PT blogs a gig he played with Ruby Harris at a Conservative synagogue and writes about a misunderstanding with regard to whether the food was kosher by Orthodox standards (There is a range among among Orthodox certifications that is not relevant for this discussion.) or Conservative kosher.
I was once hired by a fellow musician to sing at a Shabbos Bar Mitzvah in South Jersey. There were four vocalists hired for this event which turned out to be in a Conservative shul. The arrangements were for us to eat at the homes of Orthodox people in the community on Friday night, daven Shabbos AM in the Orthodox shul, and then walk over to the Conservative shul to sing at lunch. We were told that the clients had made special arrangements for us to have "Orthodox kosher" food at lunch. The rest of the affair was "Conservative kosher."
When we got to the hall we ran into two issues. The first was when the Maitre D' announced that he doesn't seat the band. Nice. At a four hour Shabbos lunch. Eventually he consented to give us a table with four glasses and a pitcher of water in the corner near the kitchen.
We also discovered an issue when we went into the kitchen partway throught he affair to find out about the meals we'd been promised. The caterer proudly hauled out some frozen Meal Mart tv dinners and told us to give him approx. ten minutes notice before we were ready to eat so that he could heat them up for us. Ouch!
