Sonja loved to watch her father wash the dishes. He wasn’t a particularly neat man in many other ways. His car was a mess. His desk at work looked like a place where files went to die. But when it came to dishwashing, he was Mr. Clean. He would soak, scrub, scour, rinse, and repeat until the dishes were spotless. To him, dishwashing was an art form. He was the Botticelli of the Brillo pad, the Cezanne of the sponge. In short, his dishwashing was a masterpiece.

Sonja would clear the table and then sit and watch the master work. He was relentless. Casserole pans, mixing bowls, cookie sheets–no problem. Nothing seemed to faze him. That is, nothing but the chulent pot.

On Saturday night the chulent pot sat as his greatest challenge. For over 12 hours, starting on Friday afternoon, the chulent ingredients had bubbled in the crock pot, churning and boiling into a delicious Shabbat-afternoon delicacy. It was also creating a cleaning challenge of epic proportions. The pot soaked in suds all of Shabbat afternoon, long after the soup meat, potatoes, beans, and kishka were just a gastrointestinal memory (or nightmare, as the case might be). Now Sonja’s father had to blast it clean, good as new for the following week.

Just before her father started on the pot, Sonja would catch, for just a moment, the look of exasperation on his face. Then he would launch into his cleaning routine with a scrub brush and steel-wool pad, scrubbing incessantly until it was immaculate. When he was done, a sweet smile would cross his face.

“Dad, how do you do it?”

“What do you mean, Sonja?”

“I mean, how do you clean that pot? I know you hate doing it. I’m not even sure why you enjoy doing the dishes at all. But every week you persevere. And that pot? It’s like totally gross.”

Her father smiled his sweet smile again.

“Sonja, I don’t love doing the dishes, but I do love your mother. When Jacob labored for the hand of Rachel he worked for seven years to earn the right to marry her. Then he was tricked and had to work for seven more years. The Torah states, ‘Vayihyu bi’einav kiyamim achadim bi’ahavato otah. They seemed to him a few days because of his love for her.’ I’m not a very neat man, and I’m not planning on becoming a shepherd anytime soon, but I use my dishwashing as a way to show how hard I will work to show my love. And I love your Mom so much that the work passes quickly. I even enjoy it. Besides, your mother and I are a team. And if I didn’t clean, I would have to help cook, and you certainly don’t want that.”

Sonja thought of her father’s Sunday morning omelette surprise and nodded in affirmation.

“And the chulent pot is the ultimate expression of my love,” Sonja’s father continued.

“How so?”

“Well, when Jacob first saw Rachel, he walked up and rolled the heavy stone cover off the well by himself. It was a superhuman feat of strength, showing his great love for her. That is the chulent pot in our house. No one man should be asked to clean this cauldron of doom, this pot of pain, this vessel of…”

“I get it.”

“But I do it for love.”

“And does Mom see it that way?”

“No, she knows I love her even without all the dishwashing. In fact, I think she would find my point of view rather amusing. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing it, though.”

“Gee, Dad, I sure hope I marry someone someday who does all the dishes.”

“Amen to that.”

Larry Stiefel is a pediatrician at Tenafly Pediatrics and actually does scrub the chulent pot every week.

By Larry Stiefel