Kefir grains look like small white lumps of intricate shapes floating in milk. By turning milk into kefir, they are able to grow and reproduce. In this sense, they can be treated like pets and given individual names, following special rules — similar to those that exist for pedigree dogs or racehorses. (Grains from the same jar must have names starting with the same letter, etc.).
In the spring of 2001, while in Jerusalem, I was growing kefir grains and giving them names according to the following rules:
− the first part of the name was the names of real people who died a natural death in Jerusalem on the day when a particular kefir grain was born (i.e. Aharon’s, Haym’s, David’s, Lea’s, Rochel’s, etc.);
− the second part consisted of English nouns starting in alphabetical order (ab, ac, ad … ba, bc, etc.) depending on the jar and usually ending with “-tion”. If necessary, adjectives were added to maintain alphabetical order. Thus, the full names of the kefir grains looked like Aharon’s Abstraction, Haym’s Acquisition, David’s Addition, Lea’s Bare Abruptrion, Rochel’s Beady Copulation, etc.
In the spring of 2003, in Moscow, I grew a new batch of kefir grains. Their names were similar, with the only difference that the Jewish part of the name was replaced by a Muslim one (according to the alphabetical index of the book by J.S. Trimingham “Sufi Orders in Islam”). After a series of special exercises and examinations, I selected about 100 of the most outstanding specimens, which were taken aboard a training aircraft of the Russian space forces and released into weightlessness.[1]
[1] Leiderman Yu. Giving names to kefir grains [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=976Comment type: Published comment
Author: Yuriy Leiderman
Bibliography:
Leiderman Yu. Giving names to kefir grains [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=9
