Apologies for typos, I'm on mobile.
Tl; dr: Cousin and his fiancé want me to pay for cleaning their entire (kosher) kitchen after I left non kosher food in their fridge.
So, I was raised Jewish, but my family was very lax, we didn't keep kosher, and I rarely went to synagogue. My cousin's family was the same, for the most part. We have always been pretty close, he's like a brother to me.
We both went away to college, and he decided to go to a historically Jewish school because he got a full scholarship. In college, he became a lot more religious and met his more religious girlfriend, who is now his fiancé. They have a kosher household, in another city.
I was traveling to a wedding where I was in the bridal party. There are not many direct flights from my city to the destination of the wedding and the ones that exist are expensive. Instead I booked a flight to their city with a layover of a few days, so I could see my cousin, continuing on to the wedding after. I initially looked into booking a hotel where my cousin lives but they were out of my budget, so I booked a hostel. My cousin heard about that and told me the hostel I wanted to stay in had had some issues with bed bugs, and petty theft, and insisted I stay in their guest room instead, and I accepted.
I flew in on a Tuesday morning while both my cousin and his fiancé were at work, I went to his office and picked up his spare set of keys, and then went to do some touristy vacation things. I ended up having lunch with some old family friends, and then I went back to my cousin's apartment.
I brought some left overs with me, put them in the fridge and took a nap in the guest room for most of the afternoon.
I woke up to my cousin's fiancé (who I had only met once or twice before) yelling at me about how I ruined her kosher refrigerator by bringing in food that was not kosher. I didn't realize that my leftover pasta mixed meat and milk, making it not kosher.
Kosher kitchens are generally inspected by rabbis, blessed by them, there's a whole process that goes into keeping it kosher (I have never kept kosher and I'm not super knowledgeable about the topic so I didn't know this before staying with them).
I felt terrible, they extended their home to me and I did something thoughtless. I apologized and offered to clean the entire fridge myself and replace the groceries, but his fiancé was just sitting on the kitchen floor, crying, because she had already eaten and nothing was kosher anymore.
My cousin came home and comforted her and I apologized again and offered to clean the fridge or help in any way, and go grocery shopping with them at the kosher market to replace anything they wanted.
My cousin told me to go to sleep because it was late and I was exhausted and told me not to worry about it and he would fix things. I apologized again and went to bed.
When I woke up, my cousin told me he would have to have a rabbi back in to supervise the cleaning of the kitchen. They live in a very religious neighborhood and their synagogue has some sort of cleaning service they're affiliated with that has a rabbi on staff, so they clean the kitchen and make it kosher again. I offered to pay for it, but he told me it was fine, that it was his fault for not reminding me how strictly kosher he is now.
I thought everything was okay, we spent the weekend hanging out and his fiancé was a little frosty towards me, which I understood. Before I left, I took them to dinner as a thank you and an apology, and again I offered to pay for a grocery shop for them, which my cousin refused.
I went on to the wedding. While I was there I was pretty busy, and I didn't check Facebook. I'm not one of those people who goes on social media everyday, anyways.
I got home yesterday, and when I logged into FB I had at least a dozen messages from my cousin's fiancé asking me to PayPal her for the cost of the cleaning service. It came out to a little over $1k, there was a receipt attached that noted that they cleaned the entire kitchen, not just the fridge (which is the only place that my food was, and it was in a container in a bag, fwiw.)
I cannot afford 1K. I wiped out my cushion in my savings by attending the wedding, and getting my bridesmaid dress and such. I haven't responded to the message but I texted my cousin and he hasn't responded either (unlike him). Am I wrong for feeling like she's taking advantage of my willingness to pay for cleaning the fridge?
I contacted the cleaning service and asked if they could send me a bill for just the cost of cleaning their fridge, or a bill with a full itemized breakdown, and they emailed me the breakdown, and the fridge was only $150 to clean. I'm thinking about just sending her that amount with another apology, but I don't know if that's rude? I don't want to start a bigger fight, but I think asking me to pay for a $1,000 cleaning bill is crazy. Am I in the wrong here?
Submitted March 24, 2016 at 09:54PM by Sonotkosher http://ift.tt/1WLGa7u relationships
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