You say latke, I say lefse

The sales director for a Fortune 500 company told a story that he swore to be true: In northern Minnesota, or maybe Wisconsin, there was a nursing home with an unacceptable and unexplained mortality rate. Residents were dying, although the deaths couldn't be traced to communicable diseases or falls or medical mishaps. Some clever soul came in to observe the facility and made an interesting observation: The residents of the nursing home were almost all of Scandinavian heritage and culture, probably third or fourt generation. The care staff were almost all first- or second-generation immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Their standard interaction was this: The care staff would come into a resident's room and say, "Would you like me to bring you an afternoon snack?" The resident would say, "Oh, don't bother. I'm fine." The staff would say, "Okay," and leave. And the resident would go day after day without adequate nutrition.

The staff got training in a critical aspect of the residents' culture: Ask at least three times, with escalating intensity. When the resident said "Oh, don't bother," the effective response was, "Oh, it's no bother. I have plenty, and it's all ready to go." if the answer was, "Oh, someone needs it worse than I do," the staff person was to follow up with something like, "I'll just have to throw it out if you don't take it." At that point, the resident was likely to say, "Oh, all right," and take the snack.

Problem solved. Survival rates improved.

If the story sounds crazy, you're not from Minnesota or Wisconsin, where self-denial is an art form and even an afternoon bottle of Boost is shameless self-indulsgence to be resisted.

I thought about that the other day at the Tri-Faith Race, Religion and Social Justice Conference. The theme this year was the role of food in nourishing justice and equality. "Food connects us to culture, faith, and family," one speaker said.

But which culture, which faith, which family? Although it isn't my heritage, I was raised in a culture of tater tot hotdish and lefse. The Norwegian spice rack, the old joke goes, is salt and pepper. When someone in a Thai or Indian restaurant asks, "How spicy?" I say, "I'm from Minnesota. Don't hurt me."

One of my very early Jewish experiences--before I'd been to a service, before I'd been to a Torah study--was at the annual Great Latke/Hamentaschen debate at the University of Minnesota. Scholars from a range of disciplines argued the superiority of one of the two Hanukkah favorites. Each used the heuristics of their field of study--chemistry, literature, history. It was fascinating. Afterward, of course, there was a latke-hamentaschen buffet. I hung back, waiting my turn, as I had been raised to do. Around me, people pushed their way into the line. "You'll never get served if you don't step up," my companion said. It felt unnatural, aggressive, rude.

More than once in my life I have taken my place behind a group outside a public restroom, only to be told after five or 10 minutes that they aren't waiting for the restroom--they're just standing there chatting. “Sorry—I’m from Minnesota,” I explain.

Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman opened the path to conversion for me when she drew a pie chart on the board in our intro to Judaism class and divided it into sections labeled religion, family, food, customs, and more. After our year-long course of study, she said, we'd come into the Jewish experience with the religion piece, but that's a relatively small sliver of the whole. The rest we'd learn over time.

A couple of decades later, I suspect that some pieces will be forever out of reach.