Jewish Guilty Pleasures

I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite guilty pleasures recently. What makes something a guilty pleasure? I think it has to be something that’s bad for you, something that you feel a little bit gross doing because you know just how bad for you it is, but something you do anyway because you just can’t help yourself every once in a while. Often, of course, foods are guilty pleasures. But I also include lying outside in the sun without any sunscreen on, fashion-themed reality television, and gossiping about breakups in my social circle.

I have Jewish guilty pleasures, too. Some of them are foods: yerushalmi kugel, which is utterly delicious and also horrifyingly bad for you, Babka, and brisket (I’m a vegetarian, but I still sometimes dream about brisket). Other Jewish guilty pleasures include: showing up to shul on Shabbat for the second half of musaf, categorizing everyone as either a religious zealot or a heretic, and delighting in the sordid gossip of the synagogue you don’t go to.

What are your Jewish guilty pleasures?