That Reminds me of a Joke

Apropos of the last two posts, a Jewish business associate of mine is visiting Asheville next week and wanted to meet up. In case he wanted to meet over a meal, and in case he keeps Kosher, I was trying to see if there are any Kosher restaurants in Asheville. Yelp suggested this one.

I don't know a lot about Kosher, but I do know that shellfish isn't on the list! It turns out there aren't any Kosher restaurants in Asheville, and not many Jews either -- the closest synagogue I know of is actually a Methodist church that loans itself out to them on Saturdays. The very small Jewish population has been around long enough that there's a Jewish section in one of the old segregated cemeteries near Hendersonville, but the population has never grown large. It's no surprise that there are no restaurants that go to the very substantial trouble of maintaining a Kosher kitchen -- you have to have a whole separate kitchen, as well as separate utensils and all the rest -- to cater to such a tiny populace. 

However, the Lobster Trap bit reminded me of a joke I read in a book by Isaac Asimov. I no longer have the book, but the joke goes approximately like this:

On the holiday of Yom Kippur, the solemn day of atonement, a synagogue's congregation sat waiting for their rabbi to turn up. He was late, and later, and still hadn't appeared well into lunchtime. In addition to being hungry, they were very worried that something had happened to him. So they began calling all around town to see if they could locate him or get word of what might have happened to him. 

Finally someone reported that he had been seen at a local seafood restaurant. The congregation went to find him, and discovered him eating a big plate of oysters. Looking on in horror, they exclaimed, "Rabbi! Rabbi! How could you do this, on today of all days?"

He looked at them quizzically and replied, "What? There's an 'r' in 'Yom Kippur.'"