A parable.

[xiphias]

A man goes to his rebbe with a question:

"Rebbe, why is it that we eat kugel on Shabbos?"

"It is because the numerical value of the word 'kugel; is the same as the word 'Shabbos'." ¹

The man nodded, and turned to leave, satisfied. But before he got halfway home, he stopped, thought a moment, and ran back to the rebbe.

"Rebbe -- the numerical value of 'Shabbos' is MUCH greater than the value of 'kugel'!" he said.

"So, nu, have another piece."

¹ In Hebrew, each letter has a value, which is how Classical Hebrew tended to present numbers. That also means that you can add up the values of the letters in a word, to get the value of the word. And there is a common thing you do to take words of equal value, and connect them. In this case, the words are שבת, Shabbat/Shabbos (depending on accent), and קוגל, "kugel". Shin = 300, Bet = 2, Tav = 400, for a total of 602 for "Shabbat"; Kuf = 100, Vav = 6, Gimmel = 3, Lamed = 30, for a total of 139 for "kugel". Naturally, this means that you ought to have 4 ¹⁄₃ pieces of kugel on Shabbat.

Comments

[squid314.livejournal.com]

I'd hate to think how many inedible objects we would have to eat on various holidays if we followed the general rule "Eat anything whose numerical value is equal to the numerical value of the holiday."

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The part where you calculated that you should actually have 4 1⁄3 pieces of kugel on Shabbat possibly cracked me up even more than the original story. I'm not even sure i know what a kugel is, but that story is hilarious.

I get the impression, from things that you and others day, that an awful lot of rabbis, especially Reform rabbis, are extremely into Granny Weatherwax-style headology. Don't know the answer? It's not an important part of Jewish scripture? Make up something plausible! So as long as you give a nice placebo answer that satisfies the asker, that's just fine.

In fact, sometimes I swear that rabbis compete to come up with the most outlandish things possible and see how far they get!

[(Anonymous)]

I beg to differ with your explanation. The real answer is only 3 pieces. He should have had two more pieces. You see only Litvaks spell קוגל with a vav - koogel. Everyone knows kugel is spelled קגל = eg 133. Of course, your parable suffered in the translation. You see, the original was not kugel, but chulent (or cholent if you're a Litvak). Then the Rebbe's answer made sense

dod

[fauxklore]

Both lukshen kugel and potato kugel are made of starchy foods bound with eggs and baked. And there is savory non-dairy lukshen kugel, too, often with onions and mushrooms in it.

The word is usually translated as "pudding" which is rather confusing.

[nitoda]

I was wondering why I was feeling confused so googled kugel and came up with the same stuff you've been describing. So then I went for kugeln and here is a pic and article about the kind of kugeln I remember - Mozartkugeln! From Salzburg. Not at all the same thing, and probably why I had it in mind that a kugel would be a round thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozartkugel