Do you stack or scrape?
I know it sounds weird, but apparently this is one of those random questions that frummies in the shidduch world ask. I have never been asked if I care about this particular way in which my future wife will clear the table, assuming she will clear the table in the first place. Furthermore, I have never even met someone who was asked this question by a shadchan, all of which leads me to believe that it’s one of the urban legend shidduch questions, kind of like the one about whether the yeshiva guy has laces or slip on shoes.
So what’s the deal with asking whether she stacks or scrapes? Since it’s rarely actually asked I’m imagining how it may be asked; perhaps in a situation like, “when your daughter clears the table does she stack or scrape the dishes?” I have to imagine it’s asked in shorthand speaking form of “does she stack or scrape?” Or perhaps it could be the frum way of asking if the girl spits or swallows, maybe they say “does she stack or scrape?” with a wink telling them, “you know what I mean, but I need to keep things tznius.”
Let me explain to you why stacking and scraping became such an important issue on deciding if the girl would be a good wife for you. There is a difference of opinion on the issue, but many gedolim hold that if the girl stacks her plates she is in a rush to do the dishes and will be careless, spots will be left on the dishes and future guests may wonder about her abilities in the home. Other people also felt that stacking the dishes was merely a way to leave them off to the side and dishes that were stacked tended to be left alone while the dishes became crusty, on both sides of them no less.
Others argued that scraping dishes took time away from torah study, but most of these people were modern orthodox because women are not over the issur of bittul torah, since it is assur for them to learn real torah (they can learn nuvi, but only the tznius parts, which limits their options to just about nothing)
According to most mainstream shadchanim, scraping is the way to tell if your wife will be able to provide you with the shalom bayis you need. Many shadchanim will only help scrapers find a shidduch, while many stackers grow old and move to the upper west side where they become modern orthodox and begin to use paper plates (a shonda) Scrapers have it so good, because they take the time to clear the plates and they leave the table so that other men can talk torah without the women folk present.
In recent years it has become common for boys to pretend to offer their help by getting up half way from their seats (kind of like the half assed moddim bows in shul that people do) but it doesn’t go much beyond that. Men in the yeshivish community are encouraged to stay out of the kitchen unless they are making stuff in the microwave, crock pot or George Foreman Grill.
My brother was asked about it, though that was at the very beginning of the whole issue, if I recall correctly. (He got married in 2005, and I think I first heard of the whole thing like a year or so earlier.) He was also asked about plastic table clothes, because apparently that is a sign that you are lazy and don’t want to do laundry.
Spits or swallows ? You pig! As for the stack or scrape, if this is not urban myth, you who are in this parsha of your lives, are doomed as doomed can be.
Good thing we have a dishwasher where I work
Dishwasher == Fleshlight?
im so proud of myself for inspiring this 🙂
I don’t get it. How can you stack the dishes WITHOUT scraping them first? Who’s going to stack dishes that are covered with leftover food and bones? BTW, it’s my husband who does the scraping and stacking. I wash the actual mess after Shabbes. If we happen to have dairy on Friday night (yes, we sometimes get tired of chicken, and I don’t eat red meat), we hide them in the dishwasher, but since our dishwasher is dairy, we can’t do that with the meat dishes.
BTW, speaking of not eating red meat (and yes, I know no one else was, but I was). . . If there is anyone else who is like me, and eats chicken, but not beef, I need to give y’all a heads up. When you see chopped liver at a big affair, don’t eat it. We assume it’s chopped chicken liver, because that’s what it’s supposed to be. But while doing hashgachah for a bar mitzvah of 260, I discovered that according to the caterer, all commercially made chopped liver is made with beef liver, not chicken liver. I was furious.
beef liver and onions is da shiznit
Fine, but then you know what you’re getting–when you see a big slab of beef liver, you know what it is. How false advertising is it to offer someone chopped liver–wouldn’t you assume it was chopped chicken liver?
But it’s not technically red meat, then it would be brown, right?
“da shiznit” etymology please, anyone?
(v.) var. (with short i from ptp. or n.) of earlier shite, ME shiten, OE sc?tan; cf. MLG, MD schiten (D schijten ), OHG sk?zan (G scheissen );
+
Snoop Dogg.
=
shiznit
But the problem is the friggin’ SUGAR that caterers and restaurants/deli’s put in it. Echh! I like my meat savory. If I wanted my meat sweet, I’d—well, I’d….I’d….hmmm.
Just what would I do? Oh jeez, the analogies are gonna get lascivious now buddies. So I’ll lay off.
OK if I wanted my meat sweet I’d eat Rosh Hashana food (sic! sic! sic!) all year round.
LMAO “da shiznit” 🙂 Mr. Fried, you’re so “with it”!!! ROFL
I prefer chopped beef liver any time. Chicken livers are a poor substitute.
Batsheva – We assume it’s chopped chicken liver, because that’s what it’s supposed to be.
Why would you make such an assumption??? Store-bought chopped liver has ALWAYS been made out of beef liver. I love it!
agree, I haven’t bought it in a while but now I feel like buying it for Shabbos, just because you mentioned it
They even include the ingredients on the package!
http://bit.ly/dtPgVB
Either way, it is really bad for your cholesterol. Moderation, folks.
Why were you furious? It tasted good; didn’t it? What harm came to you?
sorry for getting technical but im pretty sure scrape and stack are two components of the same plate clearing technique, as mentioned in a previous comment. the other option is to carry them to the kitchen one by one (and then, when no one is looking, throw them all together in the sink anyways). so i guess the question is really stack or not (sounds similar to stacked or not, but has a completely different meaning… or maybe not)
Ah! But do you give them a quick rinse in the sink to avoid the caked-on after Shabbos mess?
My aunt (who is not Orthodox) always said not to stack because you then have to wash the bottoms of the plates, while if you don’t stack all they need is a quick rinse.
I always do a thorough wash of any dirty dish.
Uh oh…I use those plastic tablecloths where I just roll the whole thing up and toss it into a Hefty bag at the end of the meal! I think it was child #5 when I gave up on china. On the other hand, all of my sons do know how to cook, do laundry, change a diaper, say please and thank you, open doors for ladies, converse intelligently on diverse topics, and don’t consider a size 10 fat, so maybe they’ll fare pretty well when they get to the shidduch stage. My bechor told me the other day his top three priorities were that she has to be smart, have a sense of humor, and yiras shemayim – everything else is negotiable. Not to pat myself on the back (albeit anonymously), but sometimes I think that my husband and I really did get something right in our parenting (or maybe it’s just that we had terrific kids)!
See you just dont speak guy talk-
He said “Yiras Shemayim” but he meant a Shayna Punim with a Gut Tuchas…
LOL…perhaps.
LMAO! Sounds about right…
“Scrapers have it so good, because they take the time to clear the plates and they leave the table so that other men can talk torah without the women folk present.”
The men are more likely to talk about the type of whiskey they’re drinking.
Duh, this is satire dude
You’re all missing the point. It is in poor taste to scrape at the table – ie seen in typical frummie catering places in brooklyn and monsey where they actually scrape platesh*t onto a large platter or shissel while a simcha is going on. Low class. One would never ever see scrapers at a fine restaurant – only the oily gross ones like Mendys or Essex on Coney and a myriad of others.
Stackers are like waiters in a fine restaurant – bring the plates in the kitchen and SCRAPE in the privacy of your own kitchen and not at the table where splashing and basic nausea could occur. It’s way classier to efficiently take a few plates out at a time and let hell break loose in the kitch.
As for the woman who doesn’t stack because then the plates would require a light rinse…that’s like only washing the tines of forks, tops of knives and spoons because hey, only they touch the food and/or mouth. NOT COOL!
Last paragraph was Excellent.