature of God, and the possibility of faith after atrocity, the dietary laws are presented as precisely the kind of ritual observance that Evolutionary Judaism—a movement defined by its willingness to discard what it deems inessential—can set aside without anxiety.

Kashrut and the Ethos of Evolutionary Judaism

The dismissal of kashruth as an inessential aligns directly with the principles of Evolutionary Judaism as the novel presents them. The movement, as embodied by Sarah Blumenthal, treats formal observance as secondary to the inner life of faith. This is made explicit in the same passage where Everett reflects on Sarah's mourning for her husband, Joshua Gruen. He notes that her mourning "should last, formally, for one year, but this is another inessential according to EJ, on the theory that whatever it takes to remember and memorialize your dead must come naturally from the heart." The parallel is deliberate: just as the formal mourning period is waived in favor of natural, heartfelt remembrance, so the dietary laws are waived in favor of a spirituality that does not depend on external rules. Kashrut, in this framework, belongs to the category of "inessentials"—customs that may once have served a purpose but are now superseded by a more direct, psychological, and emotional approach to the divine. The novel's narrator even suggests that such matters "must work out anyway with a psychological inevitability," implying that the true workings of faith are internal and cannot be regulated by dietary prescription.

The Dinner Table as a Site of Unobserved Law

The Amarillo dinners themselves dramatize the irrelevance of kashrut to the novel's central relationships. Everett, Pem, and Sarah gather over candlelight and glasses of red wine, and the narrator observes that something like a courtship is developing between the priest and the rabbi. The setting is significant: a Broadway restaurant serving food that would not meet the standards of kosher observance, shared freely by a rabbi and a priest. The dietary law is not merely ignored; it is implicitly superseded by the human drama unfolding at the table. Everett feels like a chaperon, noting that Pem and Sarah regard each other "with a degree of attention they are not even aware of," and that their simultaneous attention to him is "clearly an effort of will." The scene is charged with the possibility of a union between Christianity and Judaism—a union that would be unthinkable if dietary laws were treated as binding. Kashrut, by its absence, makes room for the novel's central romance: the convergence of the priest and the rabbi, and the eventual conversion of Pem to Judaism.

The Mitzvot as a Subject of Discussion, Not Observance

The novel returns to the question of Jewish law in a later scene at the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism, where the dietary laws are discussed as a topic of study rather than a rule to be followed. On a Friday night, the synagogue is jammed with some thirty people, and Sarah, in rabbinical black with the robe open over her street clothes, leads a seminar on "the codes of conduct, the mitzvoth, of which there are some six hundred thirteen." The Torah lies on the table before her in its simple vestment, and Pem sits in the first row. A well-dressed middle-aged woman, a newcomer, is speaking about Reform Judaism. The scene is instructive: the 613 mitzvot, of which kashrut is a part, are treated as an intellectual and spiritual subject for discussion, not as a binding code. The seminar format itself—open, exploratory, inclusive of a stranger's observations—reflects the movement's approach to law as something to be examined and interpreted rather than mechanically obeyed. Kashrut, as one of the 613, is thus situated within a broader revaluation of the entire legal tradition.

The Wedding and the Triumph of the Inessential

The culmination of this trajectory comes at the wedding of Pem and Sarah, where the dismissal of kashrut as an inessential is vindicated by the joy of the occasion. Pem, standing with a cordless microphone, his double-breasted blazer hanging open and his tie loosened, addresses the assembled guests. He declares that he will not speak of his happiness or his prayerful thanks to the Lord, but that he will "passionately live what's left of my life to earn what she has given me." He announces that he will soon be a Jew and will find "the joy of a hallowed life." The scene is one of unmediated celebration—a dance to "My Blue Heaven" in which Everett holds Sarah for the first time, feeling her heat and the clean herbal scent of her hair, until her son Jake cuts in. The wedding is the novel's answer to the question of what matters in faith: not the observance of dietary law, but the lived, embodied, and joyful commitment of one person to another and to God. Kashrut, dismissed early as an inessential, is never missed. The novel's theology, like its romance, proceeds without it.

Narrative Significance: Law as a Measure of the Novel's Priorities

Kashrut's minor role in City of God is itself a statement. The novel is saturated with religious reference—the Ten Commandments, the 613 Mitzvot, the Golden Rule, Shabbat, the Mikvah, Brit milah, the Minyan—yet it treats the dietary laws as a passing aside. This is consistent with the novel's broader method, which weighs the traditions of Judaism and Christianity and finds much of the formal apparatus wanting. The dietary laws, like the formal mourning period, are presented as obstacles to the natural, heartfelt expression of faith. By setting them aside, the novel clears space for its central concerns: the memory of the Holocaust, the possibility of belief after the death of God, and the love between a priest and a rabbi that bridges two traditions. Kashrut, in this context, is not a law to be observed but a marker of how far Evolutionary Judaism—and the novel itself—is willing to go in redefining what is essential to a life of faith.