As religious questions go, it is a relatively small one.
But, inevitably, it must be asked: Is it O.K. to eat a chocolate statuette of your favorite holy figure?
The matter arose recently at Bond Street Chocolate, a bite-size East Village boutique that traffics in intricately detailed figurines of Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh.
Last week, an organization called Universal Society of Hinduism issued a demand:
“Upset Hindus urge withdrawal of Lord Ganesh-shaped edible chocolate,” read the society’s Feb. 1 news release.
The owner of the store, Lynda Stern, was puzzled. For more than five years, she has been selling the gold-dusted Ganesh and his shelfmates, beside passion fruit bonbons and chocolate-coated wasabi peas, with barely a whiff of controversy.
A Chocolate God.
You may think me quite unhip
or else an irreligious clod
or else an irreligious clod
but I think it would be fun to worship
a Chocolate God.
And here is my further plan,
the altar could be made of marzipan.
hzl
2/10/15
PS:
PS: If 'The Remover of Obstacles' is Ganesh
then why not ganosh on Ganache?
Ganache Recipe & Video - Joyofbaking.com *Video Recipe*
www.joyofbaking.com/ganache.html45 mins... term referring to a smooth mixture of chopped chocolate and heavy cream. ... Butter, oil, or corn syrup can also be added when a dark shiny glaze is desired.
In the release, the society’s president, Rajan Zed, wrote that Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, was “highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not to be eaten casually.” The chocolate statues, he wrote, were an insult to Hindus.
Mr. Zed, a former Postal Service supervisor in Reno, Nev., and the society’s only full-time staff member, is a frequent critic of the nonreligious use of Hindu imagery.
He has taken on an Australian brewery whose ginger beer label shows Ganesh and the goddess Lakshmi; challenged the Brooklyn Museum over a mural depicting the deity Kali; and persuaded Urban Outfitters to stop selling a Ganesh duvet cover.
But Ms. Stern, whose 3-inch-tall Ganesh sells for $15, has no intention of desisting.
“All spiritual icons are treated equally in my shop,” she said, “with honor and respect to the religion.”
And it turns out that whether the statues offend the devout depends on whom you ask.
“We Hindus look at the universe as eternal and god almighty as one,” said Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, in Queens, which says it is the country’s largest Hindu temple. “So we would not say that the lord resides only in that little piece of chocolate. It’s more like when they eat it, the lord comes back to us — he is within us.”
She added, “Our own Indian children would love to have some candies like this.”
The store’s Divine Collection also includes a 4-inch-high Virgin of Guadalupe, which sells for $18. The Rev. Santiago Rubio, pastor of theChurch of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Chelsea, was not pleased to hear this.
“We consider statues and images as sacred objects that help connect with the divine or the supernatural,” Mr. Rubio said. “So to transform them into merchandise, candy to eat, I don’t think it’s the best way to go. It’s just business for these people.”
But a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Zwilling, recalled a Catholic organization’s dinner at which guests were given white chocolate Virgin Marys.
“I don’t think there’s anything inherently sacrilegious about it,” Mr. Zwilling said of Ms. Stern’s Jesus treat, which is cast from a dashboard ornament. “It’s the intention of the person making it that matters.”
Ms. Stern said that after an article about the chocolate statuettes appeared in 2009, she got a call from a representative of a Buddhist community in Chinatown who threatened a boycott of the store. She chose to ignore it — “That’s not my demographic,” she said — and it ended there.
Since then, she said, her figurines had been purchased “non-ironically” by many religious customers. (In case anyone was wondering, Ms. Stern does not make figures of the Prophet Muhammad.)
Hun Lye, a Tibetan Buddhist lama who last year helped make a sand mandala at the Asia Society in Manhattan to demonstrate impermanence, said that for many Buddhists, eating the Buddha’s likeness “would be considered disrespectful and it would be believed that it would result in negative karma being created.”
On the other hand, he said, a famous ancient Buddhist text, “A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life,” “says that those who get upset when the Buddha is being insulted should not call themselves disciples of the Buddha.”
“It’s the Dalai Lama’s favorite text,” he said. “But probably you wouldn’t see the Dalai Lama buying the statue and chomping on it.”
Correction: February 8, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the title for an ancient Buddhist text. It is “A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life,” not “The Boddhisattva Way of Living.” It also misstated when that text originated. It was the eighth century, not the ninth century.
An earlier version of this article misstated the title for an ancient Buddhist text. It is “A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life,” not “The Boddhisattva Way of Living.” It also misstated when that text originated. It was the eighth century, not the ninth century.
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