Is there something wrong with the Gefilte Fish weve come to accept as normal?
Well, to answer that you have to look at the history to understand where Gefilte fish came from. According to my Dad, as the Jews were crossing the red sea, some of them got thirsty, and G-d sent a small fish who would suck in some salt water, and then spray out pure mountain water for the Jews to drink from. To this day we eat this fish every Shabbos to commemorate the miracle – Gefilter fish. OK, bad joke. The real history is that originally we’d eat all kinds of fancy fish (search the Yosef Mokir Shabbos story online to see what I mean). But then when the Ashkenazi Jews had to go through all the persecutions and most of us were dirt poor, we’d buy karp, which is very bony and cheap. In order to make it edible, we’d crush it and grind it like meat, and what would come out was ‘Gefilte fish’. The truth is, we SHOULD be eating choice fish for Shabbos. But Gefilte fish has become a staple of the Shabbos meal, and reminds us of the times when we were living dirt poor in the ghettos and S
