Our Non-Jewish Oven

I feel like oven manufacturers might not be super in tune to what Jewish customers want in a new stove.

Welcome to Part 883 of my ongoing series about how the new stuff you buy isn’t always better than the old stuff.

We didn’t really want to get a new stove. Our old stove has a lot of great features, and has been accumulating even more great features over the years, most of them child-safety related: 

1. It has two ovens (one rack in the milchig oven, two racks for fleishigs).

2. After a number of years, the door handles break off. This is a cool feature that makes it harder for little kids to pull the doors open, because you have to be coordinated enough to open them with your fingertips.

3. Three of the flames could only be turned on with a lighter.

4. Most oven disasters happen at times of the year when the oven is used a lot. Our oven knew this, and would sometimes stop preheating before the major yomim tovim.

5. Eventually, one of the burner knobs stops turning altogether, and after two weeks of you forcing the knob to turn because it’s Pesach, this burner begins to give off what might be a faint smell of gas.

I mention this in case the yeshivas are reading this and thinking, “They can buy a stove every 19 years, but they can’t afford more tuition?” There was a gas leak. Though it was a slight gas leak; probably not so dangerous. Nothing happened all the times we turned on the lighter. It was the kind that you aren’t sure is a gas leak, but you keep your kitchen window open just in case.

Basically, we had the yeshivish car of ovens. It had tape on it, it was missing handles, like “This door you can only open from the inside,” plus there was a faint smell of gas, but it wasn’t so bad if you rolled down the windows. And there was zero trade-in value.

Anyway, you’d think technology keeps getting better, right? No. Ovens can only get so good. And if they add one nice feature, it means they’re sacrificing something else.

For example, one feature they’re touting is, “We made both ovens the same size now!”

Great, so the fleishig oven is smaller?

“No!” they insist. “It has the same square footage!”

The reason we know the oven is smaller is that the stove knobs are on the front. One feature we liked about the old stove was that the knobs were on top, along the right side of the stove, so the kids wouldn’t play with them. This was an important safety feature. (The other safety feature was that the front knob didn’t turn.) So we don’t want the knobs on the front, because as my wife says, “The kids are going to play with it.”

Our kids are teenagers. They’re going to play with it either way, because new burners are fun. You turn them and the flame goes on, unlike our old oven.

But wait; why are the knobs in front?

Turns out there’s a very good reason: The company added a fifth burner, in the center. It’s oval.

What pot is oval? Am I making challah on the stove?

Actually, it’s meant to be used with this grate that comes with the stove that has a grill on one side and a griddle on the other, so that on one side you can make steak, and on the other side you can make pancakes. I haven’t actually asked a shaylah about whether we can use each side for a different gender, and I’m not going to, because even if the rav says yes, what sink am I going to wash this in?

Apparently, people were clamoring for this so much that the manufacturers said, “Let’s just make this part of the stove! Right in the center, between the other 4 burners!” If I have 4 pots on the stove, I am not squeezing between them with barbecue tongs. And if I don’t have pots on the stove to keep an eye on, I’m grilling outside on a grill that doesn’t set off the smoke detectors.

I also cannot see how I’m going to keep this middle thing kosher, with all the splashing that happens when people cook.

And because of this grill burner, there’s no room on top for the knobs, so the knobs have to be in front, so the ovens are shorter. And the ovens are the entire reason I’m buying a double oven! Two kosher ovens! But those aren’t all they can be because of the grill, which ironically is going to be treif!

It’s like they have no idea what Yidden want. And who else is this double oven made for? Besides maybe Italians.

Yes, they gave us a Sabbath mode. Ovens have a feature that if you leave them on for more than 12 hours, they turn off, but if you put them on Sabbath mode, they stay on. I always wonder, “What do non-Jews think of Sabbath mode?” It comes with the oven, it’s a whole page in the manual, and they must think, “Why would I want this? Keep the oven on for days in a row? Won’t this heat up the house?” Except the Shabbos goyim, who are going to ask, “Are they trying to put us out of a job?”

The new Shabbos mode does have a disable light feature, though. But it also disables the clock, for some reason. You have no idea what time it is. And this is the only clock we have in the kitchen on Shabbos.

My wife wanted to take out the bulb. I don’t want to do that, because the racks on this oven don’t slide out easily, and sometimes we’re pulling on the rack with our yarmulke and it’s not coming out and it’s not coming out and then BAM!

So I’d like to see what I’m cleaning.

My wife said, “Well, we liked the racks in our old oven; maybe we can put those in.” And I tried that, and there’s no way it’s going to work, because the racks from our old oven are narrower.

So here’s the thing: We were wondering, if the oven is not as tall, how is it the same square footage? And the answer is they made the interior a little wider.

Which is like, “Great! I still can’t stack pans!”

Well, can we fit a third pan across?

Not that much wider.

Unless we stack them sideways, like seforim?

This is one of the ridiculous features that do not care what frum people want. Do the racks slide out smoothly so you don’t keep spilling on the bottom of the oven? No, but it has Steam Clean! You can put your hat in there!

Okay, I don’t know what Steam Clean is.

But it definitely comes with a QR code that I can scan so I can put my oven on the internet. What is my oven doing on the internet?

“It’s for when you’re not home,” the manual says.

What is my oven doing on the internet when I’m not home?

Turns out that it puts an app on your phone so you can preheat your oven from work. In case you ever want to burn down your house when you’re not home. Or scare the daylights out of whoever’s working in the kitchen.

Yes, you can cook supper without being home, which is something our ancestors only dreamed about. Our ancestors would have asked, “But how do you get the things into the oven?”

Oh, you need someone for that.

“Ok, but can’t that person just turn on the oven while they’re at it?”

Sure, the oven also has Delay Start, so you can just set that before you leave the house. But in case you forget, you can turn the oven on from your phone. Unless you forgot to enable Remote Start. You could just always leave Remote Start on, unless your wife believes that you shouldn’t do that in case people want to hack your oven. Who wants to cook our food at the wrong times? Are the Russian hackers cackling about how they’re going to overcook our dinner?

“They wanted to leave the oven off for 24 hours. Now they’ll never get to kasher!”

This sounds like the plot of a frum kids’ comic book.

Don’t have a smart phone? You can also let your non-Jewish neighbor scan in so he can turn your oven on from the comfort of his living room, in case you forgot to set Sabbath mode.

“See? You still have a job.” n

Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to [email protected]. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.