I think that may be what the idea was, but they definitely meant just regular celery because the conversation, which had happened a couple of times with guests when I was a kid, was along the lines of "why are you using parsley? Celery is so much nicer!"
When they're already encircling an entire region in wire to claim it's a house, and also claiming some dude owns all the bread in a country, eating celery seems a bit of a step down in comparison
To be fair, you're conflating Orthodox (or even Ultra-Orthodox) Jews and Reform Jews, which is kind of like conflating Mennonites (or Amish) to Methodists. Same religion, very different interpretations. The latter being much less medieval in their way of thinking.
“There are no Christian symbols on the walls,” Plaut said. “There’s no mixing of meat and dairy, and the pork that is evident is hidden. Hence the phrase ‘safe treyf.’ You can’t see it when you eat it so it’s ok.
People are weird. There was a break-off group from the temple in my town because they felt it was too progressive (not about social issues, about Reform Judaism) that my grandfather joined and then complain about them not having services on days when there was a ball game on. Like- "this temple is not religious enough, let's form a more religious one... but only when baseball isn't on."